Jim Barahal - CEO of Honolulu Marathon: Building the Fourth Largest Marathon Event in the USA

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are currently in Honolulu, Hawaii, and I am joined by Jim Barahal, the CEO of the Honolulu Marathon. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Jim.

Hey, my pleasure, Casey.

So it's my first marathon. I flew out here from Los Angeles and I've been looking forward to sitting down with you because not only have you built the fourth largest race in the entire usa, but you've been a runner for quite some time. And I'm excited to learn from you and to dive into your story. So what does this 50 year anniversary marathon mean to you?

I'm old. Yeah. My first marathon that I ran was 50 years ago.

Wow.

In 1973. June 1973, Toledo, Ohio, which is known as the Glass City. Toledo is, and it's called the Glass City Marathon. And ran my first marathon there. And that coincidentally happened to be the first year of this Honolulu Marathon. 1973, 171 finishers. Never dreamed that I'd ever go to Hawaii, let alone live in Hawaii, and then somehow be part of this incredible event, the fourth largest marathon in the United States. Quite a journey. And I think it's been a journey for the Honolulu Marathon from those humble beginnings to now our 50th anniversary. And coming through Covid, which is very rough for everybody on every level. We're very excited to fired that starting gun on Sunday. And it's quite a scene there at the start it's dark. It's very much like a movie set because it's, it's dark and the fireworks go off with the starting gun. And it's, it's quite exhilarating. And leads many first time marathoners to make the cardinal mistake in a marathon, which is to go out too fast. It's exciting. And there's people all around you. Yep. And then about 15 miles later you say, whoops.

Absolutely. And that's what I'm looking to not do. And this is my first marathon, as you know, and I've been prepping for it and I'm beyond excited for it. And funny enough, I didn't even know there was fireworks at the start until I think a week, week and a half ago.

I'm glad we told you.

Has that been a tradition over the past 50 years?

Yeah, it's always been fireworks for 50 years. So it's that darkness at the start. So it's quite a scene. And it's also from a medical point of view and from a performance point of view. Casey. Most of the, like the big marathons, the top Marathons, if we look in the United States, like Chicago, Boston, New York, go overseas in Europe, London, Berlin, these kind of marathons, they're all in the spring and the fall. And the reason why they're all in the spring and the fall, Boston started the marathon. That's the Original 1. Over 100 years. Spring and fall gives you the best temperature, the best weather, theoretically, for the best performance. Your best marathon weather is probably about 50 degrees, somewhere between 50 and 55 degrees in low humidity. So all those marathons, when they're first set up, were only for really top elite runners. So they're all sprint, they're all in the spring, in the fall. But, you know, the 50 to 55 degrees can somehow end up being 28 to 32 degrees or 75 to 78 degrees. So the weather can be pretty crazy. There's, yeah, Honolulu. We, when I, when I first was in charge, we started at 6am then we moved it to 5:30am and then we moved it to 5am because we wanted as much time in the darkness as possible to get better performances from especially the fast runners like yourself, who ran a 127 half marathon in Malibu. Man, that's pretty good. But also, it just gives a little layer of safety that the more time you can spend on the darkness, the less time you're dealing with the sun. And of course, in the Honolulu Marathon, the biggest enemy of the runner, besides the course in the distance, is the heat. So it works out pretty well that way.

Absolutely. I'm excited to get out there and get it going. This Sunday at 5am I want to ask you what led you to running your first marathon? I think you said 50 years ago, right?

