Wow – So this was a hard report to write – at least at first. It’s difficult to analyze your failures. Yet when you pick them apart enough you find the gems that allow for future success. And to effectively find these gems you really have to tear the wound open and brutally expose all the things that you sucked at. As humans, it seems our nature is to share our success and hide our failures. But honestly, we grow more from our losses than our wins. And it can be hard to see that when you are fresh off a loss. So this is me openly sharing my process of how to take a failure and tease out the lessons needed to make the next attempt a win.

After looking over this run I’ve distilled it down to 3 reasons I needed to abort this run:

• I probably needed to run from the ocean to the Lookout as a training run.
• I went out too hard at the beginning of the run.
• I did not have the fitness to finish this run properly.

I Probably Needed to Run From the Ocean to the Lookout as a Training Run.

The day I ran from the Sea to the Summit of Kilauea, I had initially intended to run the 34 miles and 6700 feet of gain from the ocean to the Lookout. But while I was doing the run and taking in the scenery, I truly began to appreciate I was on Kilauea and not Mauna Loa. And it felt as though I needed to give the Sea to Summit of Kilauea more respect than just a footnote in a workout from the ocean to the Lookout. So I ended the run at the bottom of the Mauna Loa Road. In hindsight had I pushed the remaining 11.5 miles I would have discovered how very hard this 34-mile section is. This would have made me reconsider when I would be fit enough to get to this section in the run and still feel strong for the final 20 miles. I would have then pushed the Sea to Summit date a few more weeks to be sure I had the fitness for this run.

I Went Out Too Hard

Looking back at the data of my run from the Sea to the Summit of Kilauea and this run, I could see that I made my big mistake over the first 14 miles and 3200 feet of gain. On the previous run, I had reached this point in 3:10:00 at a 13:39 pace with an average heart rate of 145 bpm. And looking through my notes on that day, I mentioned I had gone out too hard for this section. So last Sunday when I went through the same point in 3:20:00 at a 14:20 min/mile pace with a higher heart rate of 148bpm, I knew I had pushed way too hard. I felt so good going through this section though and was having such a good time despite the wind and rain. But it was early into a very long run, and I knew better. At the time I just felt I would settle in with a lower heart rate soon. But soon never came as I continued to press against the rain, wind, and darkness for another 2 hours at the same effort. And so at 5:35:00 into the run I was at the bottom of the Mauna Loa Road 23 miles into the run and I felt wrecked and dejected. And staring out into the darkness I was pretty sure this run was not going to be completed.

My buddy Steve Ellison drove by around this time (4:30 am) and motivated me to keep going at least until the Lookout. He followed along in his truck for another 45 minutes until the sun began to come up. I actually felt a surge of energy when the sky started to light up. But it was short-lived, and an hour later I was barely pushing a 20 minute/mile pace near the end of the road and stopping frequently to take a breath. By the Lookout, it was pretty apparent that no amount of food and rest at this point was going to magically give me the strength to make the next 20 miles and 7000 feet of elevation gain to the summit. And what about the last 6 miles back down to a van waiting for me at the Mauna Loa Observatory? Ya, that wasn’t going to happen. It was quite obvious this run was over.

I also think that having my buddy Steve with me for the first 2 hours might have got me a little too motivated. I believe I found myself, for lack of a better term, “performing for the camera”. I was so excited to finally have someone shooting video during the dark parts of the run I might have kept pushing myself a little too much during that period. Honestly, having one of my best friends in the world cruising along in a truck beside me while shooting video and chatting me up was awesome. But I might have been a bit more enthusiastic than I should have been for the first couple hours. I’ll keep that in mind for the future if I am lucky enough again to have someone with me early in a very long run.

