I hate hills, even though I’m doing them.

To me, working out is just that–work. It’s not a bunch of fun, it’s work, and like in my life of work, I don’t miss work very often.

But it’s become my weekly stress relief, joining a running group that starts at 6 am at Kapi’olani Community College. A few of my Twitter friends are getting together regularly for a quick run, then breakfast at Grandma G’s, which is one of the regulars at the weekly farmer’s market held on campus.

This week’s run was tough–but it’s done. And I feel better if nothing else.

My training–for cycling, anyway–was not.

A week and a half after falling and injuring my right knee, worrying about some family issues and needing to meet friends to fix my truck, I decided after fighting with the wind for the first half of the event to turn around and do only 31 miles rather than the full metric. In truth, my distance traveled was a bit more than 31, and I could have done the full ride if I had known that fixing the truck wouldn’t take all that long at all.

Despite a long rest stop, I did reasonably well, averaging over 15 mph while moving.

And now, I must train even more for cycling.

The time I set for working out is often at the expense of my family. When I do get vacation days, lots of them are spent taking my aunt and mother to doctor appointments.

My cousin is supposedly coming to take over care of his mom–my aunt–soon, but my sister is leaving town for a couple of weeks, which is going to make things tricky.

It’s been tough, and I have a feeling it’s about to get tougher.

In the end, my time was considerably better than in the past Ford Islands: in 2009 I ran the race at a 13:18 pace; in 2010 at a 12:13 pace. This year I finished at an official 10:54 pace, taking over a minute off my previous best.

On the other hand, in the end my time was considerably slower than my best 10K to date, the 9:57 pace at the Johnny Farber.

Considering I fell and injured myself a few days before, I think I did fine.

Just a few tenths of a mile into a three mile run I fell for the first time I can remember. My right knee and phone took the brunt of the impact, both with more scratches than I’d like to admit.

But I got up and finished, even if I didn’t finish nearly as quickly–or as painlessly–as I’d liked to.

More importantly, on Thursday I ran again, because the Ford Island Bridge Run 10K is coming up, and I finished that too–five miles.

I’ll see you all after the race Saturday.

I’m running on Wednesday for sure, and again on Thursday. I have a 10K on Saturday that I feel undertrained for. And with a bunch of parties I’ve been overeating too.

I have to work on this.

The metric is in less than two weeks and I have yet to do any ride over half its length this year. That ends this weekend when I do a 45, but I still may not have enough to do the full metric.

We’ll see.

Here’s this weekend’s long, windy, slow ride:

This’ll be my third year in a row of running this particular 10K. It’s a lollipop course that starts downhill–and ends uphill.

In the meantime I’ve not been training like I want to, but my newfound friend Kyle Higa got me out running longer than a 10K on Saturday morning early–and while I struggled after being off for a week, I finished.

Now onto more training–for that race, the Jamba Juice Bananaman 5K in early May, and the Hale’iwa Metric Century on April 10th.