Camping Club Trip #7 - Volcano Cabins (again)!

The last two weeks have been a blur of unpacking, assembling, installing, renovating, repairing and steam cleaning. Twenty days into the month, we finally feel about 80% 'done.' This weekend Ryan's room should be finished (we had a week long delay on the tiling). And once it is, it'll put us closer to 90% done since we'll finally be able to move his bed off the patio. This still leaves us with a long to-do list of projects, but at least we'll be finally, officially 'moved in'.

Here's some of the progress over the past 2 weeks... Although psst! The pics are deceptive. I just moved/hid stacks of stuff around to make these pictures look better. ;-)

The patio 

The planter boxes shall soon be overflowing with...dead plants! But hopefully a few live ones too. Today I planted two kinds of lettuce, beets, chives, basil, Chinese peas, carrots, squash, Roma tomatoes, cilantro and green onions.

Ryan's new race car bed (from his friend Noah)!

The master bath

I fell in love with this rug months ago and ordered it online. But because it's made of wool, it sheds. Excessively. I've vacuumed tufts of it daily, yet it continues to cover every inch of the entire great room- our sofa, the floor, our clothing, our bodies... Not cool. I researched online and apparently short filament wool typically sheds for 6 months - 2 years, even with daily vacuuming. Which = NO CAN HANDLE. So sadly, it's going back to Home Depot.

The to-do list is still endless- but we're working on it. We have less than a month to be wedding ready. :-) It didn't help that over the three-day weekend instead of whacking away at the to-do list, that we went camping for two nights instead. ;-)  Even though we were just at the Volcano cabins back in April, I had a half marathon race, so we decided to make it a camping trip for the boys. The trip was great overall- surprisingly clear and sunny weather with the usual cool mountain breezes, a couple of new hikes for the boys (one to the Devastation Trail, the other to see the glowing orange lava lake at night), a beautiful half marathon race course (with a terribly embarrassing finish time for me) and plenty of memories.

Once again, we bunked at the Namakani Paio cabins. We love how much space there is for the kids to safely ride the scooters around.

We usually run/hike/play behind the cabins in the dry forest...and had this view our first day. :-)

We checked out the newly renovated Volcano House. The hotel/restaurant have gorgeous crater views of Halema'uma'u spewing fire!

Since we hiked into Halema'uma'u the last time we camped in April, we took the boys on the Devastation Trail this time instead.

Ha ha. Just kidding. We kept reading signs about not picking the 'ohelo berries (which are for the endangered nene goose).

Devastation Trail. Aptly Named. The area was covered in cinder 5+ decades ago and it still looks barren.

The reward at the end of the trail? A gorgeous view of Kilauea Iki!

The second hike of the trip was a short one from the cabins to the Jagger Museum at night for a view of the lava lake at Halema'uma'u. (This was obviously taken in the day, but we went during opening hours so the boys could do their customary jumping around the seismograph at the Jagger Museum.) It's tradition.

The boy's favorite part of each evening- building and stoking the fire for hours (note: it is also my least favorite part of the night, since fire = soot, smoke and ash everywhere.

A few words on the race (since it was the reason for the trip). The race course is beautiful- think misty, cool (ave temp about 70-75) lush green rain forest, quiet side roads and the most gorgeous finisher's chute ever (it was lined with fragrant ginger blossoms)...and HILLS. Lots and lots of hills. It is on a Volcano after all. I admittedly did NO hill work pre-race, and suffered dearly in my performance. I ran my worst half marathon time since like, 2006. Try a 2:15, baby. You could have knocked me over with a feather once I saw my finish time. Red-faced. Shame fo' da family.

I'm not quite sure why I sucked so bad. I have no excuses- I slept okay. I ate okay. I trained okay. My weight is okay. I had no bathroom issues. I did my usual 10-milers every Sunday leading up to the race, and I still ran 2 short runs mid-week. I never did the aforementioned hill work or logged anything longer than a 10-miler, but still. Unlike the Kona Half, I just never really felt on fire that day...I think I was always just recovering from a hill to ever feel in control. And I thought I could make up time flying down the hill the last few miles, but I think it was too little too late.

I was embarrassed and in shock after the race for hours...but that's long passed, and now I'm just disappointed. But obviously you have good races and bad races, and this was clearly the latter. It has helped me to remember not to take the good, or even the average races for granted. Still, for the first time in years, I don't have a race on the horizon and that feels really odd. I can't help but wonder if its because I'm dejected from the last race. But I don't think so. If money were no object, I'd be signed up for the Honoka'a Half in October (the only Big Island half marathon I haven't done). But we do have a new budget to consider, and honestly- the last 4 years have been fairly race-filled. So I think I need a break from the constant pressure of having to run specific mileage. I'm definitely still going to be running (I do like how I feel when I do it), plus Karen is training for the Honolulu Marathon, so we'll be logging in some long runs soon. We're already excitedly planning a run from Lako St to Kua Bay, which is about 15 miles.

I'm also hoping to start doing some cross training for the first time in years. Kind of excited at the thought of maybe being able to beat young children in an arm wrestling match. It's been years since I've pumped iron or done push ups. I'm going to pick myself up off the ground and let this bad race fuel me to become stronger.