Andrew C's 2nd Hawaii Report

I decided I wanted to explore south of my hotel and made up a route of 40+ miles so I could return for lunch in my room.  Little did I know how much climbing I would be subjected to.  Right off the bat, I had a 400 foot climb to get up to the Hawaii Belt highway.  But did it stop there?  No!  I kept climbing good until I hit 1000 feet elevation (remember I'm starting from sea level) in 4 miles.  To put that in perspective, if you did that for 100 miles, you would have 25K feet of climbing.  Fortunately it got less steep, but I still kept climbing until I hit about 1600 feet elevation.  Once I got further south on the highway, the traffic thinned out and it got more scenic.  After 14 miles I had my turnoff and hit an awesome descent that took me back down to the ocean.  Of course that meant I would be climbing again soon.  And so it was, climbing back up to the highway. 

Even though it wasn't hot, the humidity is oppressive and you are sweating up a storm while climbing.  Once I reached the highway, it was back north until I took a split off that had a lot less traffic.  I took a right off that road to do another climb, just to do it.  It took me up to 2175 feet elevation.  But not before I got chased by a big black dog on one of the more level parts.  He looked like he meant business and so I had to run and eventually got rid of him.  But the effort made me go nearly anaerobic and I had to stop to recover.  The downhill was clutching brakes the whole way.  Following the Mamalahoa a little longer, hooked back into the Hawaii Belt and enjoyed the downhill that I suffered so much on coming up.  A left turn and my 400 foot descent to get me back to the hotel for lunch!  4700 feet of climbing for 42 miles.  For the afternoon, I rode up to Kona and then out on the Queen Kaahumanu Highway for 20 miles.  It was a struggle to go north into the winds.  Coming back on the Queen was a joy!  I think I coasted for at least halfway.

Back to the hotel and then out to the Pizza/Pasta place to gorge on a 12" pepperoni pizza before climbing up the 400 foot climb once again to watch the sunset.  Not a stellar sunset this evening with a bunch of clouds out there.  The camera enhanced it and made it look a lot better than it was.  Finished with a total of 89 miles and 7000 feet of climbing.  My buddy from work should be arriving this evening.  He will be competing on Saturday in the Ironman Championships.