 Welcome to Healthy Planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the ThinkTech Labs Showy Network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today is Kavika Carlson, founder of Hawaii Running Projects. Welcome, Kavika. Hi. Thanks. It's great to be here. Thanks for being on the show. So let's talk about how you got started with Hawaii Running Projects. So Hawaii Running Projects started back in 2010. I was a coach at Mickey Town in Honolulu, and unfortunately, during the big financial crisis, they shut down. So we were looking around for another place to move it to because we had about 100, 150 runners, and they're like, where are we going to be running? So Honolulu Lemon stepped up and we had it there for about a year, and then they decided that they didn't want to host it anymore. So I'm like, well, we got to keep the running program going. So we just started up Hawaii Running Project from scratch. And I think we met three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, usually at the park, but maybe some different locations for the long runs. And yeah, that's how it got started. So how did you get started with running and becoming interested in running? Well, that's kind of a funny story, because growing up, I used to hate running. I used to do other sports like swimming, wrestling, cycling, baseball, and for me, running was punishment. If you mess up, it's like, hey, go run a lap. So I was working in the hotel business and there was a new hotel that opened up on the big island. So some of my buddies transferred over there, and I went to go watch them. I went to go visit them. And the Ironman Triathlon was taking place that same weekend. So while they were at work, I went to watch it. And I was just so inspired by the athletes. I'm like, oh my gosh, look, they're amazing. I want to do that. So I literally went to the library, I checked out a book, and I got how to do a marathon. So swimming and cycling were easy for me. But I figured in order to run a marathon, I had to figure out how to do that. So yeah, I got Jeff Galloway's book of marathon, it's a walk-run method. And you can marathon, you can do it. So I just followed the plan that he had here there. And five months later, Maui Marathon was my first running race ever. And did you run the oath? Did you walk run it? Well, see, I was supposed to follow that walk-run method. And I don't know what happened, but I just got so excited at the beginning. I just ran the whole first part, then I got tired. And then so most runners hit the wall at 20k. That's where I hit the wall. It's 20 miles, sorry. And so that's when I started run walking, the kind of the rest of the way. So yeah, I did walk on and off at the end of the run. But I made it through. So I was super happy about that. And then after that, how many marathons have you done? Well, then I got into like, I was, I was, I was still a jogger. And all I did was want to finish off a marathon every year. And then I did, I did do an Iron Man that next year. And then I did Iron Man every year for the next four years. So I was a little bit into running at that point. And when I moved to Oahu, that's when I joined up the Nike Town Run Club. And I really got into racing. And from that point, I got it, of course, when you start racing, you want to like race the longest, you know, the longest distance. So that's when I really started getting into marathons. And so since then, I've done over 200 marathons. Wow. So tell us about your personal best. I saw some stuff on the website. I was very impressed. Personal best. So yeah, I had two really good coaches when I first started here, John Leo and his running club and then Jerry Linger. And he's a world famous runner. He had, he had like 57 American record, one world record. He was one of my coaches. And he really inspired me to like improve a lot. And I increased my mileage. And so my first marathon was three hours, 54 minutes. And then a couple of years after I moved to Honolulu, I dropped it down to two hours and 53 minutes was my best. So I improved like a whole hour. I went sub three qualified for Boston. And yeah, it was super exciting. Yeah, that is very exciting. That's impressive. So do you ever get any kind of joint pain when you're running? I mean, I'm curious, because that's what happens when I haven't tried running in a long time. Yeah, a lot of runners say that it wears out their knees. And I think actually in the long run, it's the inactivity that will wear your knees out. It's more of your diet. And just like running improperly that that will give you the knee pain. So I did go through a period where when I first got that was that was when I first got into running. I didn't really know a lot about nutrients. And then I was starting to I get into the vegetarian diet because I heard it was more healthy. But I, you know, I still didn't do that much research. And I didn't know much about it. So I was I was taking all these protein colors. And it turns out by taking too much protein, that was just creating havoc on my joints. And so I, I happened to work with this guy and she handed me this book. And it was called Nathan Nathan Pritikin's diet or runner. And now Nathan Pritikin wasn't a vegetarian or vegan, but he basically he was his was plant based. And eliminate processed food and all that kind of stuff. So I went on, I went in that diet, and then within months, all of my joint