Race Day

Me at the start line in the blue shirt

On Sunday morning, our alarm clocks got us out of bed at 5 am.  We had breakfast, loaded the car and were on the road to Kona by 5:30 am.  The hi-way is very dark and void of traffic at 5:30 am on a Sunday.  I'm sure that any of the cars that we met were driven by people  who were going to work at the different resorts along the way. 

We arrived at the Kona Pier (race starting point) about 50 minutes before the start time.  I met the race organizers;  a group of high energy, smiley people, who explained the procedures to me.  Thirty minutes before race time, I started my warm up.  With 30 minutes to go, I was impressed with the number of people who were already there.  I estimated that there were at least 200 participants, and they were still coming.  They were not organizing the starting line based on personal pace capabilities and so with five minutes before the start, I positioned myself near the front of the start line so that I wouldn't have to trample the kids and slower people who were running the 1 mile event.  The 5 km and 1 mile events were starting at the same time. 

"Stay focused and whatever you do, run faster than those little girls running the 1 miler"

At 7:30 am sharp, the count down and GO were given over a loud speaker and away we went, running on a road, only a few feet from the ocean, in Kona Hawaii.  Right at the start, a group of young guys took off at a ridiculously fast pace.  I was wearing my Garmin satellite watch and had told myself before the race that I was going to try and keep my speed at 13.6 km/h which would give me a personal best (PB) of 22 minutes.  However, it is very difficult to run slow when there are people ahead of you.  I imagine that even race horses would run faster in a pack than when they are alone.

In the first 1.5 km, I kept looking down at my watch and I was running between 14.5 and 15 km/h and I thought, "oh my god, I'm running way too fast and I'll never finish the race".  I brought my pace down for a little while and I started to feel good as I started to pass a few people.  However, at around the 2 km point, a Charlton Heston looking, 60-ish looking, bronzed and muscular, freak of nature, passed me.  As I watched him pulling further and further away, I thought "this is bullshit" and so, at the half way point, I dug down a little deeper and picked up the pace a little.

I caught up to a couple of guys and we started a series of little battles, where I would pass them and they would pass me.  This happened two or three times.  One of the guys was wearing a pair of the new style, goofy looking "toe shoes".  I could not let him beat me with those shoes.  With 1 km to go, I felt like I was near death.  Saint Peter had positioned himself at the pearly gates and was looking for my name.  As I eased up a bit, those two guy overtook me.

Me in the blue shirt just as I was passing Mr. Toe Shoes

Close to the finish line, with surf boards in the foreground

But then something amazing happened.  My training took over and I remembered my interval training; all the sprints that I had done, I glanced at my watch, and with 400 meters to go, I took off sprinting as hard as I could go.  My satellite watch told me later that I did the last 400 m at 22.8 km/h.  I passed the first guy and with about 100 m to go, I blew past Mr. Toe Shoes and finished the race.  I have to thank my brother Paul for inspiring me to get into this sport.  Passing those two guys at the end of the race was a bigger rush for me than any hat trick I ever scored in hockey or birdie in golf.  I will never forget that feeling.  I finished the 5 km race with my PB time of 21:04.  I finished 22nd in a field of 251 runners.  Thank you Ann and Allison for getting up so early in the morning to support me. 

I look like hell, but I beat Mr. Toe Shoes!

Thanking my sponsors:  Gatorade and Adidas...In my dreams

Here is a link to the race website with the results and photos.   http://bigislandrunning.com/

There are images of myself on the website: images 1178, 1184, 1374, 1750

Image 1374 is a good photo of Mr. Toe Shoes in his red shirt, moments before I turned on my 43 yr old jets :)