Lots to blog about

Sorry for the lack of blog updates lately fellow readers, but I've been pretty busy trying to finish up assignments, study for tests, doing lots of running, travelling, and adjusting to the university life in general.  Did I say travelling?  Why, yes I did!  Where did I go?  Well, a couple weeks ago the Seawolf cross country team headed down south to the Islands of Hawai'i for 9 days to get rid of all the racing cobwebs, and get this season underway!  I've never been to Hawai'i before, so I should probably start off by telling you all how awesome it was...Or maybe I'll just show you.  After all isn't a picture worth a thousand words or something like that?

The first race site (Jurrasic Park Film Location)

The Team

Not a bad beach eh?

Couple of Flamingos

The view from the hotel

Men's team

The backstretch of the race course A.K.A the 13th fairway

You can click on any of the above photos for an enlarged view.

 Yeah, so those were a few of the photos of the trip, but they definitely don't serve justice to this island paradise.  Hawai'i is definitely another one of those places that belongs on a bucket list, and I could literally spend hours writing about how the whole experience, but we have some running to talk about! (And I need to get some homework done tonight)  Anyways, the Seawolves definitely brought their A-Game to Hawaii.  Race #1 went a little like this:  We had a real early morning after a long flight and a race 2 days before, so it's safe to say that we were all a little beat up going into it, but ran good races overall and managed a couple W's for the men and women.  Time wasn't really relevant here, especially with the 90 degree weather, the goal was to get in a solid tune-up race that would prepare us for the race the following weekend, and as a measuring stick for the rest of the season.  So basically goal accomplished, +1 for the Seawolves.  By the way, this race course was in the park that filmed movies like Jurassic Park, 50 First Dates, and You, Me, and Dupree.  I'll try to get some official team and individual results up on the results page when I get a chance, so stay tuned.  After Race #1, a few of the guys happened to notice yellow fruits hanging on some of the trees during our cool down, and jumped at the opportunity to have an exotic fruit feast mid-run.  So we picked some guavas off the tree, and continued on our cool down with handfuls of tasty fruit.  WIN!  Then, we got to stay in Hawai'i for another 7 days to train and wait for our next race.  Pretty rough life, eh?  If you can't already imagine, we had tons of fun running along the waterfront trails, climbing mountains overlooking Honolulu, and ripping out some fartlek sessions under the palm trees.  In between all that, we also got to work on our Alaskan tans, got to swim in the big pool with all the sharks, ate lots of pineapples and got rocked by the massive waves at the north shore of the island.  Then came Race #2.  Just like the first race, the men's and women's teams both jumped to the front and finished the job off right.  2 more wins gave us all the confidence we need that we're on the right track, and ready to rumble come October.  Note the golf course pictures above, that was our race course, no complaints from me!  We also brought home some wicked Tiki Man trophies and flowery necklaces, which was pretty sweet as well.  That night we flew back home to the Big One, and we're here for a couple more weeks before Western Washington in early October.  We're in the middle of our big uninterrupted training block right now, doing some serious work.  This past week has probably been the best week of training for me, as I'm coming to adjust to the higher mileage, and on a couple of occasions I've felt like I had that extra gear I was missing in the first few weeks.  I'll try to update this blog at least once more before the next meet, but for now I have some anatomy studying to be done!  Talk to ya later!

P.S.  Below is the Hawaii Five-O theme song, and from 0:15 to 0:18 into the video where the guy is standing on the balcony is the hotel we stayed at.  Our hotel is famous!  Once again, note picture above for our hotel view.