pain, no, I just cleared up. And so I, yeah, I've been, I've been really lucky. So with the pasta, do you mean like also pasta, rice, or like what level of processing is possible? Well, yeah, I mean, technically, those are the processed foods, but those probably are not as bad as anything that comes in a bag or a box or something like that. Those are the ones that are, that are not really good for you. And so you could be, you could be like a vegan and lame that you have a good, a good diet and you could be eating like Oreo cookies and, you know, vegan ice cream and stuff like that. And it's still not a, a whole food plant based diet. And that's the one that I have evolved towards. Yeah. And then what kind of things can you tell people about you said also the posture is important? So like, what can people try to do to change their posture to make it easier for them to run without joint pain? Yeah, so running form. When we do our workouts, we usually start them with running drills. So the running drills are just like any other sport, basketball, football, baseball, where you're doing these drills over and over again. And so we do, we do what we call butt kicks. And that's to have a nice recovery in the back. If you look at the Kenyan runners, they really, they really have a nice extension out in back. And then we do high knees, high knee running, high knee skips. We do some lateral movements so that you're moving at your hips and you're not moving or twisting at your upper body and things like that. So those drills, because you do them over and over again, it just kind of gets ingrained into you. And it helps your form. Well, that's cool. So you do have an equal drills then. I saw your schedule and there's different things on different days. Can you tell us about the different things you do on different days and where a beginner could potentially go to the Hawaii running project meetup and start off like a complete. Sure. Right. So there's three basic workouts as a runner. Most people, when they become a runner, they just jog outside their neighborhood and they do the same thing over and over again. So it's kind of like if you go to the gym and you lift the same weight and you're just going to kind of plateau and you're not going to improve. So what we do is, yeah, so Tuesdays we do speed work. That would be an example of that would be like 200 meter repeats, 400 meter repeats, something like that. And then you take a little break in between. So what that's doing is that's making you really improve your lung power. That's called VO2 max. That's the maximum amount of oxygen that your muscles can intake. We call it TNT or Tuesday night training. An explosive workout. So Thursdays we do a medium distance tempo run. So that would be like running a little bit faster than a jog. So you're kind of on the edge of being like out of breath, like if you were running with somebody, it's a little bit difficult to hold a conversation, but you can still manage to do that. That's like a tempo threshold run. And we do that around diamond head, which is about four and a half miles. But if you're a beginner, we do have shorter distances that's like 1.8 miles going around the park or three miles up to the lighthouse. And the same thing going back to Tuesday nights, because we're doing likes, for example, do eight 400 meter repeats. You could just, if you're a beginner and you want to sit out one, you'd want to sit out one. We even encourage walkers like walk runners to join our program, because especially on Tuesday night, because if you're doing the loops around, we do them on Magic Island. If you're doing a little loop, you're going to wind up in the same spot. So it doesn't matter how fast you go, whether you're walking, running, or jogging, you're still going to wind up in the same place. Friday night, we do a social run. It's Friday night fireworks. We meet up at Alamoana Beach Park near Magic Island. And that takes place at six o'clock. And we don't have any kind of a set program. It's just whoever shows up, you go out and you do like a social run with each other. And then seven o'clock, we have a potluck. And then 745 is the fireworks. And then during winter time, or during summertime, they change it to eight o'clock. So anyway, we watch the fireworks. And it's just a really fun night for us. It's kind of, you know, power on at the end of the week. Saturday, we have a cup of honey park run. It's a 5k. It just goes a loop and a half around the park. So that's another one. Also, the nice thing about that one is you can see how you improve. So like over weeks or months or a year, you can see how you improve your time on that run. And then Sunday, Sunday, we do our long run. And it just depends on what we're training for. In August, we started training for the Unlittle Marathon. And so now we're doing, we started out doing long runs at six miles. And we're going to build up to about 20, 24 miles depending on whether they're experienced or not. And then the same thing, even if you're a beginner and you don't, and you're not training for the marathon, you can still show up on those dates because we have alternate runs, not open and runs, but alternate distances that you can view. So for example, we were doing a 10-miler this week, but I also had three, five, and seven mile options set up where you could just turn around, basically out and back so you could turn around and you could start