Jonathan Holland's Staging Area

This course was hard. I held my target pace to about 25km, but as the sun came up and the heat increased I fell off hard. I was shocked at how many people were walking by mile 20. That final crest over Diamond head was brutal.

Amazing views and the most “major” you can get without a lottery. I’ll run it again in a few years with more prep for the heat.

Advice for first timers:

1. Get to your corral early. It was madness trying to push up to the right start pen.
2. Until the 10k split off it was very very crowded which made it difficult, lots of weaving around lost walkers.
3. Hit those water stations. The first hour and a half is in the dark but the sunrise changed everything.
4. Leave some gas in the tank for mile 24, the elevation chart downplays how hard that hill is.

The medal and race production was great, I felt like the expo was lackluster, expected more major brands to represent.

Overall, I felt like it was a great race even if it crushed me. Just go into it with appropriate expectations of the challenge.

I’ll start off with the good:

1. Orca Running always puts on a great race, great staff, everything is well organized, good aid stations etc. I love running their races.

2. Most of the course is pretty scenic, which makes the double out and back layout more tolerable.

Now on to the bad:

1. Orca should stop calling this course flat and fast. It’s rolling hills, but fast with the amount of recovery you get on the downhills.

2. There are two very unsafe areas on the course. When you start you leave a board walk and sprint around a tight uphill corner in loose dirt, I’m shocked there are not more people getting hurt here. On the final stretch there’s another section of the course that is extremely poorly laid out and has you crossing an active park full of pedestrians and then dropping downhill and making a 90 degree turn on a dirt single track. This is the 100 meters from the finish and people are all out sprinting, it’s a completely baffling layout. Orca could fix both of these issues by starting the race in the parking lot and heading up King Olaf way, you would lose the scenic board walk but that stretch was just people pushing and shoving anyways. With high stack race shoes becoming the norm we shouldn’t have courses designed for a trail run.

3. It’s a double out and back on an open street. While there wasn’t too much traffic, it’s still a really subpar experience to just about any other race layout, and having to hop into active traffic to get around walking 10k participants just adds to the danger.

With that said, it was still a great day. I had a blast, and some small adjustments could make this race into something really special. I’ll probably still run it again next year since the hills provided a good challenge.

Well organized race along a scenic trail, it’s a slight uphill out and a slight downhill back.

The first km is rather congested since the trail is narrow but I found things opened up after that.

I’ll be doing the half next time.