Race reports · 2023 · by Jay
Honolulu Triathlon, twice: 2014 and the year we meant it
We did this one at Ala Moana twice, with zero weeks of training in 2014 and fifty in 2023.
We did this race in 2014, and then we did it again in 2023, and the course hadn't changed much in nine years, but the two of us had.
2014
I talked Michelle into it. Neither of us was really training, and we hadn't decided this was going to be a life, so it was a weekend with a timing chip and not much more. Without any training an Olympic-distance triathlon is a long, uncomfortable morning, and then you go home and eat, and that's the honest description of that Sunday. We did the Tin Man two months later and then more or less stopped, because it hadn't stuck yet. The 2014 results aren't online anywhere we could find, but the Tin Man from that same summer is, and it has its own page.
2023
Nine years later we came back to Ala Moana with a marathon and two halves in the previous twelve months and a 70.3 two weeks out, and this time we actually raced it. The lead-up looked like what a lead-up is supposed to look like, with sleep managed, bricks done, and the eating tested on a 50-mile ride and a 10-mile run three weeks earlier, whereas in 2014 the lead-up was whatever we happened to be doing that week, which was usually nothing. The Olympic distance is where you find out whether you like triathlon or just like the idea of a Saturday with a timing chip, and in 2014 we liked the idea while in 2023 we liked the sport, which is a different thing and the reason this website exists.
The race is at Ala Moana Beach Park in May. The swim is inside the reef, in water that's calm most mornings, and the bike goes out along the highway and back, and then you run a 10K in the park, where by the time you get to it it's usually already hot. It's the only Olympic-distance tri on the island, so it anchors everybody's spring, ours included. For me it was also the bridge to Honu, because I went into the 70.3 knowing my transitions worked and that my open-water swim wouldn't panic, since I'd done both here two weeks earlier, and two weeks is about the right amount of time to still remember what went wrong.
The 2023 numbers are on the card, 2:46:58 for me and 3:14:51 for Michelle, sixth in her age group, but the number I care about more is the weeks of training before each one: none in 2014 and fifty in 2023. A year later, with a full season of triathlon behind us, the 2024 edition went 2:20 and 2:49. One week after this one, the Hibiscus Half was Michelle's day, and both races are in the same video.