Ford Island Bridge 10K

Well it's another wet windy day here on the island. Seems like we have had high winds for like 4 weeks straight... I'm ready for our normal 15 mph trades to come back. Anyway... it was a good day NOT to be on a bike! :) Instead, Nalani and I went to run the Ford Island Bridge 10K this morning.

I did this race last year and set my 10K PR at 45:46. Last year it was just brutally windy and I took it out too fast and just DIED at the end (uphill into the wind). So this year I was mentally prepared for how hard it was going to be at the end and decided to be a bit more conservative in the early miles. I started out just fine and cruised along nicely and pretty evenly for the first 4 miles and felt good. Light and fast... light and fast... (I have to thank Angela for that mantra!) Mile 5 was into the wind... like 30 mph headwinds today... so I slowed some, but not quite as big a fall off as last year so I still figured I was on my way to a PR. I felt strong in the last uphill mile and tried to imagine myself like a knife cutting through those strong winds... I was passing people and though I knew I was slowing down, I didn't think I was slowing down by THAT much. But alas, that uphill and headwind got me again this year and I missed my PR by 6 seconds. Grrr. Such is life I suppose.

I spoke briefly with the guy who won the race this year and he said that he was about 90 seconds slower this year than he was last year- he blamed it on the winds saying they were way worse this year. So he said that the fact that I was even close to my time from last year was a strong statement of my run fitness. Whatever. It was not a PR. But I'm trying not to be disappointed in my time because it was 15 sec/mile faster than I did that other 10K a few weeks ago, so clearly my run is moving in the right direction. I'm addressing my limiter and my run is getting better! One of my goals today was to focus the whole time, which I did, and another goal was to pace it more evenly, which I guess I did. Better than last year anyway, though I still could have probably paced it better. But, I placed 2nd in my age group at this run which is my highest placing ever at a running race. I got a cool bowl!

And Nalani had a fantastic run (I was not surprised!) and ran 44:38 which is a PR by a few seconds... Though she said this course was *much* harder than her old PR course. She *won* her age group this morning! Way to go Nalani! :)

Here's a cool picture I found (thank you, Hawaii Sport Magazine!) of all the runners at the start of the race- running across the bridge! This is the biggest 10K in Hawaii with 3200 entrants.

We topped off the morning with an ocean swim... our second one of the week. Yesterday we dealt with massive chop because we swam on the east side of the island where the high winds are off-shore and therefore create all that choppy water. Today we swam on the south side and the on-shore winds made it look so calm and inviting! But we should not have been fooled. It was the strongest current I've ever swam in! At one point I took like 10 strokes in a row while staring at the SAME rock beneath me... it cracked me up and I just had to stop swimming because laughing underwater isn't such a great idea. So we were treading water and laughing about how it was like swimming on a treadmill, but 15 seconds of that left us floating backwards fast so we had to start swimming again before we ended up on Molokai! At one point, I swear, I was taking long strong pulls and actually traveling backward. That's a really weird feeling, you know, swimming backwards... Eventually we turned around and FLEW back to the flag. I've never moved so fast in the water... ever! Very fun! So I guess what comes around, goes around. :)