Meet Gladys, my idol..

Tomorrow is the Honolulu Marathon and the 10K race walk. I'm just doing the race walk, but Gladys Burrill is the 90-year-old who inspired me to do that much. Yesterday's local paper had more info on her.

She started doing them just 5 years ago. Now that she's hit 90, she's in a new age bracket and thinks she can beat the record for a 90-year-old woman in a marathon, set in Portland in 1997 at 8:53:08. Her personal best is 8:36, so she definitely has a shot at it. She lives in Oregon most of the year, but has been here training for about 6 weeks, and recently did 20 miles in 6 hours. Her grandson and his wife will do the race with her.

She and her family both mentioned that people try to get their pictures taken with her, which slows her down, so part of her family's job is to try to keep the people away until she finishes. Especially since this could be her record breaking year! The sad part is that her 89-year-old husband passed away just Wednesday night back in Oregon, so she won't get to share the moment with him.

The logistics for the race are a bit daunting for me. The marathoners start off at 4:55, and we walkers at 5:25 (yes, that's in the AM...). Buses run from the parking to the start line between 2-4am. 60-70% of the entrants are from Japan, so hopefully most of them will be staying in hotels near the start and won't be clogging up my parking. I plan to leave home at 2am (oh, it hurts to even put that in writing), which should get me there between 2:30-3:00. (They strongly recommend not to count on catching that last 4am bus...)

So once I'm at the start, I have no clue what there will be to do until 5:25am, except perhaps stand in line for a porta-potty. There will be fireworks before the start, and it will probably be exciting to see the marathoners take off. About 25,000 - 28,000 people will run the race, and there will be about 2,000 of us walkers. Some of the publicity says it's the third largest US marathon. I checked the Marine Corps Marathon, and they say they stop at 30,000 entrants. The NYC Marathon says it had 38,000 last year. Boston had 22,000. So I guess the publicity might even be accurate...

I enjoyed watching the London marathon the last couple of years when we lived in Yorkshire. The non-elite runners often run in costume there. One guy had on a Pink Panther suit, which was probably fine the first mile, but after that, it had to be miserable wearing that thing... People ran in fairy costumes with wings, and some in very little at all (and it's chilly in London for their run...)

Yesterday I went to the expo at the convention center to pick up my souvenir shirt and bib number. I already have that pinned to the shirt I'm wearing tomorrow. (No Pink Panther costume for me - t-shirt and shorts.) I want to have as little as possible to do when I roll out of bed at 1am or so...

I also picked up some other items in a "goody" bag, which was definitely oriented towards the Japanese visitors. Most of the items were primarily written in Japanese with tiny English subtitles, and were mostly offers for tourist attractions I've already seen.

At the finish, they start a concert at 8:45 or so. The elite runners will start finishing around 7am. The wheelchairs usually come in first, then the men around 2:11-2:18, and then the women around 2:25. I expect to finish around 8am (our finish line is the same - we basically do about the first 6 miles of the course). I just hope, since we'll be after the runners, that they leave some water and oatmeal cookies for us along the way.......

The overall winners get some money, and there's also prize money for people born in Hawaii but living elsewhere, and people currently living in Hawaii but born elsewhere and people born and currently living here... And the top 3 in each age category get something, though I don't think it's cash. And every finisher gets a T-shirt and certificate. The awards ceremony starts at 1pm, but I doubt I'll hang around that long. I'm sure I'll be ready for a nap.

And we walkers, well, I guess the shirt I already picked up is it! So I could just stay in bed tomorrow and wear my shirt later. tee hee

But I doubt I'll do that, so stay tuned for a full report tomorrow!