Yeah, yeah. I was three years old. No, I'm kidding. And I think my journey to the marathon. I say this all the time, Casey. I, I, I. It's a funny thing I do with people here. I said, did you see the marathon ad on tv? They go, yeah, yeah, it was a great ad. I said, no, you didn't. Because we don't advertise on tv. And not, I'm not, not trying to just, you know, get them. I'm just. We don't proselytize the marathon. I think the marathon is something that people find. So if we're advertising the marathon, we're trying to find you. I mean, that's what advertising marketing does. We want to find you and sell you our product. Yeah, we want that. But my marathon journey, I think, is representative of many people's, is you find the marathon so my story is I was a high school athlete, baseball and basketball, never ran a step, did not like to run, got to college at the university. Running was seen as a punishment in these sports. You miss a free throw, do some laps, do some laps, right? It's a punishment. So you're trying to avoid that. And so I got to college at the University of Michigan. You know, big school, you know, not good enough to play on. On those sports teams. So all of a sudden, you know, a guy like myself who's been competitive my whole life, really into sports and playing sports, you know, I'm just doing the freshman thing, and that freshman thing ain't pretty. Sometimes, you know, you're not. You're not motivated. You're just. It's just not great. I. You know, I had to find my place, and my dad had always jogged, and I thought it was like. I thought he was, like, bizarre. You know, he would jog a little when no one was jogging in the 60s. So in the early 70s, 1970, it was. I just, you know, maybe two months into college, I said, I wonder how, you know, if I could jog from my dorm at the University of Michigan down to the middle of campus of Michigan Union and back probably about a mile one way. Wow. And I couldn't. I got to the middle of campus and I said, wow, I'm really out of shape. And so I just started jogging and running boom hadn't quite hit. The running boom really hit in 1972 when American Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon in Munich. So I started jogging and just found that it. It gave me a lot. It gave me discipline. I felt good. The endorphins are real. Yeah, I felt better. I cleaned up my actual. And, you know, gradually it just kept running. And an interesting moment for me, a guy. The next year, a guy moved in across the hall for me in the dorm. His name was Peter Burns, and he had transferred from another school, and he was running a little more than me. And he was training for the Boston Marathon, which had a qualifying time and really motivated me. We ran a lot together and got me on that path where I said, I'm going to run a marathon.

And.

And I did all my first long runs with him. My first four miler, my first eight miler, my first 12 miler. You know, you remember these things.

Absolutely.

And so I. There was a marathon in Toledo, Michigan. Didn't have a lot of races then. There was no Detroit Free Press marathon, certainly. Yeah. And so I went down to Toledo and ran that first marathon and that was a goal of mine. And it was, it was really exciting. And it's quite an experience. Marathon is quite an experience.

Absolutely. Just hearing your journey just gives me the chills because, you know, you said you remember the 4 mile, the 8 mile. For me, it was my first 5k, first 10k, and then I did my first 10 mile run last year and it was just the craziest experience for me because I never imagined that I would or would want to and actually go the distance of running 10 miles. And now to think back a year ago, I had no intentions to go sign up for a marathon. And how you just described that earlier in the conversation of it finds you. I felt like that really happened for me very quickly where I did a half just by myself in Santa Monica. Then I committed to doing the half in Malibu recently, and then it led me to committing to the Honolulu Marathon. And I want to pivot the conversation because running for me is a lot in alignment with business in terms of the discipline it takes, the practice, the repetition, and. And you've been an entrepreneur for a long time now. I'd love to hear how you think about running in business. Do they have any correlations in your life or what has your business journey been like separate from running?

Oh, man, I'm a loser. If I hadn't run, seriously, I mean, I mean, talk about an unmotivated guy. You know, I was cruising and a lot of people do that, you know, in high school you're, you know, I wouldn't say I was a big fish in a small pond, I was a medium sized fish in a medium sized pond. But then you get to University of Michigan and, you know, I said, what happened to all the dumb guys? You know, you know, where'd they all go? And so, you know, it's just a completely competitive thing. Different thing. And the discipline I got from running, to get up every day and do it, and I did it for a long time, it just gives you confidence, it gives you a discipline, it gives you a sense that you can achieve things. Because every run in a way presents an obstacle. There's very few runs I've ever had, you know, in the number of years I ran that it didn't have a moment where I didn't say, why am I out here? You know, that exhilarating, runners high, where the endorphins are really kicking in. It's real, but it often takes a while to run. And I can tell you I probably ran a couple hundred races at least. Every race I ever ran I had a nanosecond where I said, I'm going to drop out. I'm going to quit.

Wow.