a distance. So Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we train five days a week. And that's all on our website. We're also on Instagram, we're on Facebook, we post lots of pictures. So you could see it's just not even Kalani out there running. It's an old group of people who we usually have about, you know, some of our smaller workouts, we might have five or six people, but some of our bigger ones we might have like 20, 25 runners. So when you run, you also take Karani with you? Well, she's a year old, so I've been bringing her for the last 11 months or so. I'm a coach. I walk now most of the time, and then every now and then she'll be sleeping, so I'll be at home with her mom and I'll do an actual run. But yeah, I do, I do walks with her a lot. And then I also do part of the Hawaii running projects is we also do hiking and running tours. So like I mentioned this morning that I was at Manoa Falls, so we did do a hiking tour this morning and we took some people out to see the waterfall. So is that posted on your website as well or on Instagram for people who are interested? It is, it is. We have a weekly schedule and we post it on our website and that's where also like all the pictures will be. And if we have any news, we do have a mailing list. So if you go to Hawaii Running Project at gmail.com, you could just send us your email and we'll put you on the mailing list and then we can send that schedule to you personally so that you can have it every week. Well, that's great. Yeah. Well, I forget what you said about the Friday now and you said that's a good night for beginners, but how far is the distance on Fridays? Well, see Friday night is we're out at Magic Island, Alamo on a beach park, and it's a social run, so we don't have anything planned. So for example, my wife, when she got into running, she's not an athlete, but one time we were doing a holiday run and we called it the Kiki Marathon. So it was 2.62 miles. So all she did is she walked around Magic Island four times because it's a 0.6 mile loop out there. And she was amazed that she actually did it. And then that stuck in the back of her mind. And then the next year for New Year's resolutions, she's like, I think I want to run the Blue Marathon. And I was shocked because she's not an athlete at all. But what we did is we just started training basically with a 10-minute Gala Way Runwalk message. And we built up the entire year. And she did. She finished the leaders. Yeah. So anyway, there would be a good night because you could just do loops around Magic Island and then come in and join us for a part look and where it works. Yeah, maybe that's, I mean, it sounds like fun even if you don't want to do a marathon or anything, you know, that's a good right. That's the thing. Most people think, oh, if I'm a runner, I got to do a marathon. No way. I mean, you don't even have to run races. I just find that races are, they set goals like intermediary goals for you and something like that's achievable. So if you do a 5K, 10K, I mean, that would be great. But a lot of people in our group are definitely not doing marathons. Like my wife said, marathon, that was too far. I'm never going to do that again. But she has done a couple of half-marathons since. And yes, we've been really busy the last year. Marathons too? Or she's mostly running them now? Or what's her progress? Who is it? Your wife. My wife? Yeah. After she did the marathon, she did a couple half-marathons with Maui. But last year, you know, Kalani was born and she took some time off. So she, yeah, she's not really running right now. But who knows, maybe she'll get back into it. Yeah. I just got, for Kalani's birthday, we just bought a baby jogger, a little stroller jogger. So, yeah. And I've never done it before. I actually have two older daughters. They're both grown and live on the mainland. In fact, I have a four-year-old granddaughter. But when they were young, I used to hike with them on my back. We used to have a backpack and a little pouch like this. But I never ran with them. I wasn't a runner back then. So, I know you had on your website that you did 26 marathons in 26 days. Can you tell us how you accomplished that? Yeah, that was one of my crazier wins. So, yeah, my coach, he has this training plan where, like, to get back in shape, you do 15 miles for the entire month. You could either do it, like, put it up and do it morning and evening. One year I did that and that wasn't, it was that difficult because I used to run between, like, 80 and 120 miles a week. So that was kind of in the same range. But the next year, one of my buddies, Jason Lester, he was, and actually, we'll have to get it this year on this island. Chep's again. He's an ultra marathon runner. In fact, he's the first American that ever did a double-decker Ironman. Anyway, they were doing this crazy race out in Italy. It's called a triple-decker Ironman. And that's a tongue twister. It's a 30-times Ironman. They do one Ironman every day for 30 days. I'm crazy, yeah. But I figured, well, if they're doing an entire Ironman, that's a two and a half mile swim, 112 bike and a marathon. At least I could do it, like, train with him and do a marathon every day. So that's how it was kind of born. And then Jason Lester, he's this awesome guy. He just, he always does some kind of charity work involved with his crazy runs. So we decided we were, at the time, there was a lot