Tantalus 10-Mile Challenge: the one we run for the climb

Tantalus is the mountain road that switchbacks up behind Honolulu, through the forest, to a lookout where you can see the whole city laid out below you. It's beautiful, and it goes up for a long time. A 10-mile race on it was never going to be about pace, and we knew that going in, which didn't make the first few miles feel any shorter.

The road is shaded most of the way, which matters in October, and it's steep enough in places that running form stops being a habit and starts being a decision you make every few hundred yards. Going up, the job is mostly patience, and coming down is its own problem, because quads that have been climbing for miles don't enjoy being asked to brake, and we never found a polite way to ask them.

We ran it because of where it sat on the calendar. October 2023 was the middle of the marathon build, with the BOCA 30K two weeks later, and a hilly 10-miler in between was strength work with a bib on it. Hills build the legs the flat, exposed stretch of the marathon is going to ask for around mile 20, and they do it at a heart rate that's honest and a pace that doesn't matter. Later that same month the trainers showed up in the room off the bedroom, and the two have more in common than you'd think, since in both places the effort is the only number anybody's counting.

For the record, I won the 50-54 age group, 1:26:07 at 8:37 a mile, and I'd be the first to say that says more about who shows up for a hill race in October than about speed. Michelle was fourth in hers in 2:03:10. We usually do one hilly race a season and try not to look at the pace, and on this island this is the one, with the lookout at the top as the real finish and the one at the bottom just where they hand you water.