Waikiki Mile: Back To The Future

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. –  Albert Einstein

I covered the inaugural Waikiki Mile in 1994 for Track & Field News. I know I did.

You’d think I could find the results somehow. But no.

Doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter because I get excited for some of these events, even if I am nowhere near them. Like Honolulu Marathon Week. Yea, internet.

The estimable Dave Monti tells me Yared Nuguse is chilling by the pool and I can imagine myself poolside, too. There was this one time at brunch, I listened to Regina Jacobs order her egg whites just so. Remember thinking, Regina is taking this professional athlete role real serious.

1994 Waikiki Mile By Champion Marc Davis

[Dripping from a post-race plunge.]

I have been doing twenty to thirty miles a week the last month and a half. Taking four, five days off at a time. Haven’t done a lick of speed work. Haven’t done a lick of endurance work. Haven’t done any intervals.

Did one workout about two weeks ago, in pissing rain, that was my last workout. Couldn’t even walk for two days after that. Hardly doing anything except jogging. Four to six miles a day. Couple of times running hard.

I would get up and I would go do an interval workout and it would be dark out and rainy and I would just walk home. The last two weeks running every other day.

It’s not the coaching, it’s not that I’m not running because I didn’t feel like it. Basically, I couldn’t do it. My heel has been really bothering me. My Achilles have been bothering me, which basically led to the heel problem. Your typical fall injuries of coming back after shutting down after a tough summer.

Basically [Waikiki Mile] came to have a good time. Not really worried about how I was going to finish, more interested in how this race would show where I was at. If I’ve lost a lot of strength over the last month or so, because of a little heel problem. Basically, crappy weather in Oregon.

You know, you go in, you have a couple guys help you out in the race, next thing you know… I mean, Christ, I ran 3:57. My first legitimate sub-four mile. Obviously, I’ve run the equivalent to it. It’s on the roads, so this is not legitimate either, when you think about it.

It was a really really big surprise. Everybody else seems to think it was something that was supposed to happen. Alberto swears it was supposed to happen that way. My girlfriend swears it was supposed to happen that way.

A couple of the guys thought about it. They call me ‘ The Doc.’ Two or three days before the race I get a head cold, I’m all stuffed up. I’ve been traveling all around the place. Can’t even breathe. I’m all achy, definitely not feeling well. So, I was basically blowing the whole thing off. But you know, maybe the adrenalin from your body fighting the cold. The incentive to go under four minutes. I guess we just kinda went after it.

It was a perfectly set up race. I had 58 at the quarter, about two, two-oh-one at the half. I did not lead until one hundred meters to go.

I used and abused every person out there. They all know it. I know it. Nothing they could do about it. Not a damn thing. Somebody could’ve taken off with a quarter to go, I would’ve gone with him and still sat on him.

The biggest surprise in my life. I just decided I wanted it more.

[Undertrained and undaunted, Davis took home a check for $12,000.]

“I’ve run more than he has,” his girlfriend pipes up.

KALAKAUA MERRIE MILE EXTENDS COMPETITIVE RUNNING TRADITION IN HONOLULU
By David Monti, @d9monti (c) 2023 Race Results Weekly.

(21-Nov) — Back in the 1990’s some of the world’s best middle distance runners made year-end trips to Honolulu to run the Waikiki Mile, a road mile sponsored by Nike which was held in conjunction with the Honolulu Marathon.  In its final year in 1997, Canadian Graham Hood (3:55:66) and American Regina Jacobs (4:26.05) won in course record times, and Hood made $19,000 in prize money and time bonuses while Jacobs earned $18,000.

Sadly, the race didn’t have a sustainable financial model and had to be discontinued.

“We loved the Waikiki Mile; it was an amazing event,” explained Honolulu Marathon Association president Jim Barahal in a telephone interview.  “We had the World Class Mile (for the elites), but we also had thousands of school kids participating before the professional race.  We were paying for all of that, so it became financially unfeasible.  We always loved doing that mile and thought it was a great event.”

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And when the event became financially feasible again, well, bigger and better and more inclusive with modern-day improvements seemed the only way to go.

The 7th Kalakaua Merrie Mile takes place on Saturday, December 9 in Honolulu, the day before the 51st Honolulu Marathon. 

I wish I was there.

Imagine I will be.

Me and my spirit animal.

Dave’s Whole Story Here

https://www.runnerspace.com/gprofile.php?mgroup_id=44531&do=news&news_id=667476