Kaena Point Firecracker: no shade, no pavement

Kaena Point is the far western tip of Oahu, where the paved road quits and a dirt track keeps going out to a nature reserve at the point. There's no shade and no pavement out there, with the ocean on one side and dry mountainside on the other, and the trail itself is mostly rocks with sand in between. The race is ten miles out and back on that. It isn't technical the way a mountain trail is technical, but it's uneven and it's exposed, and the sun comes off the water in a way that makes ten miles feel like more than ten miles. The way back sucks, and I'll say that plainly, and I'll also say I knew it would and went anyway.

So why would two people go run ten miles on rocks with no shade a month after a 70.3? Mostly because after a year of road racing that ended in a marathon, our legs needed something that wasn't pavement, and this was about as far from pavement as the island gets. It's a different surface and different muscles, and there's no pace to chase because the surface makes pace meaningless, and I liked that part more than I expected to. There's nothing to compare yourself to out there, which for someone who compares herself to everything was kind of a relief, so it ends up being strength work that happens to come with a morning out. It's also stunning, because the point is where the island just stops, with seabirds everywhere and, in winter, whales offshore, and a race that turns around there is worth doing once for the turnaround alone.

A few things caught me off guard. Ten miles doesn't sound like a distance you need to think about water for, and out there it is. My shoes did not come home clean, and the sun was a real problem on the way back, so I was glad we hadn't been brave in the first five miles.

We ran it together and finished one second apart, 1:58:36 and 1:58:37, a month after Honu, in a year that was mostly about the decision to go the full distance and the training that came with it. It's a HURT Hawaii event, held around the Fourth of July, which is why it's called the Firecracker.