Thursday, September 29, 2016

Kona Diaries – Day #7 (11 days till the big day)

Normally I usually take Monday as an active recovery day as part of my training routine, and am good to go by Tuesday, but I woke up on Tuesday still feeling pretty sluggish and tired. I felt better than Monday, but I still wasn’t quite recovered and felt like I needed one more easy/recovery day. I can’t stress enough how important to is to listen to your body, and not be afraid to tell your coach how you feel so they can adjust your plan!

Today, I got up and instead of heading to the pool, I did an easy recovery 4 mile run. I headed toward the run start, and then ran the first 2 or so miles of the course just to further familiarize myself with every inch of this course!

I of course re-fueled right after and since this was one more recovery day for me, I got to play coach & sherpa for Jorge who decided to ride from Kona to the Mauna Kea Observatory! Only a 60 mile ride with nearly 10,000 feet of climbing! All I can say better him than me although I was a little jealous. 

Oh and sherpa(ing) is HARD! Between driving, getting bottles ready, and finding spots to pull off and take photo’s with 2 iphones and 1 GoPro I had my hands full. So full I forgot to eat … for 3 hours … whaaaaat?
It didn't take long for the road to go up!

The Queen K from up above

There is definitely more to the island than the Queen K. This road was nice but unfortunately didn't have any shoulder so it was quite scary at times

Getting closer - there it is - in the clouds - Mauna Kea 

Just keep climbing, just keep climbing - Contador style! 

Are we there yet?

Unfortunately Jorge has been dealing with some foot pain, and when the pain became too much he was smart and called it a day around mile 35 by which point he had already climbed 5,500 feet!
Since we were so close to the top of Mauna Kea (well the visitors center at least), we drove up it. The visitors center is at 9,200’ feet. If you so wish and have the car that can make it up very steep grades, and gravel roads (4-wheeler is a must), you can try to proceed to the top, which is at 14,000 feet! Since you can drive up to the top from sea level in less than 2 hours, you must actually acclimatize at the visitors center for at least 30 min before continuing further up. We didn’t have a 4-wheeler so we were out of luck, but the views even from the visitors center are awesome, and you have essentially already driven through the clouds. You can read more about Mauna Kea here.

Not yet almost there

Can't miss the warning sign! 

Once we got back into town, we went for an early dinner or else known as dinner #1 at Da Poke Shack!Their Poke is absolutely amazing! Warning: You will never be same and you will never think of sushi the same. It is THAT good!

Supersize me! 

I then also had brinner (breakfast for dinner) as dinner #2 and after some work, and of course some time in the recovery boots! 


Tomorrow (wednesday) it is back to regularly scheduled programming with a longish swim, and last double digit run before race day! Thanks for reading! 

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