Freedom Fest 10K at Kualoa

Of course I had to start with my award winning "commercial butt" picture. JK - I actually don't know why it came up first, I meant to have it elsewhere. It was a beautiful day for running at Kualoa Ranch. The sun tried, unsuccessfully, to make its debut.
This is the gathering for the pep talk, and they discussed changes in the course. Because of heavy rains part of the trail was flooded.
The starting line.
Right before the race. Ryan came straight from work and literally pulled up mintues before the starting gun.
So side story: about a half hour before the race they were moving the cattle away from the race route. Obviously they stampeded. Man you should've seen people freak out. Have they never seen a John Wayne movie?
Waiting for the starting gun.

Lady Liberty started us off (it was Freedom Fest after all). She had really nice running shoes all decked out in the stars 'n stripes.

And we're off!
It really was a blast!
To motivate myself, everytime I passed someone I would say in my head, "Skye Lynn, make sure that the Cowboy booty is all they see the rest of the race!"

Good thing my shorts are unique, you can certainly pick me out in the herd. I mean crowd.
Here's a sampling of the trail.
I wish I'd had a camera. The scenes I saw were spectaular! Luckily Ryan did a little hiking and so he got some pretty decent shots. I ran through jungle, field, and mountain. It was incredible!
Like the Hawaii of old you read about in books. I seriously under anticipated the amount of uphill trails! While they explained the course changes they said, "Sorry about the hills, but at least you won't be running in muddy water."
Yeah we went UP to the military bunkers in those mountains. I climbed rocky paths, muddy trails, and slick grassy hills and waded streams. At one point we were going UP a Princess Bride hill on wet grass. Any idea how slick that is? I noticed everyone was walking up it so I asked the guide if anyone had actually run up the hill, he said that two or three had (that's out of 119!).
Here's a neat cave around the four mile mark.
It was really windy up by the bunkers. I saw calm skies, light sprinkles, and torrential downpours.
The natural beauty of a savage sea in a storm is one of my favorite sights!



Yay! Only two miles to go!
Here I come!
While waiting for me, Ryan went in this bunker where they have a small exhibit dedicated to all the movies they have filmed in the Kualoa Valley at the ranch.




Here are just a few examples. A lot of Vietnam War movies.











So close! I can see the finish line!




The home stretch!

My race slip. It basically says I completed the 6.2 miles in 1:17:18. I came in 89th out of 119 (my goal was to make it before 100 and I did!). I ranked 42nd out of 62 women and my average pace was 12:28 per mile! I was pretty proud of my first 10K!
Because of the world cup they gave out soccer t-shirts.