Some Like It Hot

OK, can I just say how jealous I am of so many people posting about the hot temperatures on the mainland? Seems like every time I log on to facebook or blogs in the last week I'm reading about how hot it is. Funny to me that a lot of it is complaining. HA! I would NOT be complaining if it was 90 degrees here right now.

We've had week upon week upon week of wet windy weather here... a bit of sun here and there but overall it's been an overwhelmingly wet winter. I know it doesn't help that I live on the windward side of the island (which is the wet side). But seriously, I am ready to be hot. I want to train in hot weather. I want to feel all dehydrated b/c I just can't drink enough while training because it is THAT hot. I want to feel the sun beating down on me- burning holes in my skin from its intensity...

It's not that I really enjoy feeling like I might burst out in flames or die of dehydration while running... it's just that I know that it's going to be brutally hot and sunny at the 70.3 I'm doing on The Big Island in less than 9 weeks. If we don't start getting some sunny days soon, we won't have time to acclimatize to running while feeling like we might melt. That's what it's going to feel like at 11AM out on that golf course so that's what I want to feel like right now on my long runs. Grrrrr.

Moving on... On Friday I get to fly over to Molokai for the day to check out the Coffees Of Hawaii Plantation! I'm not sure what all I'm going to be doing over there, but I'm guessing I'll get to tour the plantation and get to learn more about how the business works and what my role might be... Oh, and meet a bunch of the friendly folks who work there! I'll take lots of pictures and write it all up for you when I get back. :) I've never been to Molokai so I'm looking forward to going! We were going to take Moana and stay for the weekend, but I have to be back on Sunday (more on that in a bit) so it was only going to be 24 hours for her there and the thought of packing her car seat and the pack-n-play and all her stuff for just 24 hours didn't seem worth it in the end. Maybe we'll go back over for a 3 day weekend later this summer when we'll have more time to settle in and explore the island a bit.

So Sunday is the annual Team Time Trial! It's a 40K race on the bike with 3 other teammates... I think TTT's are the hardest thing ever to do on a bike... harder than individual time trials because you just don't want to let your teammates down so you're giving 100% the whole time. I've done the TTT twice since living here- both times had my friend Sandy on my team and both times we won the women's race! This year I'll be riding with Sandy once again and our other 2 teammates are stronger than we've ever had before so the 4 of us are going to ROCK that course! The scary thing about riding with such strong teammates is that they will be hauling so fast at the front that sitting on won't give us a ton of rest before it's our turn to get on the front for our own pulls so it's going to be brutal. Then, like last year, I'm going to turn around and ride the 40K TTT again as the woman on our mixed team! Last year I had all of about 2 minutes to recover before starting again on the second team. Man, that was hard. Hopefully I'll have an extra couple minutes this year but we'll have to see how they order the teams. We have requested an early start for our women and a later start for our mixed team so hopefully it'll be ok. I'll find out on Saturday when they post the start times for each team. Regardless, this is going to be a wicked hard day on the bike but so much fun being part of this great Pac Velo team! :)