This fall I will turn forty. My first notion was to book a fabulous beach vacation somewhere that requires a passport and invite all my friends, but then I realized what a pain in the ass it is to take time off from work and family, spend money (not necessarily on a place you want to go), and just to simply be out of your routine for more than a couple days. So I bagged the idea of asking my friends to join me.

Once I knew it would be a solo adventure, I started to narrow down my list of locations. The rules were as follows:

1. It must be somewhere I have never been;

2. It must have an amazing beach and warm sunshine;

3. There must be alcohol (in other words, we’re not going to the Perhention Islands).

My list included Peru, Sri Lanka, Portugal, and Hawaii. I want to hike, run, swim, stand up paddle, do some yoga, maybe some pilates, definitely have cocktails. So long story short, I picked Hawaii, which seems SO LAME compared to the other more exotic locations, but I’ve never been and then there’s this – One of my former students who was born and raised on Maui is leaving four years in the Peace Corps in Uganda and returning home this summer, so I have a home base, a connection to the localness. That was the final straw. I booked the ticket. Done and dusted.

But that’s not enough, is it?

I just happened to look up some running options for that week in Maui and it just so happens that it’s the weekend of the Maui Marathon. So, I registered for the half. I swore I would NEVER run more than 8 miles, but you know what? I have lungs and they work. It seems these last few years people I love have been losing their lung abilities. Well, I still have mine and they work and I can run. So that’s that.

Except now I’m training and this is what I feel like all the time: