Day 4: Snorkeling, Surfing and Mud...

Sunday morning we woke up early and met downstairs at 9:00am to head to the famous Hanauma Bay snorkeling beaches. We had heard that the place could be very crowded, so we tried to get an early start and for once we seemed to find where we were going without any wrong turns (thanks to Mr. Higgins' GPS system). We quickly learned that to bring a big group to this area you are supposed to have made reservations - something I was totally unaware of. Luckily, they had no groups coming that day, so they were able to let us right in (with a minor delay as the whole group waited for Julius & Alok who had not eaten breakfast and so decided to order french toast from the snack shack... we *all* had to wait for them as their delicious meal was cooked... and then we had to sit in a room with them for 10 minutes, smelling their food while they ate it - not cool. Our only revenge was forcing them to sing along with the corny introductory song that plays on the Visitor's Guide video.

Anyway, snorkeling was amazing. We saw tons of different fish, the majority of which are only found in Hawaii. A few people saw eels, and Alfred claimed to see a sea turtle... for many it was their first experience snorkeling and it was certainly well worth the trip.

After snorkeling we returned to the hotel around 1pm, relaxed a little, watched some football (it was Sunday after-all) and then Charlie, Skyler and I rounded up a group to go surfing. I think 10-11 of us rented 6 boards (each 11-12 feet long... big ones!). We were on the water for about 75 minutes and I think almost everyone actually stood up and "surfed" at least one wave. It was pretty darn fun.

After surfing, it was time for our run. We met at 4pm, and I'm going to let Colin Schmitt take the story from here... click here for Colin's phenomenal recount of the third part of the day - the muddy part.

Day 3: Race day!

Powered by a phenomenal dinner at the Surf City restaurant, and another good night's sleep,the boys and girls were ready to rock-n-roll today at the Punahou Invitational. The goal of this trip is for it to be a memorable and fun experience for everyone. Having a good performance at the one competition of the weekend would obviously go a long way towards accomplishing that goal (along with all the other amazing things a vacation in Hawaii has to offer).

With that in mind, the JV girls stepped to the line first. Juniors Sarah Haydock and Grace Park lead the way for the Vikings, running together most the way (pack-running would turn out to be a major theme of the day). Sarah pulled away from Grace over the last part to place 12th overall in 14:23 for the 2 mile course. Grace was 3 seconds back in 13th place.

Running third for the girls was sophomore, and newcomer to running, Min Kim - who may have had the race of the day for the girls team. Min went out smart over the first mile, probably back in 40th-50th place, and then ran a tenacious 2nd mile, passing scores of runners and ultimately cracking the top 20 with her 19th place finish in 14:46. Look out for the Min the rest of this season and hopefully for many seasons to come!

Rounding out the scoring were Juniors Lizzie Henehan (27th - 15:10) and Tamar Ben-Shachar (33rd - 15:20). A little ways back from them sophomore Abby LaPier accomplished her goal of finishing the race! A varsity contributor last year as a freshman, Abby is battling knee trouble this season and it was certainly a pleasure seeing her back out on the course again. I'm sure she is looking forward to continued improvements with her knees and more competitive races in the future.

When the points were added up, these performances were good for a third place trophy for the girls! Nice job ladies!

Next to take strut their stuff were the boys team - running together as one big 15-person team in the Varsity Boys race - and strut their stuff they did! With 4 weeks to CCS, crunch-time has officially begun, and I challenged the boys before the race to forget about race times, mile splits, and all those types of things... and to focus on *competing*! With the goal in mind of working hard over each of the 3 loops of the course, especially the uphills & the downhills, the boys got off the line well led by sophomore Charlie Avis who ran with the lead pack for the first 1/2 mile. The other boys got out well and the majority of them were in the top 35 during the first mile. Charlie was out-run by the top 3 runners early in the race, and then ran the final 2 miles virtually all by himself in 4th place turning in a great time on the ~3.05 mile course of 16:57 (the brochure said it was 111 meters short of 5k - you do the math) - this was just 17 seconds off the old course record which was broken today by the winner who ran 16:28.