Why did I do this? Because the reason why that happens in a race is because you're running at your aerobic threshold. It's called. You're running as fast as you can without crashing. So if you're not doing that, if you're doing a race and you're saying, this feels great, la di da, you're not running fast enough. But I think as far as the business thing, it just gave me a motivation and a discipline and a sense that I could achieve things. But. But an understanding that achievements are done in small pieces. Because you don't start out by running. You say, I'm going to run a marathon tomorrow. You start out by running a half a mile or walking a half a mile. And then gradually, over enough period of time, you achieve what you would have considered not possible. And I think my business journey is the same way. Where I started with an idea, I executed the idea and then gradually watched it grow. I started a company called Doctors on Call here in Hawaii. I recognize there's a lot of tourists here and very little health care for them, but it actually started earlier. I started a house call business.

Okay.

That's where the name Doctors on Call came from. House calls only, I said. And so I got, I got an article in the newspaper. This is, you know, way back in a different media day. And I did house calls for 18 months.

Wow.

And then I met the manager of a hotel, Hyde Regency Waikiki, said, why don't you put a clinic here in the hotel? And I did that. And so.

And you went to school for this? Just for, for context.

I went to medical school.

You wanted, you wanted to go to medical school. You wanted to do this? This.

Okay, not even close.

Okay.

I, you know, it's a traditional medical school thing. University of Michigan, you know, kind of put that one on a little bit of cruise control too, and wasn't sure what I was going to do, and came out to University of Hawaii in 1979 to do a one year residency. And from there I was going to go to the University of Louisville to do dermatology.

Wow.

And I got to Hawaii, was out here for a year and said, man, I like it here. And so I delayed that residency for a year. And then I said, you know what? I don't want to do it. I'm going to do something different. And I started this house call company and I probably did 7,000 house calls.

Wow.

And then got this office and eventually built 19 clinics on multiple islands, sold them to a big hospital chain here. So my journey was very much like the running journey, in a sense. That first day when I took that first step to run across campus, it didn't occur to me that I would run a marathon. It didn't occur to me that I would, you know, run races. And it never occurred to me that through the running that I would end up being involved in the Honda Marathon and then having the experiences that I've had. So I think running. And it doesn't have to be running. I say now it doesn't have to be running. It can be yoga, it can be Pilates, it can be ballet, it can be whatever. But I think the thing is an active, healthy lifestyle and the discipline and the feeling that it gives you, both physically and psychologically, you can achieve things. I think you have to do something like that. Absolutely.

I love that perspective. And it's. It's so cool hearing your journey and your story and not being so involved with the Honolulu Marathon over the last 35 years. It's. It just makes so much sense looking back. But you could have never predicted this. And I want. When talking about the business side, the medical practices. So you said you were seeing tourists coming here a lot, and that was the opportunity where you said, hey, I'm going to go build clinics. What was, you know, the. The opportunity there? The. The competition. Because I myself and I think a lot of people, right. Like, I'm coming to Hawaii and then I'm going back to Los Angeles. I don't live here.

Yeah.

Like, what was your experience living here, and how did you see that opportunity present itself?

I remember, you know, I set up this house called Business. It wasn't going to be a tourist business at first. I thought there might be a niche. And, you know, I was just a guy back then as, like, a fairly top local runner. Okay. In Hawaii. So I was known for that. And I just wanted to hang out. And it's like an extended. I wouldn't call it an adolescence, but it was an extended college. You know, a college or having parties. It's a lifestyle. Yeah. You're out in Hawaii, it's laid back. I'm digging this. Yeah. I remember meeting with the guy as a marketing guy and said. He said, what's your goal? You know, And I said, you know, if I could see like, 20 a week, so like, three house calls a day, then I can just hang out on the beach and do my running and have fun. And so. And eventually, you know, just. It went from that to we saw 40, 000 patients a year. So that, you know, so a very different business. But, yeah, it was. It was. It was an interesting, you know, thing, the tourist thing kind of. I got a call from the. I started noticing a lot of the house calls are from the hotels. In fact, the one hotel is a Saudi royal family. They take two floors. And I was like. I was spending like half a day there. It was great. And so then I realized there may be an opportunity here in the tourist market. And I kind of timed it perfectly when the Japanese tourism started in Hawaii in around 1982, 1983. And so we really. I set up bilingual clinics and Japanese speakers, and that segued perfectly into when I got involved in the marathon, as Japanese tourism was starting to go here. When we first met with people in Japan about partnering with the Hanu Marathon, I had a lot of experience working with the Japanese. And we eventually got up to 21,000 Japanese participating in the marathon.

