Great Aloha Run: the distance that was our ceiling for years

For a long time this race was our whole calendar, and it's still the one we'd point a friend to who was starting endurance sport after 45 on Oahu, because it isn't easy but it's the right size.

When this was the ceiling

The Great Aloha Run is every Presidents' Day. You start downtown at Aloha Tower, go out along Nimitz and Kamehameha Highway, and finish on the field at the stadium, and it's 8.15 miles with thousands of people, music, a countdown, and a real start line. A beginner with a few months of consistent running can finish it upright, and most of them do. For years it was the longest thing either of us had run, and we did it every other year or so, which made it the one morning that felt like a race. The rest of the year didn't have much of a plan in it, and then February would show up and we'd go do this, and we're not embarrassed about that, because it was where we were, and we stayed there a long time.

This year

By February 2023 a marathon had happened, so the Great Aloha Run turned into a training day, which felt strange the first time we said it out loud. It was also the same week as the Kailua 10-Miler, which is more racing than one week needs and not something we'd plan again on purpose. It was still a good morning, as it always is, because the stadium finish is the closest thing Oahu has to a big-city race, and being in the middle of a few thousand people is a decent reminder that this sport isn't only something you do alone at 5 a.m., which for us is what it is most of the year.

For a lot of years one race a year was our whole running life, and it was this one, and that was a fine life. When we wanted the next distance up, the Hibiscus Half in May turned out to be the right size for that too. Michelle ran it faster than I did that year, by 49 seconds on the watches, and since the official results are on Athlinks, which we can't read by machine, the times here are ours.