Did it HURT? Part II
Read “Did it HURT? Part I” HERE.
After finishing the Peacock 55 Miler and making it off the waitlist for the HURT100, I was on a high. My confidence was exactly where it needed to be. If I would have made it off the waitlist prior to finishing the Peacock 55 Miler, I would have been a mess of anxiety leading up to Peacock because my confidence before Peacock was already so low.
Training with other Bing Bongs helped keep training a good ol’ time.
I was way more careful with the way in which I trained. I didn’t drastically increase mileage like I did last year. I was able to keep the growth through each month pretty steady with growth while ending the last two months of the year with over 200 miles each and over 40,000ft of vert each month throughout those 200 miles.
When the Honolulu Marathon came around in mid December, I had one goal when it cam to the marathon itself and that was to get as close to 4hrs as possible. But since I had ran 4 miles just to get to the start line and I was going to be running another marathon worth of trails after the actual marathon, I wasn’t sure what I would be able to do.
The Marathon started off awesome though. I was pretty steady for the most part for the first 13 miles and then I slowly started to get slower each mile until I hit mile 21 or so. That’s when I really started to decline. Running longer distances on concrete is something I hate with a passion. It’s truly so much harder on the human body and can be super taxing.
I was able to finish strong as I hit the finish line finishing in 4:12. I was really happy with the effort but I wasn’t looking forward to the rest of my day at that point. I could feel blisters on both of my feet, my knees were super sore already, and I still had 27 miles left in my day in the mountains.
So I received my finishers medal, shirt, banana, and malasada and I started making my way through the city on foot to get to the trailhead to start the trail portion of my day. I honestly didn’t run much because I was trying to eat and trying to rehydrate to get my body back to a good place after what was a scorching marathon.
Once I got within half mile of the trailhead, I had to stop at my car to change my shoes, shirt, refill my vest, and I had to pop those blisters.
Now, I was headed up the trail with Nimai, Justin, and Andy. On tired legs, going up Hogsback is always a struggle for me. Or maybe is because I try to push so hard going up when I don’t have tired legs. Lol
The group was a blast and Burger King Chicken Fingers that we arranged to have delivered by the wonderful Laura at the Manoa turnaround was a huge motivation for me to keep moving my ass forward. The Chicken Fingers were perfect paired with some Fries and a Coke. After spending a short time chowing down, we had to start making our way back up to the boardwalk. The pace was steady and felt really good. Once we arrived at the board walk, I realized I forgot my headlamp in my car and I knew it would be getting dark soon.
Justin offered to run down to his car in Makiki and drive over to Nuuanu (our next turnaround destination) to drop off a headlamp and some snacky snacks. Lol. We basically walked down most of Nuuanu to give Justin ample time to make it down the mountain and to drive over to the Nuuanu Trailhead.
After running the Honolulu Marathon and the running into the mountains to run a HURT Loop to wrap up “peak week”, I was feeling amazing. Day Totals was 56 Miles with almost 7,000ft of vert. And weekly total was 83 Miles and 13,000ft of Vert.
Once we got to the turnaround point, we started filling up our vests with water and were eating some of the snacks we had stashed away in the bushes. Some rats had gotten to my Hawaiian Rolls which was pretty disappointing. Lol But right as we were finishing up eating, Justin pulls up with perfect timing. It was such a clutch move and timing which allowed us to continue on our journey into the night.
As we started making our way back up the mountain, the rain had started to come down. It wasn’t heavy or anything but it was enough to drench us pretty good. We were still able to maintain a good, steady pace going up though and in no time, we were beginning our decent down Manoa Cliff Trail. At this point which was about 52 miles in, I felt amazing physically and mentally. It didn’t take long before we hit the top of Pipes but as soon as we started making that decent, the rain started dumping. I had the energy and what not book it down but I didn’t want to leave my friends behind so every time I would stop to wait, I would start shivering right away. I used “arm circles” forwards and backward to try and maintain warmth in my upper body which seemed to help pretty well. I was pretty fired up knowing we were on the home stretch though AND I was feeling really, really good.
Once we got off the trail, we still had about a mile to my car and I asked Nimai if he would be down to run it because I really, really wanted to. And away we went. I’m pretty sure that’s the night that we did some up and backs in front of the car to even out the distance too as we waited for his significant other, Laura. I definitely could have kept going.
Ahhhhh it was such a high I was on. Especially since that was my peak week in mileage and the vert was OK as well.
My son and I at the top of Koko Crater on New Years Eve for sunrise.
Fast forward past a couple weeks of more training, long runs, and etc. and now I’m sick. I came down with a fever on Christmas Day. It put me down and out for a couple days. Even after the fever was gone, I still had really achy muscles and joints from shivering and what not from my fever. It sucked and made me really nervous about my taper. I’m not sure if my body was ever fully recovered from getting sick. But after the New Year, that didn’t matter. Making sure I’m taking in enough calories, hydrating, remaining positive and continuing a couple of training runs here and there while tapering was the focus.
Nimai helping me pack my drop bags at Uloha! This dude helped me so much in training and I can’t thank him enough.
A week out from the race, I was feeling good. So so sooooo good. The weekend before, Anna invited a bunch of us local HURT100 runners over to her place for a little briefing and good company which was awesome.
The week of the race, I did one last run from Makiki to Manoa to iron out pace and race day gear. And that last run went perfect. Timing was on, I was stoked about my new lights, shoes, and so much more.
The anxiousness that I was feeling leading up to race day was crazy though. But this time, it was a good anxiousness. I was just riding the mental high I was on as long as possible hoping that it would stay positive leading into race day.
To be continued… Did it HURT? Part III coming soon.
