Several weeks ago I hurt my achilles. I’m embarrassed to admit how I did it, but I’m going to anyway. I was running sprints up our super-steep driveway as part of a high-intensity interval workout. I was on my final sprint when my achilles just exploded in pain, right at the end.

I knew it wasn’t ruptured since I had an old injury on that same achilles from playing college basketball.  I figured I had just re-injured it, but nothing major. I’ve been dealing with it since, and when I do a lot of climbing on the bike, it continues to hurt. But Sunday morning, (after Saturday’s steep climb in a short period of time), my achilles not only hurt but was bruised, so I knew something was/is definitely not right.

As a result I had to ride on flat roads instead yesterday. I was able to ride part of the route of the Ironman competition, and I had the ocean to one side the whole time, but I also faced 13 miles of a headwind, too. Jonathan, on the other hand, did a pretty epic ride (one that I’m pretty sure would have put me in the hospital).

Jonathan’s ride involved 4000 feet of climbing in about 10 miles. The road was absolutely beautiful, and had sustained 17 – 20% parts. We drove it after so I could see what I missed out on. Below are a few pictures from the top. And, Jonathan got his first-ever callus as a result. I’m not kidding. But I refuse to post a picture of the callus. John D. – it’s here in the blog, so it happened!

We then had an amazing kalua pork bowl for lunch, and after a quick swim we visited a beautiful coffee plantation with amazing coffee. We took the tour and learned all about the coffee making process. I took pictures of the local caretakers, Marjorie and Hubert.

We were treated to another beautiful sunset while sitting on the patio. We head home tonight, so no more rides, just recovery!