I Didn’t Have the Fitness to Finish the Run Properly

First of all, it’s important to understand what I wanted to achieve with this run. Obviously, it was primarily to experience running successfully from the Sea to the Summit of Mauna Loa. Yet I had important secondary goals laced into this run I would achieve if I completed this adventure. 1) I wanted to experience that confidence I had from climbing again where I would be feeling a bit strung out mentally and physically but still having a reasonable amount of control while in a dangerous environment. This would likely be what I would experience going through the 20 miles of lava fields at the end of a 55 mile run to 13,678 feet. Of course, I didn’t get to do this. 2) I also wanted to know that I could make a good judgment call and push through or bail if I needed to. I think this was a success because knowing when to call it a day was something I realize I can still do. 3) And finally, I really needed to finish strong and in full control by the end when I got to the van after reaching the summit. And I think this gets to the core of why I chose to quit this run.

I have quite a few adventures lined up over the next few years, and I’m just in year one of this plan. I’m very excited to run from the Sea to Summit of our volcanoes here, and they are my training ground and stepping stones to the next big adventures. I would say this is similar to how you might go to Yosemite and climb something substantial like El Capitan by 2 or 3 different routes. You choose a more natural (easy) route, to begin with, and then each successive route is a bit harder and more challenging. And you take what you learned from the previous route and apply it to the next harder route. Then after a few routes, for many climbers, this could be the crowning achievement of a lifetime of climbing. To others, it might be a great accomplishment but also a building block to something bigger. So I’m treating the Sea to Summit runs of the volcanoes as progressively harder El Cap routes. Each is a special event in itself but is also a stepping stone for the next harder route. So for this year’s runs, I would like them to culminate in what I am loosely calling the Big Island Trifecta. This is a 100 mile Sea to Summit of 3 Volcanoes with 25,000 feet of elevation gain, 40 miles of backcountry running, and a goal of completing it in around 30 hours.

Training for this Trifecta means each Sea to Summit run I do, my body needs to treat as a progressively bigger workout and not an all-out event. What’s the difference? If I train all year to set a PR (Personal Record) in an Ironman event I can be sure that I am going to finish with a completely empty tank, be hanging on for dear life at the end, and so smoked physically that my body will need a large amount of time just to heal. And the idea of another Ironman or bigger event 1 or 2 months later is pretty hard to fathom. Now if I go into that same Ironman event and use it as a big training day for an even larger event – let’s say Ultraman – then you can be sure I went into that event with more fitness than I needed for just 1 Ironman event. And you can be sure I would not empty my tank and go all out in that event.

This is how I pictured the Mauna Loa run was supposed to be. I would finish the run strong but not at a crazy pace and would absorb the adventure as if it was a big training run. And a few weeks later I would be able to start building on this greater fitness which would get me through to the next run. But this was not how my run was unfolding last Sunday. By 23 miles and 4,000 feet of gain, my body felt like I had done double that much. So by 34 miles and at the trailhead to the serious part of this run, I could tell I would have had to use every bit of willpower I had to force march myself to the summit and then stagger down to the van. And my body was going to treat it as an event and not a training day. I did this on Mauna Kea and dragged myself to the top. But my body had a hard time absorbing this as a workout and I spent way more time having to heal from it like an event. That was a bit short-sighted on my part. This time around I am looking at the bigger picture and I could see I needed to save Mauna Loa for another day. And I needed to stop at a point where I could use the run as a positive building block that I could absorb and build on. And 34 miles, 6,800 feet of gain, and 9 hours was a good stopping point. Now I wanted to and had the energy for a shot at getting to the cabin at 7.5 miles and 10,000 feet. But I would have failed there, turned around and had to come 7.5 miles back. Then my run would have been 49 miles, 10,000 feet of gain, 3,000 feet of loss, and likely 15 hours. I would have felt wrecked from the effort and my body would have treated it as an event. And I would have had to heal and build all over again.

But I do recognize a truth of this route that I will remember for the next attempt: There may be no way to do this run without my body treating it as an event. It is just such a big run with so much elevation gain and so much mileage above 10,000 feet. Picture getting to the top of Haleakalā and still having 12 miles more to get to the summit. So the next time I show up at the Mauna Loa Lookout, I will keep that in mind as I sit down on that picnic bench and contemplate the ridiculousness of the next section of this route. My guess is I’ll just need to tell myself: “Suck it up Buttercup and let’er rip”. 😉

A Bit More Video to Show How the Adventure Went.

The Final Interview