Aloha!

Last week, Trea and I celebrated our third anniversary in Maui! I have wanted to go to Hawaii my entire life, and it's something I never thought I'd get to do. We always go somewhere extra special on our anniversary, and we've spent the last two years in Puerto Rico. We ADORE Puerto Rico, but we decided to try something new this year and go a little bigger, since it was also my 30th birthday.

The first thing we learned is that Maui is far, far away from Arkansas, even by plane. When I booked our flights, I didn't care that the only seats left were in the back of the plane by the bathroom. But when I was actually on the plane, I cared. I cared a lot. For seven hours - overnight - in a middle seat. It was a rough trip. There were flight delays. There were times when we questioned the value of a "relaxing" vacation as we ran Home Alone-style through LAX to just barely make it on our third and final plane of the day.

There were lost bags. We arrived in Maui Friday night, and Trea didn't get his luggage until Sunday morning. We were not amused, United. There were entire days of lost sleep. That's right. By the time we rested our heads on our feather pillows at the Honua Kai Resort, I had been awake for well over 24 hours, which took a while to recover from. And when we returned home on an overnight flight, I was awake for 28 hours before I finally got a brief nap. Yes, Maui is far, far away, and middle seats are stupid.

BUT! Fun was had by all once we finally got there. We spent every morning sitting out on our lanai watching for whales. And we saw some too! We got to see them even more closely when we sailed to Lana'i for an all-day snorkeling trip.

It's a humpback whale tail!

We also saw dozens of spinner dolphins that swam and played by our boat!

Flipper!

We fell in love with beautiful Kapalua and Honolua Bay.

Kapalua hills overlooking Honolua Bay

Honolua Bay

We went to a luau on the beach at sunset.

We had pretty, pretty drinks with umbrellas.

We tried poi. It was gross. We tried shave ice, and became best friends with the good people at Ululani's Hawaiian Shave Ice. We almost filled up our frequent visitor punch card for a free one. There's a reason they're listed as the number one restaurant in Maui on TripAdvisor.

The day we went sailing, the views of the West Maui Mountains were unbelievable.

And there's just nothing like watching the sunset on the ocean.

We went snorkeling, and I only had a mild panic attack when we saw an eel. I had a full on panic attack when this guy swam directly at my face and showed no signs of backing off. I was certain it looked like a member of the piranha family.

On our last day, we drove to Hana and saw a 200-foot waterfall.

With all that excitement, we only found time to run once. We ran down the Ka'anapali Beach path and lasted about 2.5 miles before the humidity got to us. Sadly, that's about all the running I've done since the Bentonville Half Marathon - three weeks ago! I can definitely tell I've lost strength and endurance. It's time to put another race on the calendar and get back to training!

How do YOU get back into the swing of training after some race recovery time?