Kona bound!

I am feeling quite privileged to be invited to spend a week in Kona mid-March, thanks to my wonderful and generous in-laws. I don't know exactly where we'll be staying while we are there, but I know I will need to be running some significant miles that week. I might also go for a bike ride or two, as my husband will be cycling until his legs fall off and I will go with him once or twice.

If anyone has suggestions for running and cycling routes, please let me know! Other ideas also welcome. We already know that we'll be visiting the volcano park but other than that neither of us is very familiar with the Big Island.

Your help is appreciated!

Sounds great! I would need a map to remind myself to remember where Kona was.

We stayed on the Big Island for about 10 days. We were based at Hilo and moved around abit. (Farmers' market is simple but interesting stuff that we don't have/it's very expensive for us here in Canada.) We only cycled around the area for 1-2 hrs. each day and did rent a car for about 3 days.

Make sure, if you didn't on other Hawaii trips, buy Kona coffee from there for home. It's hard to get in Canada. Wonderful stuff.

We took a trip up Mauna Kea to view sunset and the stars. There is a world famous research astronomy observatory. I had never seen so many stars at night without the telescope. It was magical.

It drops to below freezing up there from tropical temps. below.

This definitely is not related to jogging or cycling routes.

I :heart: :heart: :heart: the Big Island, and would love to ramble around on a bike there one day.

The one thing I thought of was Saddle Road. It connects Kona and Hilo, and it used to be a scary, only partially paved and partially maintained road and was even banned on car rental agreements. However, there has been quite a bit of maintenance done on it lately, no more bans (I think), so you might check it out. Pretty cool area, turns into a kind of a no-mans land through the middle of the island.

I would drive it first to be sure nothing has changed (road washed out, etc.) - there is a whole lot of nothing out there. Also you will want lots of water, nutrition, etc. There aren't 7-11s nearby. But, man, it seems cool.

Riding around the exterior roads would be fun too. A lot wetter, for sure.

Maybe check out the Ironman routes?

Thanks for the hint Tangentgirl!