Hawaii 2016 Day 6-The Spartan Super and Earning the Trifecta

Well today is a monumental day. I have been blogging about the Spartan Trifecta for almost 2 years. For the first time not only did my phone not autocorrect "Trifecta" to "trident", it is actually now suggesting the word "trifecta" when I make a typo. 

Oh Samsung, it's like you finally understand who I really am!!

So Dave and I came out of Saturday with some pretty solid cuts, bruises, scrapes and sunburns. As hard as we tried to stay slathered in sunscreen there was no getting around the water, mud and sweat that kept washing it from our bodies.

We meant to get on course good and early on Sunday but I was tired and moving pretty slowly. Dave was feeling tip top. 

 We finally strolled out on to the Super course at around 9:30. I think the cut off time for completion was 6pm, so we were feeling pretty good about our chances.

 So good about them that we did take the liberty of grabbing some photos along the way. We left the phone in the bag for this one-so it's crap.

 Here we are climbing the 10 foot wall.

 That's not an easy thing to convince yourself to do on the third lap!!

 The spot where they filmed Jurassic Park. This is located directly in front of one of the longest ever barbed wire crawls I have needed to do (three effing times). My knees are torn beyond recognition from this one.

Nice views...

 Us being ridiculous. ..

 The location where they filmed Mighty Joe Young.

 And finally, 3 hours and 16 minutes later:

 We actually did it! I tuly didn't know that we could. I kept fearing that one of us would twist or break an ankle or something and we wouldnt make it.

We are both feeling incredibly proud. 

I knew I was in trouble on the walk back to the car (about a 3 km walk each way from the venue-I think there should be a medal just for the walk!) But I kept a brave face until we got to our accommodation. Then, unfortunately, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening puking my guts out. It was just too much sun for this girl. 

If I EVER suggest that it would be a good idea to do something like this again, please slap me.

The volcano video

Here is the awesome video that we were abe to take on our helicopter flight earlier this week.
Even the pilot was blown away by the amount of glowing, flowing bubbling lava that was moving in the crater and also out into the ocean.
https://youtu.be/CQ0RnVCXYMA

Hawaii 2016-Day Five-Spartan Day

The real reason that the Co Founders of the Snazarella family find themselves in Hawaii was to meet "in the middle" to do some races with some dear friends from Australia. So, last November,  when we were feeling very sad about leaving, Dave and I signed up to do a Spartan Trifecta in a weekend in Hawaii.

Mad right? Today was the day that we needed to put our bodies out there and do that which seemed so long ago to be a brilliant strategy.

We started with the Beast. It's the longest distance and is usually around 21k and we wanted it out of the way first. You can do the three races in any order you like over the 2 days.

In this photo we are still so blissfully unaware of what is ahead of us.

 True to Spartan form at 0.5km we went for a swim. So for the rest of 6.5 hours our socks and shoes were soaking wet. Classic.

 We are racing through Kualoa Ranch where Lost and Jurassic Park were filmed.

 The views wereally stunning. The obstacles were very difficult.

 Without question the hardest part of the Beast course was the time that we spent up in the mountain on sheer mud. Not deep mud, though there was lots of that too. This was mud so slick that if you were not holding on to a tree (many of them covered in thorns) you wouldn't be able to make any progress at all. We climbed up over this stuff, we climbed down over this stuff, we tried to walk on flat ground over this stuff. It was unrelenting. One of our kilometers up in that muck took almost 45 MINUTES.

There is video footage of me sliding down right off the path and only barely catching two tree roots on my way down to the valley below. (Don't tell my mom about that please).

Don't take my word for it though, just do a quick search around instagram and see all of the muscle bound athletes talking about how incredibly difficult this beast was.

We just kept taking it one step at a time.

 So yeah, it was fun! We ran the beast and just barely made it back in time to be allowed to get back on course to do the Sprint (7km) course.

We stopped for a quick selfie  (obligatory), changed some key clothing (for me it was my shoes and socks,

for Dave it was his shirt) and then strolled back out on to the course before the final call.

