it's official

We are now ALL signed up for the Honu Half, a real half-ironman race on the west side of the big island May 31st. That's just about 6 weeks from now. EEEEEeeee!
Ok so actually we're all in pretty good shape -- each of us kicked ass last weekend at the Lavaman olympic distance triathlon at Waikoloa. It was thecrab's first race, and he's clearly a natural!
This will be my first half-ironman, and I'm more than a bit nervous when I think about the distances: 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile run. Especially those last two. What I really need to do is to not think about the big picture right now, and focus on day-to-day training. If I do it right, the race should be perfectly do-able! With that in mind, here's what I did yesterday to kick off training for the Honu Half in earnest: a bike-run brick.

We started at Hapuna Beach Park, which is where the Honu Half will actually start. No swim practice for us though! Starting at the beach parking lot, we biked north for one hour or so, and the return took about the same amount of time (I know that seems obvious, but it doesn't always work like that, depending on the wind!) The winds were pretty intense but not so bad during the ride except for one part leaving Kawaihae, about 2 miles of under 10mph because I was going uphill right into the wind, YUCK! Most of the ride went pretty well, however, and I felt okay to run next. That was about 30 minutes out and back towards Puako, fine for about the first 40 minutes, but then I started having some trouble with overheating. I managed to push through it, but the run was pretty brutal: hot, dry, and desert-y terrain with big gusts blowing dust into my eyes. After that, a heavenly cooling soak and brief swim at Hapuna made me feel WAY better.

my stats for the day:
bike: ~2hours, made it to Mahukona and back, ~32 miles.
run: Hapuna parking lot through Puako and back, ~1 hour and ~ 6 miles.

woo!