While Charlie ran most of the way by himself, the rest of the team exhibited the ferocious pack mentality that I alluded to earlier. Junior Skyler Cummins lead our first pack. Skyler, along with Seniors Brian Karvelas, Sam Jones, and Jeremy Jacob ate up most of the field through the middle miles of the race and kicked their way into the top 10 - placing 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, respectively, all within 15 seconds of each other. This dominating performance would earn each of them an individual medal and would also win the team scoring by over 50 points and by over 3 minutes of team time! For juniors Avis & Cummins, they are running right where we had hoped they would be at this point in the season. Karvelas continues to amaze in his first season of cross-country, and Jones & Jacob are seasoned veterans who are clearly rounding into top form at just the right time - today was a *huge* performance from these two.

Not to be outdone by the top 5, two more packs of Paly boys roared along the course as well. The first, ten seconds back from Sam & Jeremy, consisted of Seniors Julius Berezin, Brian Hsueh and Gilbert Choi - who took places 14-16, all finishing within 5 seconds. Next, 20 seconds back from Gilbert, was Junior Colin Schmitt and Seniors Wes Duplantier and Willie Xiang, packed within 2 seconds of each other.

To highlight how well the boys ran today, here's a fact for you: had we *not* run our top 5 runners, our 2nd 5 still would have won the meet overall! Wow. In this second group the big performance came from Senior Wes Duplantier, who I believe ran faster today than he ran at Crystal earlier in the week - and today's course was longer and slower than Crystal - so a pretty huge improvement from Wes!

With 11 boys in the top 24 of the race, we still had 4 more boys out there: Senior Rajan Narang twisted his ankle on the warmup, felt it some during the race and ended up "tempo-ing" the race to finish 36th out of the 162 runners. Senior Henry Becker ran his 2nd solid race of the week with his 41st place finish. Senior Alfred Chen struggled some with the change in climate, but competed the best he could to place 49th, and Senior Alok Subbarao rounded out the squad with his 65th place time of 19:46.

With two races down, and two trophies won, the Varsity Girls took their turn. Senior Mia Lattanzi ran almost the entire race in 12th place, and finished in 20:41 to lead the team. Behind her, Junior Gillian Liu and Senior Leah Gaeta traded places back and forth a few times before Gillian asserted herself to place 16th, 33 seconds back from Mia. Leah came tearing across the line just 13 seconds back from Gillian in 19th place - solid performances from all three of them!

Running as yet another pack were the girls 4,5,6 runners of sophomore Kathleen Higgins, junior Jessie Kuo, and junior Elizabeth Scott. Taking turns leading the pacing duties, Kathleen and Jessie would eventually lead the group across the line in 27th and 29th place just 7 seconds apart. Elizabeth, struggling with an allergy to the grass on the course, ran a gutsy race to finish 35th about 20 seconds back from Jessie. For Kathleen it was yet another remarkable performance in what is turning out to be a breathrough season for her. For Jessie it was another race competed in - and when you've dealt with all the injuries that Jessie has had to deal with in her career, its just great to see her out their doing her thing! Rounding out the varsity team was Senior Ariana Hoyt who placed 43rd out of the 103 runners in the race in a solid time of 23:32.

The girls waited anxiously after their race to find out if they too had placed in the top 3 to earn themselves a trophy. When the scoring finally came in it showed them one spot out, in 4th place, 25 points behind the third place team. Still a very solid performance in the 12-team field.

The meet was really a fun time for everyone - we were the only mainland team there, and before each race the announcer would welcome our kids and the other teams would cheer for them. Afterwards, the meet director came over to me and asked a favor: "... we've got some extra food, do you think you could have your kids come over and eat it?"

Ha, when I relayed the request to our troops, it sounded like a heard of buffalo were running across the beautiful Punahou campus as they stormed their way towards the food tent and proceeded to inhale mass quantities of who-knows-what. Anything to help out the meet director, right?

After some fun team pictures with our trophies, we finally hit the road, returning to the hotel for a shower and a little rest.

But not too much rest - after an hour or so at the hotel, and 2 innings of the Sox/Indians game, we hit the road to traverse to the North Shore of the island for Waimea Bay - a world famous surf spot (surf isn't up yet though, so the waves were very manageable).

When we first got there the boys played a vicious touch football game on the sand, then Skyler & Charlie led the way (with me close behind and checking for safety at every turn) up the nearby boulders for some cliff divin...err... jumping. Fear not parents, as we ensured that it was safe, and with the exception of Skyler who repeated showed off his back-flipping ability from 20 feet up, everyone else landed feet first and their were no mishaps whatsoever.

