Honolulu Marathon 2008

This is one of the many pending blog posts I've had tucked away in the wings, waiting for the Baja trip and others to get out of the way.

After an enjoyable week of sightseeing around Oahu, we arrived at the suffering portion of our trip. My dad and I ran the Honolulu Marathon on the morning of Dec 14th, 2008. I've gone ahead and copied my journal write-up to go along with the pictures, for those not on that list. I brought my camera along, so some of these are mine, others I stole.

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Up at 2:00 a.m. Surprisingly, not very tired. Slept pretty well for a race night. Got ready and drove to Waikiki in the dark, attempting to find the finish line. (They bus you to the starting line) Got lost, and by the time we located the buses, there was nowhere to park. Found a parking spot about a mile away and decided to walk to the starting line instead of trying for a bus.

Walked about a mile or so with a ton of other people to the starting line, where another 25,000 runners waited. 30 minutes later, we were off, walking to the starting line and then jogging out. It’s a massive crowd. Much energy is spent dodging slower runners and walkers.

It rained almost continually all morning, which helped keep things cool, but the humidity was in the mid 90’s, which wasn’t pleasant.

This was a tough race for both me and my dad. We hypothesized about the reasons why for much of the race: humidity, sporadic training, my old shoes, etc. By mile 10 we had slowed down quite a bit. My dad was suffering from some aches and pains that would plague him the remainder of the race. For me, it was all the hiking I did in my flip flops yesterday. My feet were killing me, and opting to go with old, comfortable shoes turned out to be a huge mistake.

The rain let up mid way and the sun came out. I hugged the side of the road as much as I could, trying to stay in any shade available.

Ignore the shirtless ghost next to my dad. I had a severe case of raw nipples, and was forced to go topless in order to prevent further chaffing. Eventually I secured a couple band-aids and put an end to the free show.

The last 10 miles were slow and painful. We walked a lot and suffered through them.

At last the finish line was in sight and we stumbled through in about 5 hours 45 minutes.

Picked up a snack and our finishers shirt, then it was a death march back to the car. That was one painful walk.