So that is very cool to hear. And I'm so curious because I've hosted over the last five years different events, launch parties for companies, and just bringing people together. And there's an art to it, and there's a science to doing it right, and there's a science of doing it wrong. And, you know, I pick up my bib this morning. There's thousands of people collecting their information. There's so many incredible volunteers. How have. What have you learned through hosting an event with, you know, upwards of 20, 30, 40,000 people in a city? And there's so many logistics and things that could go wrong. Like what have. What have you noticed? And how have you gotten better at that over time?

How was your pack of pickup? Was it okay?

It was perfect. I walked in, I grabbed my bib, and by the time you texted me.

I had everything I needed. You know, it's such a good question. And there's so many moving parts to something like this. So the, you know, I guess someone asked me the other day, we're talking about business. And I said, if, like, what's the most important thing? I said, if there's one word that. And we can expand on that, if there's one word that describe what I learned about business, and particularly this business of the Honda Marathon, because it is a business. People used to say, it's a nonprofit. Is there you. A nonprofit? I said, you left out a word. They say, what word? I said, corporation. We're a nonprofit corporation, and I'm not doing that to be cute or silly. I'm doing it for a reason, because it reminds us that it's a corporation, it's a business. Now, we don't want you to see that business. When you come here and pick up your pack and you go to the starting line, you want to have an experience. So the business is not something you should see or notice, but it is a business. So from where I sit, what's a business? At the end of the day, businesses, you have to take in more money than you spend. That's it. It is not that much more complicated than that. But the one word that I've learned the most is called outsource. Outsource. And from. In other words, find people who are experts in what they do. And if we break down what we're doing in the marathon in terms of, you know, road security, police building, things, you know, everything you can think of is all outsourced. And from a leadership point of view, the same word would be delegate, man. You've got to learn to delegate. And when I started my company, Doctors on Call, it was interesting because I was 27 and I had never started a company, had no business experience. As a medical school man, I'm like picking apart cadavers. I'm not business training. And I gave it a name. I didn't call it Dr. Jim Berhol's practice. It's called it Doctors on Call. Part of it. I had a sense that maybe I'd have people working for me or with me, and I didn't think they would want to work for Dr. Jim Bear Hall's practice. I didn't think somebody would want to answer the phone and say, Dr. Bear Hall's office. I thought it would be better if it was a company. And I also knew that there wouldn't be so much centered on me even if I was in charge. It wouldn't just be me. It would be something bigger.

Yeah.

And so fairly quickly, I learned, and this is saying I use a lot. So if you want something done exactly the way you would do it, do it yourself. And it's like a. It's a fundamental business thing with me. And as a leader, when you see some, you know, you don't just rush in and say, you're not doing this right. You know, this how you do. There's a wide range of what's okay. And if. But if you think that you could do it better, then you'll never build a business because you'll be such a micromanager, you'll be such a nightmare boss that you'll never get people to work. So you gotta. So you gotta give people the. The knowledge and the. And the vision and, you know, what's the mission? What are we trying to accomplish here? And within that, let them do their thing. Obviously, if somebody's just horrifying, you have to do something. But in general, if you want something done exactly the way you would do it, do it yourself.

And so very valuable.

