I was already 43 when my daughter Yuki and I went to see the Honolulu Marathon runners go by a quarter mile from our house in December 1978. We watched for a while and it was pretty impressive. Yuki said we should do it the next year. I told her she could do it without me.

But then in January there were some Nike running shoes (Oceanias) on sale for twenty-some dollars, and I thought that maybe commuting 5K back and forth to work by bicycle every day plus the weekend group bike ride might not really be enough exercise, and I started running around the big block we live on. I ran that 0.8 mile (1.25K) several days a week after work, and in less than a month I had worked up to doing two or three laps. By June I had worked up to an occasional six-miler and was starting to think of really trying for the marathon.

On October 14th I entered my first race, the Val Nolasco Memorial 22K (which has ever since been shortened to the Val Nolasco Memorial Half-marathon). By then, I had penciled in my Honolulu Marathon application, but this would tell whether I should change it to ink or not. A running friend warned me about going out too fast at the beginning (as he had recently done), so I took it easy for the first 11 miles, nevertheless passing people who had been reduced to walking or stretching out cramps, and was full of pep for the last mile. I blazed across the finish line in 2:03:19, good for 634th place.

A full marathon being less than twice that long, I was encouraged to ink in the application, changing only my estimated finish time, from 3:59 to 4:20, and I mailed it in. And less than two months later, I completed my second race and first marathon, in 3:57:34 (2,326th place), which would remain my Personal Worst for 16 years.

There is a gentle but long hill sea-side around Diamond Head from about 23½ to 24½ miles of the Honolulu Marathon. By the time I got to the top of that I swore I would never do anything so stupid again. A week later I was planning to do better in the following year's Honolulu, and in fact took 30 minutes off my time in 1980. I would only beat that 3:26:53 twice in the rest of my running career.