Run With Garrison

Hi everyone,

I have completed my first 4 week training cycle of 2014 and I am feeling pretty good. I hit my mileage goals for the past 2 weeks and wound up hitting 300 miles for this 4 week cycle–right on my goal.

However, my best run over the last 2 weeks was also my shortest…Earlier this week, I spent a few hours up on Tantalus (both the trails and roads) and then I took Pauline up to the Tantalus trails for our first actual trail run together. It had been raining quite a bit and Pauline was excited to break in her new trail running shoes. The plan was to run the inner loop–Up Hogsback, across Makiki Valley and Down Center trail–and have a nice, easy run together. I had been bragging a bit about how tough the climb up Hogsback was and how nasty the overall footing was on these trails and Pauline pretended to listen as we started up Hogsback. As usual, it was tough and I was sweating like a beast (I was also feeling my prior 2 ascents up Round Top Road). About halfway up the climb, Pauline just came around me and then took off. I could not keep up. As we reached the sandbags, I let her know that we were close to the top and then she seriously took off. She waited for me at the top and asked for directions. I pointed her down the Makiki Valley trail and away she went. She seemed impervious to all the mud/roots/rocks that I was clearly struggling with on this day. As we were heading down, one of the bridges had been downed by a fallen tree, I knew this because Pauline had yelled back to give me a heads up. It took me about 30 seconds to navigate the obstruction and by this time I had assumed that Pauline just levitated over the entire obstacle. Pauline made it to center trail and just knew to go left. She was just gone….

When I arrived at the trail junction near the Nature Center, I was greeted by my soon-to-be-wife sitting on a bench…Asking me what took me so long. Yep, I am super proud and super lucky!

Here is the recap for the past 2 weeks

Week 3

**5 mileage days with 2 shorter runs on Friday

**2 Tantalus Counter Clockwise loops–Negative Split lap 1 86:29 lap 2 79:49

**16×400 on the track with 100m jog recovery average 92 seconds

Weekly mileage 78

Climbing 5241 feet

Week 4

**4 mileage runs

**1 long run–20 miles out to Dog’s House and back

**Great Aloha Run. I was hoping to be able to put in a solid effort but I think the increase in mileage had left my legs a bit flat. No worries because Jeff and I had a long warmup and it was a nice day to run in the rain

**Tantalus day–1 lap counter clockwise, followed by ascent up Round Top Road and descent down the trails. this was the preamble to my fun run with Pauline

Weekly mileage 90 miles

Climbing 5519 feet

That is about it for now. The next run with posted results will be the Aiea Loop Trail race on March 15. After a little rest and some Big Island time, we might be ready to run our first race as Dr. and Mrs. Garrison.

Much Aloha,

M & P