And. And so they'll do it differently, and you'll be shocked at sometimes how they'll do it better than you would have thought of. So I think, you know, this kind of thing with so many moving parts happens on one day. No dress rehearsal. That's what we say. We don't get a dress rehearsal. I'll tell you, if last Sunday we could have put this marathon on just for grins and just to work out the kinks and see where, you know, the mistakes. Yeah, yeah. You know what? The city's not gonna let us close the roads for a dress rehearsal. So we also know that things are gonna go wrong. And they will in business, they'll go in relationships. And so it's not a problem. It's just. It's a. Truth is that things will go wrong, and we don't know which things will go wrong. If we knew which things would go wrong, they wouldn't go wrong. We would correct them. So we know things go wrong. So as we. We hit the race day, we have a lot of experience and we have a lot of eyes and we're watching. And if something goes wrong, we try to fix it the best we can. And hopefully it's. It's not something that's terrible. So. And people have asked me, like, how, you know, the pressure and all the moving parts, how do you deal with it? And the answer is, I never think about it. I never think about it. And I used to say one day a year being like October, I'd wake up in the middle of night in a panic. I'd say, oh, my God, how are we going to do this? I can't control all this. I don't. You know, there's so many. I don't know what's going on. Yeah. So basically, I don't think about it. We have an incredible team. I have an Incredible race director, J.J. johnson, who's a former military guy, because in many ways, this is a military operation.

Absolutely.

Got your team. Turn them loose. And, you know, at the end, John Cross and I, who. My old buddy from Michigan is out here we used to joke about, I said, it's only a foot race. It's another thing. It's only a foot race. And a foot race has its own momentum. Right, we're going to line you up. And. And we also used to joke, only one person needs to know the course, the guy in the lead. Everybody else is going to follow that person. So, you know, it has a certain momentum, it has a certain flow and a certain energy and we're not really trying to control it, we're trying to maybe contain it. And so, you know, generally it goes pretty well and. But yeah, if you think about it too much, you go nuts. Yeah.

Very valuable feedback. I appreciate you for sharing that. And with the race day coming up here soon, on Sunday, again, first, first marathon I'm running. You are very experienced as a racer, as a business owner. What advice would you give me when I'm on mile 20, 22 of this race? And how do you be present in that moment, in your opinion?

A couple things. It's interesting you said, how do you be present in that moment? Years ago, Runner's World did a study on competitive runners, like top runners and more recreational runners. And they found that the higher level runners, and you're definitely trending in that direction, do not dissociate. They actually stay in the moment. They concentrate on what they're doing. You're almost like a little computer, you know. You know how my legs feel, how's my foot? I got this blister. This thing's hurt, you know, you know, that's how I was. And the slower, the more recreational runners, it's all good just for fun, tend to dissociate. They listen to music, they think about something else. They, you know, they get away from it. So, you know, that's an interesting thing for sure, I think, because 50th anniversary of my first marathon, I thought about that experience a lot. And I, and I've used this saying a lot. I say you're going to learn a lot about yourself when you run the first marathon. And the main thing you're going to learn is you're a coward. That's, that's what you're going to learn. Because, you know, I hope you don't learn that. But you know, you're going to definitely. Because I was in my first marathon, man, I was, you know, I was out there like 18, 19 miles and I was, you know, I was heading for maybe, I don't know, 240, right. And I'm feeling pretty good in the span of about 10 minutes. You know, I was a coward. I mean, I wasn't a coward. I just felt bad and I had to start walking. So when you look back on it, it's not really fair. But you, but to yourself, but you realize that the training and the discipline and the mental toughness and, you know, the things you said you weren't going to do, you know, you start making accommodations pretty quickly. And the reality is it's probably physiological. You know, once the lac. Lactic acid hits, once you exceed your aerobic, your oxygen carrying capacity, you know, you, you crash pretty fast, but you also learn you're not as tough as you thought. And so my first three marathons, I walked parts of them. And for the fourth marathon, I just said, okay, I got one goal in this marathon now. I don't care how slow I go, how fast I go, I'm not gonna walk. I'm not gonna walk. And I didn't. And from then on, I didn't walk anymore. You're gonna get this overpowering sensation that you're gonna walk. And so I, you know, you ran a 127 half, so, you know, you're obviously in really good shape. And the trick is to not get out too fast. And all the excitement. I told you this. I ran Boston Marathon one year with a guy. We trained. He had, he was a competitive runner at the University of Michigan, and Kim Hildebrand. And we had another friend named, named Earl Bogrow who was training with us, but he wasn't as fast as us. But somehow we all qualified for Boston. And so we got to Boston and Boston is downhill. The first few miles. You start in Hopkinton. You're going through Ashland and, you know, there's little towns. Natick and I think we had Natick. And Earl would always wear this like, like hideous green, like, sweatsuit. You know, we call him like, like tortoise or turtle or something. It was like you couldn't, you couldn't miss. It was like iridescent. And so Kim and I are coming down this hill toward Natick, and we said, that's Earl, you know, and he was ahead of us and there was no way he was going to be within. Although he ended up, you know, breaking 3:30. There's no way he was going to be within a half hour of us. At the end, we ran by him. We said, sucka. He said, you were going to die so bad because he went out too fast. So that's the trick, is to find your pace and just try to run with People, you're gonna. It's interesting, and I don't know if you experienced that in the half is that you'll meet people running a marathon.