of homeless living in Alamona Park. Of course, they don't, they don't let them live there anymore. But we were going around and what we did is we teamed up with an organization called Aloha Harvest and they sell us food from the restaurants and then feed it to those not fortunate enough to, you know, have dinner on the table every night. So we walked around the park and we fed us out there every night. And then we ran a marathon and we let, it was 10 laps around Alamona Park. We let anybody that wanted to join us for, you know, parts of it. No, of course, nobody ran the whole thing with us. But we did have some people run up to, like, half-marathon. But most of the time people just ran a couple loops around with us. But yeah, that went out for 26 days. It was in December. So we had a special Christmas morning celebration. And there was a couple families that we invited with kids. And we did a Troy drive and we passed out some presents for the kids. And so, yeah, they were very appreciative and thankful for that. And as far as the run itself goes, like, I thought I would never make that make it through. I'm like, how am I going to do a marathon every day? And so the first couple days were rough. But through proper recovery, ice, like ice baths, massage, you know, kind of like a massage gun, rolling, and then eating really, really good. Just a lot of super nutritious foods. I was able to recover and run again the next day. Yeah. So you didn't really get really sore between the times because, you know, I know after the marathon, a lot of people are so sore for days and they have, you know, so, um, yeah, a lot of the beginning marathon runners here. So and me and myself included, like you could barely even walk down the stairs the next day, like anything that's not level ground, you're like just agonizing. But by that point, I had already been running for about 15 years. So I had a really good base. But it was, I think it was the combination of all those little things that I was talking about, just making sure you pay attention to the little details. And then people ask me, well, what did you eat every night to recover for the next day? And I'm like a giant bowl of salad. And they're like, what? Because I mean, you think you think about salads as rabbit food, but actually all those leafy greens, they have an unbelievable amount of minerals and vitamins. And those are the things that your muscles need to recover. So I actually think a salad was was like key to my recovery. Yeah, yeah. And so with your salad, do you have any dressings that you like to use? Like what do you use for your dressing? Yeah, I would say 99% of the time it's nutritional yeast and some rice wine vinegar or just rice vinegar. Yeah, that's that's my go to salad dressing. How about fruits? Do you like to eat a lot of fruits? Fruits, I'm eating fruits all day long. Yeah. So watermelon, pineapple, those are good recovery fruits. But I mean, we live right next to Chinatown. So we could go down and we get dragged down and all these kinds of crazy fruits and stuff. But even the regular ones, apples, oranges, pears, mangoes, I mean, you name a fruit and I love it. Name something with Kalani here. She's a fruit lover too. So when you're running the marathon, do you keep some fruit in your pocket or what do you use for snacks? No, that one's a little bit difficult, because you're on the run and I was running, I used to run, you know, competitively, so you run fast. So you just maybe have like some kind of a solution drink that you're drinking with all the electrolytes and calories in it. When we were doing, for example, the 26 mile marathons, or if we're doing just a trade, like I'm out here on the trail and stuff. So I've got a couple more bananas with me. I mean, if you're going slow enough, you can eat like fruits, they have a lot of fiber. So when you're running and you're balancing, there may be some stomach distress if you're eating a lot of fruit. So that's why things like gels and nutritional drinks are probably better. But that's just, you know, you're just doing that, you know, once a day and then the 90% of your diet is going to be really good fruits. We did like a special beach to beach run. We do put on a race every year that's called the Hawaii Kai Ultra Run. It's not really a race, it's more of a personal challenge. Yeah. I had our oldest team member. He's at 82. He runs with us. He still does it. He does marathons. Yeah, we've had like six year olds anywhere from six to running with our group. If people want to train, do they try to make every single meeting? No, there's nobody. I mean, I think Kalani here is the one that attends the most number of meetings. Yeah. So we have people that come like only on Tuesday nights, like their work schedule, that's all it's going to allow or Sunday mornings. We do have people that come times a week and there's a few of them that will run the majority of the time. But yeah, there's nobody that makes ever. If people want to train for a marathon, how much do you suggest that they run every week? I guess they're going to be working up to that, right? So they would start at a certain amount and then they would you know, like way before the marathon. No, full 26 or how does that work like your first? No, no, run the full 26. In fact, for beginners, like if you start running past 20 miles, that's when you start to get injured a little bit on your first