On the water’s edge, the air is calm and tranquil yet you can hear the wind busting through the palm trees overhead. The full moon lights up the night sky as we step towards the gentle lapping waves offering our friend Bill Melson’s ashes to the sand and sea. Toby reaches into the ocean, filling a small vial to offer to the summit and moments later the Garmin Start Button is pushed. I put on my biggest smile, say goodbye to Linda and Kelli Melson as Toby hugs his wife Becky, and then begin the long jog towards the faint outline of a massive mountain on our horizon.

The first thing we notice is the wind is in our face and coming at us stronger than in any of our training runs. As the hours and miles pass by in darkness, there will be two absolute constants: The road keeps going up endlessly and the wind will do its darndest to push us back down. This day had been planned months before with the promise of a night long full moon. And tonight the sky is star-filled and cloudless. We often find ourselves running with headlamps turned off for long periods of time. Just navigating upward by crisp moonlight. Seventeen miles in we turn onto the Inouye Highway and 5 minutes later we are at our cache hidden in the tall pili grass off the side of the highway. The continuous forward motion abruptly stops after three and a half hours. As we refill our hydration packs with fuel and water we inadvertently discover it is colder than expected at just 2500 feet. Ten minutes pass and we’re heading upwards again. Our wet clothing gives little protection in the biting headwind and increasing our effort is the only way to warm up again. And so goes the start of the darkest section of our run. The sun will just not rise, the road’s grade will not lessen, and that wind – it picks up intensity. We stop talking and go deep into our own heads. What I see is the high probability of failure. My hubris has lead me astray and I have no business being here. I fight back but the darkness chips away at my motivation. Luckily I’ve experienced these feeling too many times in life to actually let them take hold of my focus. Ultimately the horizon begins to glow and with the fresh morning light we see the towering volcanoes around us. Oddly we feel more comforted having survived our demons than intimidated by the mass of Mauna Kea, now beside us.

Marathon 1 ticks by on our watches with Old Saddle Road junction up ahead. 5:48 has passed and after running the math we’re feeling good about our 13-minute/mile pace after gaining 5400 feet. It’s nice to know we could have done this section much faster yet we have been holding a lot in reserve for the next marathon and almost 9000 more feet of ascent. We jog peacefully along the saddle as the traffic begins to pick up heading for Waikoloa. Like clockwork, Albert Police shows up with bells on and a massive injection of high energy motivation. Thankfully his enthusiasm will not waver for the next 11 hours! More food, water, and a quick sit in the warm cab of his truck and we are off again. But this was a mistake. I go hypothermic and my body will not adjust to the cold wind of the saddle. Minutes drag on as my body convulses and my calves and hamstrings attempt to seize up. I get back into Al’s cab and pull on my shell and long tights. I make a mental note to be very careful letting myself get comfortable again. This adventure was not at all designed for comfort. Also, wet thin clothes at 6500 feet with a 20 mph headwind and temps below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. What was I thinking?

Thirty-four miles in and we glide without fanfare into the Mauna Kea Recreation Area just ahead of schedule at 8am. Karen shows up minutes later with the luxurious comfort of our minivan. And our team is finally assembled. She basically won’t let me out of her sight until the bitter end. And I truly do appreciate how lucky I am to have that kind of love and support. Twenty-five minutes later we are back out on the road and the wind is fierce. Yet we resigned ourselves many hours earlier to the fact this was going to be the extra challenge we were going to face today. Leaning into the wind we keep pushing forward.

Photo Gallery

Mauna Kea Access Road

Taking a breather.

Shortcut above Visitor Center

Taking a Breather a couple miles from the Summit

Meeting the Gang in the Summit Parking Lot

On the Top of Mauna Kea with Toby Olney and Albert Police

There is a much more elaborate story to this next bit but I’m going to need to save it for another day. Basically, Toby’s knees begin to fail him. And for the next 17 miles, he pushes on but with a modified gate that deteriorates into a fast waddle-walk. He knows I won’t leave his side so he pushes through the pain trying not to hold me back. But ultimately he modifies his goals (unbeknownst to me): get to the Visitor’s Center and do the on foot version of the Sea to Stars (our most masochistic bike race on the island) as a consolation prize. It’s brutal, but we get to the Visitor’s Center and Toby calls it a day. I give him a hug and I can’t help feel a bit emotional knowing I’m going to carry on without him. I feel lame doing it, but I’ve got to move and do it now! 7.5 miles and 4800 feet to go.

Now I’ve done my share of endurance events yet being new to ultra-running I’m still working out the formula to know when you are fit enough to complete a specific distance while considering elevation gain and summit elevation into the equation. I figured, find what would be the technical “Middle” of the route and break it into two workouts. So the Mauna Kea Recreation Area had a logical feel for that location and our first serious training run took almost 8 hours to cover the 34 miles and 6700 feet of elevation gain from the beach to get there. A few weeks later we did the upper 19 miles and 7400 feet of elevation gain in 7 hours (after a hard training week to purposely come into the run fatigued). Thus it felt logical to double the time of the longest run and add a couple of hours. So going into this we expected it would be 16-18 hours to complete. But did we have the fitness for that? One of the basic Ultra doctrines I discovered online was to not run a training run over 8 hours. And with that knowledge in mind, we committed to this run. What we had not factored in was the effect that 40+ miles of strong headwind would have on the day.

So… 2.5 miles into the upper section of the mountain my body starts to shut down. Not all at once, but subtly. My heart rate starts to drop from the 140s to the 130s to the 120s and then into the 110s. With 3 miles to go I can’t hold an effort up the steep roads for more than a couple hundred feet without taking a 10-second break to catch my breath. I’ve spent more than 3 weeks on the North Face of the Nameless Tower (a vertical cliff between 17,000 and 20,000 feet in Pakistan) and I don’t recall having to suck down air so hard. But honestly, each time I take this minibreak I feel great. Looking back at the photos and videos I’m smiling, laughing and really enjoying all the moments. Al is so incredibly awesome and covers the last 5 miles with me on foot keeping a close eye on me the whole way. And the reality is this: the awesome safety net I have in my support team allows me to finish this quest. I am well aware that had I tried to do this self-supported I would not have made it more than a mile past the Visitor’s Center before calling it a day. Way too many days in the mountains has taught me when I no longer have full control of myself.

So my team guides me to the summit parking lot where we meet the Melsons again. Linda has a wonderful poem she reads about the way we should remember Bill and I will admit I have a hard time maintaining composure behind my tinted sunglasses. Emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted, I turn around, lean forward into the wind, and push myself towards the true summit. Karen, Al, and Toby follow along as we top out on the highest point in Hawaii. I say a few words to Bill and then scattered him to the island breeze. I kneel and say a few words to Mauna Kea and to Wakea (the Sky Father whose mountain this is – Mauna a Wakea) and then offer the ocean we brought on foot to the summit. We all hug and then my friends and family walk me back to the van, bring me down to the low lands and finally home.

It was a pretty cool adventure, to say the least. And I’ve been really happy to share it with everyone. To my local endurance friends I say: Doing this non-event adventure is so worth it. Oh, and don’t tell me you haven’t looked up at this mountain and not thought about it – even fleetingly – haaa. And to everyone else: I hope this helps inspire you to find your “Sea to Summit” in life and go and do it.

Suggested Links:

• Link to my Fact Sheet (how to do this route)
• Link to Strava file
• Link to Fastest Known Time (FKT) site