I’ve always been into fitness, but over the last couple of years I’ve been more consistent and have been pushing myself further. My workouts vary between road running upcountry, and treadmill along with weights at the gym. Upcountry runs are usually between 4.5 and 5.5 miles. Treadmill runs are shorter and faster. They don’t involve any hills and take place at sea level which means more oxygen! So it’s a completely different experience from running upcountry.

So I’ve been wondering how well I’d do on a road run on flat terrain at sea level. Could I do seven miles? That doesn’t sound like much for serious runners, but for me it’s meaningful. So for a birthday workout I decided to go down to Kihei/Wailea and run, because I’m not getting older, I’m getting better! Right?

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite the way I’d hoped. First, the distance was only six miles, and second, the land was not flat. I knew there were hills in Wailea…I just didn’t remember there were quite that many hills, or how steep some were.

My big mistake was that I left the road and ran along the beach walk. This meant I had the heat of the setting sun blazing in my face, but worse, I had to jog up a steep hill to get back to the road, which was, uh…challenging.

But in the end, I made the 6.1 miles in 59:40 and witnessed a gorgeous sunset. So it’s all good in the end.

Here’s my course:

Posted on: Wednesday, November 7th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Categories: Fitness.