The Sprint felt like a walk in the park after that Beast. It covered the first and last 1/3 of the Beast course-no mud!! Some tough obstacles that we had already done but nothing sheer will and determination couldn't overcome.

Next thing you know, we had these puppies in our hands!

 Which meant THIS!

 So now, going in to tomorrow, we have done 2/3 of the races and have also covered 2/3 of the kilometres. I can live with that.

Day 3 - Part 2: Volcano National Park

After the amazing helicopter adventure we caught our tour bus to go around the Big Island of Hawai'i.  After a few not-so-amazing stops at a botanical garden and a local variety, we moved on to bigger and better things.
We checked out the black sand beaches and got to wander along the ocean checking the coastline for really cool volcanic rocks. Then,  we made our way to the Volcano national park.
  The park is situated in the midst of many massive craters from previous eruptions.

 It also included the lava fields and the flowing lava that we had seen earlier in the day. The only way to get to the flowing lava area was to hike for four hours round trip*  (* flowing lava can't be seen at ground level as it is impossible to see it unless your standing on it AND the roads won'the even take you that far).
  We were able to see all sorts of amazing sights including the massive lava field (hardened as it has already cooled), arches and cliff lines by the ocean steam vents,  lava tubes.
  The highlight for my wife however seemed to be this.

  An Aussie rented this red Mustang and was able to drive it completely off the road into a spot he couldn't get back out of. Same recently took some heat for a slightly less bad parking job so this delighted her to no end. Saje took the opportunity whilst others were going to the steam vents to get the whole story.

He put his car into the ditch while pulling off the road.

He was trying to go back and get his hat that had blown off.

He DID buy the extra insurance.

And oh my, he figured he hadn't done damage to the car since there were already a few scratches there that were documented when he'd picked it up.

The tow truck driver even seemed to have a bit of a snicker and took lots and lots of photos.

Our adventure enended with the sun setting and the light of the main crater lighting up the steam that rose up from it.

It was a breathtaking sight to behold up close.

Hawaii 2016-Day Three-Volcanoes-Part One

Lots of flying today! We got up at stupid o'clock and flew to the big Island.

Once there we hopped on an hour long helicopter flight over an active volcano!! The red bubbling lava was SO COOL!

 The best part was Dave thinking it was a private headset and microphone between the two of us and professing his love for me-just to have the pilot tell Dave that he loves him too. I almost cried it was so funny!!

 We saw some awesome views of the coastline as we made our way to the volcano.

 They made it clear that we would want to wear dark coloured clothing so that we didn't get glare in the helicopter windows. What do you see glaring at you in the windows there?

 Yeah, my legs. My pasty. White. Legs.

There was red hot bubbling lava. Apparently this is not at all common. The pilot was really excited. It has not been flowing like this since 2013!

 We got to see it bubbling in the crater and pouring down off of land (over what did used to be a residential neighbourhood) in to the ocean. This is a huge deal! Our air bnb host has tried 3 different times since 2006 an has never seen what we saw!

 This photo only begins to show the devastation.  You can see where the (most recent) road has been run over with lava. This was the only road in and out.

 People now hike 13.5km from where the road has been closed off to get to this point just to try to see red lava. Even when it is flowing like this it is very difficult to see from ground level.

 We saw a lovely chain of waterfalls and then made for land.

 It was an absolutely amazing experience.

Hawaii 2016-Day 2, Hiking Diamond Head and Lounging at The Hilton

Day 2 acting on a tip from our tour on Day one, we arranged to meet up with our friends and hike Diamond Head. It's an enormous crater left over from a volcano.

The point was to catch the sunrise, which was beautiful! Doing so involved waking up at 4:45 to cook breakfast, meet up with the gang and catch the 5:30 city bus!

After that the point really was to take a sh!ttonne of selfies. 

The path up meanders and winds and at some points just flat out is these massive staircases.

We are getting warmed up for spartan I am quite sure! !!

Look! Selfies!!

We were good and tired on the way back so on our way to catch the city bus Dave hailed a local tourist trolley that was mostly empty and convinced her to take us back to the Hilton for $3 each!

It was a sweet trip back!

The rest of the day looked exactly. Like. This.

 Bliss.