I love descending on the bike so coming down was a blast. The road was smooth with lots of tight switchbacks so it was an hour and a half of 40 mph +, sprinting out of the corners and jamming tunes with my new postage stamp sized i pod. By the time we got back to Kahauli we were wiped out. Stopped at an Italian joint and pigged out before hopping the flight back to Oahu. A big thanks to Mark and Debbie for hauling clothes and food up for us and taking so many awesome pictures which you can see here.

Good friends, good times!

Top of the World

After about 4 hours of hard climbing , we reached the top were the temperature's were low and the winds were high. Keeping warm was a priority. Check out how high above the clouds we were. The air is so clear up there it screw's with your sense of distance. For example, Jesse looked like he was a quarter a mile in front of me as we raced to the the top, but I'm sure it was only 6 or 7 feet.

The first few miles we ran into a rain shower or two to make sure we we're good and clean for the climb. The views on the way up were fantastic.

Ride to Haleakala

Yesterday was an awesome adventure when 8 of us from the HACC took a trip over to Maui to climb the extinct volcanic cindercone of Haleakala. It is a 10,023 foot climb in 40 miles to get to the summit. Jesse, Kristy and I rode our bikes to the airport at 5 am and met up with the others for a six o'clock flight to Maui. We just wheeled our bikes up to the counter and they roll them onto the plane for you. After a 30 minute flight we rolled out of Maui airport around 7 and caught our first glimpse of what we were about to climb.

Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Triathlon training

I haven't been posting anything lately because of the fact that we haven't been doing much.

Marianne and I did ride over to Ford Island yesterday before my long run and I showed her this giant banyan tree out there. They just opened an aviation museum also which we want to get to soon.

I've been on a mission for the last 3 weeks to get super consistant with my training and yesterday marked the end of a tough 3 week cycle. I have all the time I could want this year and am determined to make the most of it. My limiting factor in the past has not been the time to train but the time to recover, ie naps, sitting around and eating right. This allows for a quality workout the next day and the day after that and so on. I'm happy to report that it went well and I managed to hold it together with out one of my "crashing on the couch for three days while pigging out trying to recover " episodes. Out of 47 workouts I had scheduled for the last 3 weeks, I only skipped 5. Three of these were the gym which is the hardest to make myself do. I don't chase after miles while I'm training, I just stick to the program I'm following, but out of curiosity I added up the last 21 days.

Swim 8 hours----12.5 miles

Bike 27.5 hours----469 miles

Run 13,5 hours---106.2 miles

Weights 4 hours

So that works out to about 17.5 hours a week which is just right. We'll see if all this translates into faster racing this year. Now I have a recovery week coming up. Time to let all that good work soak in.

Flashbacks

We had a milestone event and I had an interesting experience yesterday. Marianne had her promotion to Major pin on ceremony at work so I decided to get my hair cut because it was looking like a mop. I went to the same women I always go to in Mililani but this time she gave me a haircut that could pass for GI issue. I didn't like it. So anyway,........

Marianne's ceremony was well done. Not too much formality and lot's of cake. She's waited a long time to pin on and it looks great on her!

After the ceremony one of her NCO's comes in the office asking "what is a push letter? I need to submit a push letter with this decoration package" I immediately burst out laughing inappropriately.

A little background. A push letter is the quintessential waste of a tree. Basicly when someone your writing a decoration for has any markdowns on one of their performance reports, (ie, not the perfect human being,) the fact that you submit the decoration doesn't send a clear enough signal to leadership that you want them to receive a decoration, you must send a formal letter along with the decoration package stating that they deserve a decoration and you want them to have it. I thought that only USAFE was requiring this but I guess you can't keep a crappy idea to yourself in the military.

So sitting there with my short hair I dictated a push letter in a jiff. 1/3 facts and 2/3 flowery bullshit usually works. Brought back old memories. That's when I had a moment of clarity.... I am happy to have left this kind of BS!

In other/real news, I read that the Army is downgrading Iraqi combat vets disability status when they separate to save money on medical costs. The number of soldiers in the highest rated disability category has plummeted since 2003. What a class act huh?