Race reports · 2023 · by Jay
Honolulu Marathon 2023: the sixth race in a five-race series
Same 5 a.m. start, same fireworks, same two trips over Diamond Head. This time with a whole readiness series behind it and a camera in front of it.
A year earlier this race was a birthday. This time it was the end of a season that had been pointed at it since August, one readiness race at a time, and for once we'd done the season in the right order.
The build, in bibs
The readiness series went the way it's laid out on the calendar: the 15K in August, the 20K in September, the 25K at the end of September, the 30K in October, and the half in November. By December the long run had been past 18 miles with aid stations and other people around, the breakfast was decided, the shoes were decided, and the pace plan had been rehearsed twice. We let the calendar be the plan, and by the time the marathon came around it felt like the sixth race in a five-race series.
The race
The Honolulu Marathon starts at 5 a.m. at Ala Moana Beach Park, in the dark, with fireworks over the water. From there it goes through Waikiki, up and over Diamond Head, out the long flat exposed stretch along Kalanianaole to Hawaii Kai and back, and over Diamond Head a second time to finish at Kapiolani Park. There's no cutoff, so you finish when you finish.
The 5 a.m. start is there because of the heat, and it only really helps the front of the field. For everybody else the sun is up by the first Diamond Head and it's full daylight on an open road by the turnaround in Hawaii Kai, so the flat part is the hot part. The second Diamond Head comes somewhere around mile 24, and that's where you find out whether the training was enough. It's also the run leg of the original Ironman from February 1978, which put the Roughwater swim and a lap of the island on the bike in front of it. We'd done both of those earlier in the year on their own, so this marathon closed out the whole 1978 course, spread across four months instead of one day.
People call miles 22 to 25 the Kahala Death March, and I believe it's a Strava segment: uphill, downwind, sun at your back, an oven. My goal was to break four hours and I felt good until that stretch, then both calves cramped coming down the far side of Diamond Head. I hobbled and shuffled and pushed with everything I had, and I came in at 4:00:34. I missed it by 35 seconds. I was devastated, and I knew before I'd stopped moving that I'd be back the next year.
Michelle stepped in a divot at mile 3 or 4 and twisted her ankle, hobbled on it for about 15 miles until her hip was really jacked, and walked most of the last eight or nine miles. She still beat her 2022 time by five minutes, at 5:37:40, and she'd wanted to break five, which I'm pretty sure she would have done healthy. We were both glad to have finished a second marathon and both disappointed in the results, and we both knew there'd be a third.
What was different
The pacing was the main thing. The first year the marathon was about finishing, and we ran it that way. This year it was about running the first ten miles bored on purpose so there'd be something left for the second climb, and the 30K in October had rehearsed exactly that, and the rehearsal held.
The other thing was the camera. This is the most-watched video the channel has ever posted, and it isn't close. People want to see the race, not the training, and we noticed. It's part of why this site exists, because a day like that shouldn't only live inside a thumbnail.
Twenty-one minutes off the year before for me and five off for Michelle, and both of those came from the series, not from anything clever on the day. The week after was a rest week on purpose, and the conversation in the car on the way home was already about the full distance. A year later, at the 2024 marathon, both of those times came down a long way.