Great Aloha Run 08

Today was the Great Aloha Run, finally. It seems like I've been training for it forever. I was definitely starting to get burnt out on running the Lanikai loop, but none of us have taken the initiative to find another course or suggest something different. Anyway, Great Aloha Run. I woke up at 4:30am and made some eggs and coffee. I also ate half a banana in the hopes that I wouldn't cramp too bad. Hit the bathroom, no problems there, if you know what I mean. (Smooth sailing) Picked up Ananda at just after 5 and we were on our way. We listened to a little Jonathan Mendelsohn to pump us up for the race. We parked at the stadium and caught a large school bus down to the start line. People were in all sorts of moods from pumped, to tired, to irritable. I thought quietly about how badly I had to pee again, while Ananda figured out how to get the time chip onto her shoe. After she had laced it up good (spelling out Champion with the plastic connector) we arrived on Bishop. We made an immediate pit-stop to the porta-potties, which ended up being a big mistake. We ended up in the slow line at the johns with no TP. We saw several YMCA folks, but since they were going to walk and we were determined to win we said our goodbyes and headed to the start line. Unfortunately we took so long on the potty line that we were at the end of the herd to start. We saw the uniformed soldiers had already started, waving their flags. When the gun went off at 7:00am there was a general movement towards the start. Luckily the timer chips start when you cross the start line, so it didn't matter how fast we were going until we got there. We started our time at 7:07 on my watch. It was hard at first because there was a ton of walkers back at the end of the herd with us and we had to navigate around them. It's our own fault for taking so long to get there, but it was slightly annoying. We did end up running a fast first few miles. We missed the 1 mile marker and hit mile 2 at 17 minutes. We ran about a 9 minute mile until marker 6 and then the course headed out onto Kam Highway, into the sun and up the hills. We had already passed both water stations. We had to slow down because it was getting harder to keep up our pace and we wanted to finish the whole thing with a good time. We passed a few interesting people. A black guy dressed in old school red sports gear with red wrist bands did the whole race backwards. There was a few people who did not use their morning allotment of deoderant and smelled pretty bad. We ran faster to pass them. I myself used deoderant, but started to sweat buckets a few minutes into it. I was pretty soaked by the end of the race. Miles 7 and 8 in the race were definitely the hardest for me, you might call it, my windward leg. I had a brief second wind at mile 7 that didn't last very long. It was the slight uphill rise, that went on forever that did me in. After you finished the first one, there was another one not far behind it. I'm not sure if there was a mile marker for 8, if there was I missed it. We did a pretty good job of not going too fast when we got close to the stadium (there's still a lot of distance left at that point) even though that's when people started to go a lot faster. The best part is, as always, the run into the stadium. We sprinted through and hopefully there will be a fantastic picture of me crossing the finish line with a fierce, determined look on the GAR site. We ran the whole thing in 1:18:43, about a 9:40 mile. That definitely beats last year's time.
After the finish you throw your leg onto a bench so they can cut off the chip and you follow the herd towards the water, the bananas and sweet bread, and the best part- the ice cold lemonade drink they always have. Mmmm, it's so wonderful after a hard run. Then we picked up our t-shirts and wandered into the stadium where we decided that we did not much care to stay for the show. We found our way to the car, took some fabulous post-race pictures in the parking lot, and drove home, where we told everyone that we won the race. A tie in fact, because we are both so fast. Click here to look at the rest of the pictures.