It's the Maui Island Challenge!

Today's run: 12 miles: 3 miles of Warm Up at 9:27 pace, Lactate Threshold run of 7 miles at 8:03 pace, 2 mile Cool-down at 11:16 pace.

I woke up unreasonably early (6am) to try to beat the heat, and though I got on the road before 7:00, I could tell I was in for a challenge. After the three mile warm-up, where I stuck to the shade and kept my heart rate at around 150, I briefly stopped to change my watch settings and get the LT run started. Phoomp! Covered in sweat: I was an instant humidor.

I took off with a pace that put me inside my target range inside of two minutes. With a short uphill and then some downhill, I figure this would be a fast first mile. It was and it wasn't: 7:22. At this point I could confirm that I would go by heart rate and not pace. As the second mile, slight downhill, came in at 7:42 and my heart rate was around 175, I knew it was going to be a struggle to get all 7 miles done like this.

I was appreciative of the comment from blogger Champagne on yesterday's post, as I stopped worrying about pace and just kept checking my watch for heart rate. Still, the pace was troubling and I wasn't optimistic about continuing. I slogged through the next two miles, dealing with the complexities of mopping my brow, drinking some water, eating some energy gel, and watching my heart rate.

Then the trouble came. Mile 6 was largely uphill, and I was tired. (Okay, so it was really mile 9, but for this I'm discounting the warm-up.) I let my heart rate drift down to 171 at times and kept working the uphill. When a stretch of downhill came, I had to work that, too, to keep the heart rate up.

Mile 7 felt like crap. I felt like I was barely putting one foot in front of the other to go uphill, I was sweating faster than I could mop it up, and the split made me wonder if I had mis-measured, since all the other splits came in under 8:00, and the last one was something like 10:00. Plus, it was during this mile that my water bottle decided to leak, soaking my shirt (moreso).

I paused briefly to change watch settings, drink some water, and mop my brow. I started out a slow, slow "cool-down" run: the two miles back to the house. After four minutes, I began to think this is what Thomas would describe as "junk-miles", since I felt like I was barely moving forward as I slogged uphill, and I wondered if it was actually doing me any good.. After 10 minutes or so, I just walked the uphills (even still, my heart rate was around 150). I jogged slowly the last quarter mile.

Beat.

I saw my wife when I came back, who said, "it's hot out there." Yup. Maybe I should have gotten up at 5:00.

• • •

Tomorrow is a rest day, and we'll be coming home. All in all, I ran 45 miles on this island while on this vacation. What kind of person wakes up early on vacation to put in 45 miles of running in tropical heat? An insane one, I think.