So first thing's first. I was early to the Hana Relay.
How early? Like an hour. We were supposed to be at the KMart parking lot at 6 a.m. but I came at 5 a.m. instead.
Don't ask me why, maybe I wasn't listening. Maybe I misunderstood someone. Maybe they covered that part while I was buying Coronas for the team meeting at Sack n Save.
Here's a photo of me waiting in the car at 5 in the morning and realizing that I could have slept for another hour.
I even made my own running t-shirt, it said "Raw Fitness Maui" in the front and "I Hate Cardio" in the back.
To give you a sense of what I was going through I will also include the back and forth text messages between Kehau and I here:
Me: Eh, we meet at kmart at 5 right? Or is it the gym?
K: Kmart 6 am
Me: 6!!!!! Holy shit I'm here already. Damn it
K: Shit I'm so sorry. We were razzing Luke abt 5 am bc he got to mtg hr late
Me: Oh man. K. Guess ill try to sleep in the car
K: You can maybe warm up :) oh man. This is classic. We always have ppl late but never early. Wow. This is for the history books.
Blah blah blah. And then I send Kehau the above pic:
K: OMG I love ur pic
Me: So glad u r happy. I'm going to run mad today, can't believe I could have had an extra hour of sleep. I'm so stupid
K: Maybe we should post our stream o texts. This is too funny. I'm dying
There was more but those were the highlights. Anyway, Ikaika is the first one there and he's not even running. He's delivering our running t-shirts which were cool "RUN RFM" which was a play on the "RUN DMC" logo.
(If you don't know who RUN DMC is stop reading my blog now and never come back. You are banned for life.)
Then Patty shows up and so does everyone else. Derek, Bump, Kalaheo, Kristi, Pat, Frank, Kehau, Kats, Lori and Ethel, Baldwin High School's female counterpart to Bump in the 90's. The gal can still run but we'll get to that later.
Soooo . . . we get running.
Pat takes the first leg then Patti. Meanwhile the rest of us jump in trucks and drive ahead to Baldwin Park where Kats gets ready to take the baton.
That's Kats in the white shirt waiting for his turn to run three miles, from Baldwin Park to Hookipa Park.
Again we drive ahead and wait. Everyone was worried about me and Kats because, well, cardio ain't our thing. Here's a view of where we were waiting for Kats at Hookipa.
I'm not sure how much time passes but at some point Kats comes into view but he's walking. Then he sees us and starts running again, God bless 'em. I wondered if I'd be doing the same thing. He crosses the line and hands off to Ethel who takes off and I ask him, "How was it?"
He answered, "That sucked."
At this point my turn was coming up soon. Ethel was running from Hookipa Park to Haiku Community Center. I was taking the baton from her and running 3.5 miles. The problem was that I wasn't sure where the hell 3.5 ended. But at this point I'm just thinking I want to survive and don't really want to think about it until it was actually my turn.
So we're waiting and then we see Ethel, and she's charging up the hill. I head up to the handoff point and then all of a sudden it's in my hand. Okay. Time to start running.
Except it's not really a run is it? I'm just jogging along. I'm concerned about my back because it was stiff before I even began but I didn't want to tell anyone. Just take it slow and easy.
Everything is all G until I get to the cemetery, then it's a long uphill fight. The worst part is that the road is uneven and my left leg has to reach a bit longer than my right. This causes my left calf to burn like a mother and my back isn't helping.
But then a strange thing happens, the road levels off and my back pain goes away and so does my burning left calf. I start hitting some sort of stride and it feels sorta good except I still don't know how far away the finish line is for me.
I try to put this out of my mind and I smell the guavas and think for a minute about my grandmother. This goes on for a while and then all of a sudden I see two figures in white t-shirts which I identify as Bumper and Derek. They tell me that the end of my run is about two hundred yards away.
Two hundred yards? That's it? But I had all this energy! I was barely sweating!
Seems I had paced myself a little too well and I took so long that my friends came looking for me. Damn it.
So for the last two hundred yards I sprint and try to get tired. A familiar feeling comes back to me and I feel like I do at the gym if I use a weight that's too light for the WOD. I should have pushed myself more, I could have done better.
But my leg is over and so is my part of the race. For the rest of the day we travel in the truck and I cheer my friends. I eat that chicken and drink that beer and we have a good time but I don't feel like writing about it. Maybe next year I'll be better prepared for the Hana Relay.
In the meantime, here's a few more pics for memories. Here we have Bump and Derek hiding under the towel in the back of the truck as the rain came down pretty hard:
And here we have Smooth Hand Luke after tearing it up on his run. There are references I could make here of Luke being too sexy for his shirt but I won't go there. We pick on him enough as it is.
Ethel stretching on a wall somewhere. I think by this time she had run twice already.
That's it guys, those are my Hana Relay pics and my experience on the run. Next year I'll be better prepared for sure.
Great Aloha Run anyone? Only 8.8 miles?
Let me know.
Later gang,
Rod
How early? Like an hour. We were supposed to be at the KMart parking lot at 6 a.m. but I came at 5 a.m. instead.