marathon. I used to train them up to 24 because I figured, oh, you know, if you get up to 24, then you can run 26. But I found that a lot of beginners wound up getting injured and they didn't even show up to the start line. So now we only go up to about 20 miles. From 20 to 26 is a pretty big gap. But like on the day of the race, you're full of adrenaline and you've rested going into it. So we found that people are able to make that jump from 20 to 26 pretty well. So we go up to 20 for beginners. And do you do the marathon generally every year with a group then? Or not? So I've done the marathon. I've started the marathon 18 consecutive times. I was injured one year. I didn't finish it. That was my tenth year. I did some crazy birthday runs right before that. I wound up injuring my knee. I ran up to I did the for my 50th birthday. I ran 50 miles. I touched the ocean down in Kihei. I ran 50 miles to the top of Haleakala, 10,000 feet. And then a couple. Yeah. And one of my friends was supposed to run with me, but he wasn't able to make it. So he called me up like two days later and he's like, Hey, let's run around the West Mawai Mountains. So that's 100 kilometer run. So that's even further. So I got about 40 miles into that. And I was, I wasn't in shape to do it. And well enough shape to do it. So I wound up injuring my knee and that carried that was the end of October that carried through to December. So anyway, I wasn't able to finish the marathon that year. I dropped out at about 16 miles. That's one of the few races ever I didn't finish. But so anyway, I've showed up 19 years in a row. I finished 18. I was sorry, I've showed up 18 years in a row. This will be my 19th this year. And then I live in Mawai also. So I did 11 over there. So I've been running a marathon every year for the last 30 years. That's amazing. Yeah, I planned it to do it when I'm 100. I mean, it's only about 40 years from now. So if I can keep the street going, it'll be great. I think so. I mean, this is just amazing to hear that someone can be in such incredible shape like you. And people are so concerned about protein all the time. Like, what do you say to these people who come in and they're concerned about getting enough protein for running? I know you said a little bit about the joints, but Yeah, I mean, as vegans, we know that the whole protein myth is totally overrated. If you look at the biggest animals on earth, the elephants, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, they're eating nothing but plants all day and they don't have any kind of a protein. They're not going to die from protein deficiency. The only people that have protein deficiencies in America are the ones that don't get enough calories. And that's basically the elderly, if they're not getting eating enough, or the, I gotta keep going here, or the, you know, if you have a dis-eating disorder. But, you know, if you are concerned about protein, I wouldn't take any protein powders or anything like that. I would just focus on maybe the bean, the bean and legume family that has a lot of proteins or just, you know, do some research and find out what are the foods that have the most protein in it, quinoa, and just start adding more of that to your diet. For example, when I was doing the 26 marathons, I had a giant salad, but some days I would take half a can of beans and just, you know, put it on there or cook up some quinoa and put it on top. So, just making sure that I had enough protein. That was when I first started my vegan diet. I had only been a year, maybe a year or two into it. And, you know, when you've been doing things a long time, you don't worry about it. But that was the first year or two. So, I was still trying to make sure I had enough protein. Yeah. And I'm just wondering, with the potluck that you guys have, are things clearly marked, like if a vegan person wanted to go to the running, get together? Yeah, we don't have them marked, but I mean, we're a small enough group where I just ask. And most of the runners that have been with our group a long time, they know I'm vegan. There's a few other that eat mostly vegan and plant-based and vegetarian. So, we just make sure that if it is vegan, they're gonna, you know, they'll know about it. Thank you so much for being on the show, Convica. We're out of time, so we have to wrap it up. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. This is Healthy Planet on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. We've been talking with Convica Carlson, founder of the Hawaii Running Project. Thanks. Thanks. I'll go ahead. Yeah, come on, come on, walk with us or come on, run with us. We love your members. No, it's gonna be, it'll be, you know, I want to jog my hosting too. But thank you, Jay, our broadcast engineer today and the rest of the crew at ThinkTech for hosting our show. And thanks to you, our listeners for listening. I'll see you in two weeks for more of Healthy Planet on ThinkTech, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet. My next guest will be Nate Hodgson, founder of Kaimuki Compost Collective. If you have ideas for the shows or questions for my future show guests, please contact me at HealthyPlanetThinkTech at gmail.com. Check out my website at GraceInHawaii.com or Instagram at GracefulLiving365 for more information on my projects, including future show guests. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill, everyone.