The beach trip finished up with a beautiful sunset and with most of the crew playing in the "shore break" and subsequent undertoe that was pretty darn fun to flop around in, except for the massive quantities of sand that it deposited everywhere in your clothes and hair.

We ended our north shore visit with a stop at a fun little Mexican restaurant where Alfred was "hot-sauced", and Skyler & Willie dumped water all over themselves.

Now we're back at the hotel, thoroughly exhausted from a long, but very fun 3rd day of our trip. Tomorrow morning we depart for the world-famous snorkelling at nearby Hanauma Bay (don't trust my spelling).

Boys splits & times:

Friday 2:35pm Hawaii Time Zone (by Coach Billing)

27 hours since you last heard from us... and we're having a great time! The flight left promptly at 3pm PST and was a simple 5 hour flight. On the way in we flew over Pearl Harbor and many of the other landmarks on the island. Baggage claim was incredibly fast and we took our first (of many) team pictures just outside the airport. Unfortunately, we had mix-ups with the van rentals and had to enlist Gillian's mom to drive a 5th van - something we hadn't expected. The good news is that we now only have minivans or smaller, so no big 15-passenger things to maneuver around the island.

Arrived at the hotel after sundown and so we opted against a run, valet parking was another interesting experience as there was very limited space to fit the cars into... 5 years of driving in Boston definitely paid off! Check-in went smoothly, the rooms are great and the food at the hotel restaurant was plenty good enough for our hungry & tired 28 kids.

Re-energized after dinner, we went for a team walk - a block and a half to the famous Waikiki and without thinking Charlie and Skyler made me proud by leading the charge straight into the ocean. I was next and then one-by-one the peer pressure got all the boys into the water (to joyful cheers from their teammates). In the water, we got a great picture of the 15 of them. The girls, not properly attired for a swim, decided that the best they could do was hide all the boys excess clothing (jean, shirts, etc)... and then, as the boys were clearly plotting to throw the ladies in the water, the girls made their escape, leaving the boys dripping wet & wandering the beach looking for the rest of their clothes (haha - it was hilarious - and the clothes were eventually found, no harm done).

By now it was 10pm and, amazingly enough, they were all pretty pooped and all reports say that they were showered and mostly in their beds and sleeping by 11pm.

Despite not going as planned, it was a great first day!

So far today we've been for a good 4-5 mile run at 9am, went to the grocery store to buy non-dinner foods for the trip. Now most of the kids are at the beach. Charlie, Colin and I are watching the Sox/Indians game (edit: Charlie just left the room after a 4 run 3rd inning for the BoSox - Matt, you'll be happy to know that Charlie is a basketcase - he just stormed out the door saying "I can't watch this anymore, call me if we score a run... heck, call me if we get a hit! I'll take any good news!")

Dinner tonight will either be at Duke's or Buca di Beppo's. Hopefully we'll have another relatively early night and they'll get another good night's sleep before the race tomorrow.

Thursday 2:03 PST (by Coach Billing)

Well, we left Paly at 7:32 this morning, with the fear that a major traffic accident on 880 would cause us to be late for our 10am flight. We arrived in plenty of time, around 8:30, only to stand in a long & slow-moving check-in line.

After 10-15 minutes of waiting, Jeremy walks over and says, "uh, Jeff - I think our flight is delayed." Upon inspection, it turned out that our worries of missing the flight were certainly "paying interest on a debt we would never owe" (as Benjamin Franklin put it)... to put it more clearly, our flight was delayed *5* hours... we had plenty of time!

But, as seems to always happen on these types of adventures, the "good" was coupled with the "bad." The friendly ATA employees informed us that we would be compensated for the inconvenience: a $10 food voucher, a $10 phone card, and, drum-roll please ... a free *ticket* voucher - to be used for any ATA round-trip flight!!!!

So, a few burritos, card games, and naps later we're now at gate 3 in the Oakland airport. Its been 4 hours of waiting so far... one hour more to go! The girls, after consuming mass amounts of pistachios, have decided to do a "core" workout in the terminal - that's currently happening to my right. Willie & Alok are in a 10-minute time out for some random act of horsing around that led them to tumble to the ground not far from me, Jones, and innocent bystanders.