Don't ask me why, maybe I wasn't listening. Maybe I misunderstood someone. Maybe they covered that part while I was buying Coronas for the team meeting at Sack n Save.
Here's a photo of me waiting in the car at 5 in the morning and realizing that I could have slept for another hour.
I even made my own running t-shirt, it said "Raw Fitness Maui" in the front and "I Hate Cardio" in the back.
To give you a sense of what I was going through I will also include the back and forth text messages between Kehau and I here:
Me: Eh, we meet at kmart at 5 right? Or is it the gym?
K: Kmart 6 am
Me: 6!!!!! Holy shit I'm here already. Damn it
K: Shit I'm so sorry. We were razzing Luke abt 5 am bc he got to mtg hr late
Me: Oh man. K. Guess ill try to sleep in the car
K: You can maybe warm up :) oh man. This is classic. We always have ppl late but never early. Wow. This is for the history books.
Blah blah blah. And then I send Kehau the above pic:
K: OMG I love ur pic
Me: So glad u r happy. I'm going to run mad today, can't believe I could have had an extra hour of sleep. I'm so stupid
K: Maybe we should post our stream o texts. This is too funny. I'm dying
There was more but those were the highlights. Anyway, Ikaika is the first one there and he's not even running. He's delivering our running t-shirts which were cool "RUN RFM" which was a play on the "RUN DMC" logo.
(If you don't know who RUN DMC is stop reading my blog now and never come back. You are banned for life.)
Then Patty shows up and so does everyone else. Derek, Bump, Kalaheo, Kristi, Pat, Frank, Kehau, Kats, Lori and Ethel, Baldwin High School's female counterpart to Bump in the 90's. The gal can still run but we'll get to that later.
Soooo . . . we get running.
Pat takes the first leg then Patti. Meanwhile the rest of us jump in trucks and drive ahead to Baldwin Park where Kats gets ready to take the baton.
That's Kats in the white shirt waiting for his turn to run three miles, from Baldwin Park to Hookipa Park.
Again we drive ahead and wait. Everyone was worried about me and Kats because, well, cardio ain't our thing. Here's a view of where we were waiting for Kats at Hookipa.
I'm not sure how much time passes but at some point Kats comes into view but he's walking. Then he sees us and starts running again, God bless 'em. I wondered if I'd be doing the same thing. He crosses the line and hands off to Ethel who takes off and I ask him, "How was it?"
He answered, "That sucked."
At this point my turn was coming up soon. Ethel was running from Hookipa Park to Haiku Community Center. I was taking the baton from her and running 3.5 miles. The problem was that I wasn't sure where the hell 3.5 ended. But at this point I'm just thinking I want to survive and don't really want to think about it until it was actually my turn.
So we're waiting and then we see Ethel, and she's charging up the hill. I head up to the handoff point and then all of a sudden it's in my hand. Okay. Time to start running.
Except it's not really a run is it? I'm just jogging along. I'm concerned about my back because it was stiff before I even began but I didn't want to tell anyone. Just take it slow and easy.
Everything is all G until I get to the cemetery, then it's a long uphill fight. The worst part is that the road is uneven and my left leg has to reach a bit longer than my right. This causes my left calf to burn like a mother and my back isn't helping.
But then a strange thing happens, the road levels off and my back pain goes away and so does my burning left calf. I start hitting some sort of stride and it feels sorta good except I still don't know how far away the finish line is for me.
I try to put this out of my mind and I smell the guavas and think for a minute about my grandmother. This goes on for a while and then all of a sudden I see two figures in white t-shirts which I identify as Bumper and Derek. They tell me that the end of my run is about two hundred yards away.
Two hundred yards? That's it? But I had all this energy! I was barely sweating!
Seems I had paced myself a little too well and I took so long that my friends came looking for me. Damn it.
So for the last two hundred yards I sprint and try to get tired. A familiar feeling comes back to me and I feel like I do at the gym if I use a weight that's too light for the WOD. I should have pushed myself more, I could have done better.
But my leg is over and so is my part of the race. For the rest of the day we travel in the truck and I cheer my friends. I eat that chicken and drink that beer and we have a good time but I don't feel like writing about it. Maybe next year I'll be better prepared for the Hana Relay.
In the meantime, here's a few more pics for memories. Here we have Bump and Derek hiding under the towel in the back of the truck as the rain came down pretty hard:
And here we have Smooth Hand Luke after tearing it up on his run. There are references I could make here of Luke being too sexy for his shirt but I won't go there. We pick on him enough as it is.
Here we have Derek, Ethel and Kristi posing for the camera. If I'm not mistaken Derek's getting ready to run leg 12.
Ethel stretching on a wall somewhere. I think by this time she had run twice already.
Here Kehau scarfs down Patty's tuna mix. That stuff was pretty awesome, wish we had more crackers.
That's it guys, those are my Hana Relay pics and my experience on the run. Next year I'll be better prepared for sure.
Great Aloha Run anyone? Only 8.8 miles?
Let me know.
Later gang,
Rod
