Aeia Loop Trail Adventure

by: Colin Schmitt

Hey everyone, Colin here... no one has written anything about that epic run we had on Sunday, so I might as well get the ball rollin'...

The whole thing started when we got in the cars... unfortunately, only the people in the very first car can appreciate what I'm about to write.... Jeff was the driver of that very first car, with Charlie riding shotgun as navigator and me, Skyler, Wes, and two other people I'm forgetting in the back... we were supposed to lead the other cars into the mountains to a trail Jeff had heard about from a guy at the race the day before... but what the other cars were entirely unaware of was that we had no idea where in the hell we were going; basically the guy who told us about the trail gave us three possible names for the exit we needed to take off the highway, and it turned out that all of the names he gave us were absolutely wrong... after missing what we thought was the turn, Jeff began berating Charlie for his terrible navigating skills (despite Charlie not being the one in control of the car or where it goes) ... saying things like "What are you DOING Charlie!!!" or "This is wrong, your're a TERRRRRIBLE NAVIGATOR!!!"... Charlie couldn't defend himself at all... so after "missing" the turn, Jeff quickly took the next exit in order to get directions (bear in mind that the other cars have no idea any of this is happening)... Jeff had apparently wanted to turn into a gas station on the left, bu tthe way was blocked by a long row of cars in the opposite lane, Jeff began to condemn Charlie's navigation skills again... "Charlie!!!! This is NOT where we want to be, what are y... WAIT THAT'S THE STREET!!! Charlie, you're a GENIOUS!!!"... by pure luck we managed to turn onto the EXACT street that would lead us to the road we were looking for, Skyler defined this as "the theory that you can find the perfect route by just winging it" and "the kind of luck that you only get once in a lifetime"... from that point on, Charlie was the Master Navigator Extrordinaire, he could do no wrong...so we tenatively followed this road until it ended, splitting in two different directions... We stopped for a second, then someone shouted "LEFT!!!!" from the back of the car, which ws good enough... we took the left road, all the while the cars behind us think we know exactly where we're going... we follow this last road up into the mountain, we stopped at what we thought was the right place, so Jeff quickly stepped out and asked a native lady where the trial started, to which she replied, "oh, you want top mountain" in a thick accent (which Skyler or I will recreate for you if you ask nicely) ... so we go to top mountain, and now the fun really starts....

The trail we were going to run was just short of 5 miles... Jeff had planned for us to run the loop twice, getting in almost 10 miles for the day... many of us hoped that the run would be through a rain forrest style area, imagine the Amazon (possibly a black panther attack somewhere in the middle), and you'll know what we wanted to run through... the good new is that the run was exactly what we were hoping, a two foot wide mountain trail run through wet island foliage... only this run had something a little extra, something none of us had expected... it had mud, LOTS and LOTS of it... I had very intelligently decided to wear white shorts...

we ran single file through the trail, with Charlie leading, followed by Sam, Jeff, then me, and then everyone else (I have no idea who was behind me)... at first we could avoid the mud, it didn't come up that often during the first half mile, and the trail was wide enough that we could run on the outside edge to avoid splashing... however at about 3/4 of the way through the first mile the trail began to go uphill, it also narrowed to about two geet across and about every ten meters was a fresh and deep puddle of delicious mud, prepared just right to stick to your shoe or get kicked up in your face... not only was this uphill trail steep, narrow, and muddy, but it was also like an obstacle coarse... we couldn't run 5 steps without tripping over routes or ducking/hurding large logs that had fallen in the path... one such obstace was a hoop like branch configuration that we immediately dubbed "the ring of fire", wich we had to dive through... because of all the obstacles we had to keep calling them out to warn the people behind us about what was coming up... they started out pretty simple, just one word warnings like "roots", "sharp turn" or "mud"... by by the middle of the run there were so many things coming at us at once that I remember yelling "Roots Rain Low Branch Sharp Turn Narrow Trail and MUD!!!" all at once... while we were running this I thought we were booking, it felt like we were jamin' through that trail... at least I thought that until Skyler called out the first mile at 11 minutes and 40 seconds... that's right, remember the first mile you ever ran in Elementary School? We ran SLOWER than that!!! this supposed top 15 Junior and Senior boys of Paly XC ran a 12 minute mile!!! The rest of the splits weren't that great either, it tooks us around 50 minutes total to complete the whole thing... of course, I honestly think that it was a fast pace for this trail, at one point we ran through 100 meters of what seemed like 12 inches of mud, after which I couldn't see my shoes, we also ran through a small mountain river, a place where I thought little tribal pigmies would jump out of the trees and attack us with arrows like in Indiana Jones... some people also went through drastic changes during the run, I myself entered this run as a clean budding young man of sixteen, and exited as a hardened (and mud decorated) tribal warrior... (the pictures should be up on the website soon, look for the one with Brian jumping out of a tree in attack position)... the girls especially were covered head to toe in mud, they had apparently had a mud battle half way through the run... after we all got back we took some pictures, and right before we got in the car, Coach Jones told us we had to wash of the mud...so I grudgingly rinsed off my tribal body paint that I had grown so fond of.... On the drive back we enjoyed one of the most beautiful views of the city of Honolulu, after all, when you are on top mountain, you have best view, correct?

this was probably the most fun I've ever had on a run, I promised myself while in the car on the way back that I would come back some day to run this again... it was that kind of experience...

my white pants still haven't recovered...

-Colin Schmitt