While visiting the ‘rents in Hawaii, we all signed up for the HURT running club’s informal 10 mile 4th of July weekend trail race. My parents’ had run this race before and from my dad’s description, it sounded like a pretty simple out-and-back on a fire road. The toughest factor in the race is usually the heat and humidity.
It was looking like we were lucking out as they’ve been having extended cloud cover lately over Oahu, which provides drastic relief from the heat of the sun. When it’s humid, the sun feels more intense, so shade feels to have more of an effect, compared to when you’re in dry heat. I remember Kansas summers were like this too – it’s humid there.
So the race starts and we go tearing off down the road. The first ½ mile was uphill, but I really wouldn’t call it a climb. What was challenging was the footing. The ground was damp, so your shoes started picking up clumps of the dirt as you ran, making your feet heavy. The other footing challenge was how uneven the road was. It was like we were running in and out of bomb craters. To keep a fast stride going, you had to look for the flat line, so we were all weaving back and forth on the fire road trying to keep out of the ditches. You couldn’t ever relax and get a good stride going because you had to look at the ground right in front of you so much. Falling on this dirt mixed with volcanic rock would be super sucky.
Once the road started evening out, the sun came out and damn it got hot fast. At about 2 ½ miles in, Mr. Ultra Runner here felt like he was going to throw up and didn’t know if he was going to make it. All I could think about was how I thought I must have eaten too much pasta last night and how hot it was. My legs weren’t tired, but my stomach hurt, either from what I ate the night before or from breathing so hard, I didn’t know.
Once we rounded the point we got into the shade of the mountain to our left and it felt cooler. I started feeling better and I noticed the guy who passed me during my I’m-going-to-throw-up period was coming back to me. Once I passed him that gave me a mental boost and I started to slowly real in the three people now in front of me. I watched those three hit the aid station/turnaround point about 30 seconds in front of me and they all stopped, gulped down a cup of water and at least one threw a cup of water over their head. Watching this I thought to myself, what are they doing? It’s a 10 mile race, why bother to stop for water? Though I was carrying a small hand-held, I had hardly drank any at this point. We’d only ran five miles. So when I hit the aid station/turnaround point, I just slapped the table and tore off in the other direction. Like in other races I’d done, a fast aid station transition helped me a lot with making up ground on other runners.
I was really feeling good now as I reeled in those three runners. Jay Z’s 99 Problems came on my iPod and it felt awesome to run to that song and pass those people, putting me into 9th overall. 99 Problems has a great tempo to run to, plus the song just has attitude and that gets me going.
When I got to the steep, little single track climb I looked back to take account of where people were. Two of the people were hanging on and were about 10 to 15 seconds behind me. I wasn’t pushing myself to run the pace I had kept, so I felt I had plenty of reserve if either of them put a move on me. But man, I was having fun and listening to my tunes on the iPod.
Eventually the trail started to change and I thought . . . I don’t really remember running on a trail like this with ropes on both sides and this much sand . . . . I stopped and looked behind me up the small hill I’d just ran down and saw no one. I waited for a second and still no one. Then I thought, fuck, I must have gone the wrong way. I ran back up the hill and saw other runners veering right when I veered left. Shit. I turned my iPod off and concentrated on picking up my pace and trying to run the people down who’d just passed me. Apparently the two people behind me yelled to me when I veered off the wrong trail, but because I had my iPod blaring so loud, I couldn’t hear them.
So now I was back in 13th place. I started running a pretty hard pace to try to re-catch these people, but three of them had put too much distance on me and were running too fast a pace for me to catch. That mistake of mine totally took the fun out of the race. I was pretty bummed and embarrassed when I crossed the finish line for making such a dumb mistake. The course wasn’t marked, but what I’m mad about is wearing that iPod which prevented me from hearing the shouts from the other runners. I’ve been in a race where a guy in front of me missed a turn and I yelled for him, but he couldn’t hear me because of his iPod.
So my finish really bummed me out, but otherwise it was a fun, tough 10 mile race. I’d look forward to doing it again, next year, but my parents won’t be living in Hawaii next summer. Damn it. My parents were two of the oldest runners in the race at 65 and with the rough turain, their knees got beat up and they had a tough time. My dad and a guy he was following made the same mistake I did and went down the wrong trail. He still finished, though. They're both tough, old, active seniors.
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