Honolulu Marathon

Finally, now that I've stopped working in Deadhorse, I was able to run the Honolulu Marathon in December.  It was a fantastic race.  It was quite warm, but there was enough of a breeze to keep me from being too uncomfortable.  Half the runners were from Japan since it was sponsored by Japan Air Lines.  It was interesting hearing all the runners around me speaking in Japanese.  It was such a huge race and since it has no time limit or participant limit, it attracts a lot of walkers.  I was in the middle corral but even then, there seemed to be mostly walkers and very few runners.  That was the most difficult part of the race for me. I wanted to run, so was forever maneuvering around all the walkers.  I figured at some point I would finally be ahead of all of them, yet even in the finisher chute, I was still working my way around walkers.  I'm not sure I'll even have a finish photo because just as I crossed, three men with gigantic flags walked right in front of me and the flags completely covered my entire body as I crossed the mat.  That was ridiculous!  But otherwise it was a really fun race.  I was a little slower than usual but still not terribly slow.  I didn't start feeling really exhausted until the last couple of miles.  I made the mistake of not bringing more energy gels, figuring they would have some on the race.  But they only had water and Gatorade.  I drank more water than on any race I've ever done, since it was over 80 degrees once the sun came up.  I loved the race and might want to do it again next year.