Totally.

You'll run with a group of people and they may be faster or slower than you. You'll, you'll leave and then there'll be another group of people. And try to hold your pace as long as you can. Stay tough, hydrate and try not to walk. Try not to walk. It's okay if you walk. Most of the people here do walk and they're finishers and it's a great achievement. But from a competitive running point of view, you know, do the math. If you're running six and a half minutes a mile, seven minutes a mile, six, six. 56. A mile is three hours. I know that. And so if you start walking, even if you're walking reasonably quick, you're probably going to be at 16 to 18. Yeah, it's a mile. So you're going to lose 10 to 12 minutes a mile in that period. So if you walk five miles, you're going to lose an hour.

Yeah.

So the trick is you're going to have to walk. If you walk, just delay it as long as possible. Some people do it another way. They do a walk jog training thing. Right. Run two minutes, jog one. So different, different ways of tackling the beast here for sure.

Thank you so much for the feedback. I'll be thinking about that on the run. And last question before we wrap up, Jim. Just if you were to give yourself a piece of advice to your 18, 20 year old self, whether that's business or in running, what would that advice be and why?

Wow, that's a good question, man. I asked my. This is interesting. My dad ran the marathon three times. The last time when he was 71 years old. And actually it was quite amazing.

71.

71. He came out here from Michigan and then the fourth time he ran it, we were waiting the finish line and we couldn't find him and got really scared and got the police and everything. And finally there was no cell phones in those days. He was by the hotel pool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I changed my mind. Normally he'd be eating a corned beef sandwich, but they don't have that in Hawaii. But yeah, the guy's sitting by the pool, so. And then that was a long segue into my friend Tony Revis, who's a running broadcaster, was out here, fairly well known. We were having dinner one night and my dad was like, you know, he said, he said George, he goes, what was your favorite decade? Right? It's like a good question. The guy's 70 years old. What was your favorite decade? My dad was born in 1917. Dad pauses for a minute and says, the 20s. And like Tony Rose, the 20s. He says, you were a kid and then it's like, come on, not when you were a kid. And he says, the 30s. And I'm gonna think, wait a minute. So all this time with the kids and raising the family, it doesn't count for much. We'll go to 20s and 30s. So, okay, but, so I'm looking back to one, you know, my 18 year old self, okay? You know, a guy who, you know, the older I get, the better I was, you know, so looking back, like on the sports stuff, you know, having a little chip on my shoulder, playing high school sports, sitting on the bench, basketball and thinking I should be starting. You know, there's a lot of people, you know, you know, we all go through that kind of stuff, whether it's, you know, sports or, you know, you know, you meet a girl or a guy, you know, you just, you know, this. There's a lot of that angst going on. And you know, by the way, that's what another thing that got me into running because I said, you know what? I don't have to have some coach saying I'm not good enough. I don't have to sit on the bench and I can, I can be on my own starting lineup. And only I can prove or disprove the idea that I'm, that I'm not good enough. Because you know what? The clock don't lie. The clock's gonna tell me how good or bad I am. And that was exhilarating for me. Although in retrospect, the coach was probably right. But when you're 18 years old, you're not thinking away. And I think running is so freeing in that way for the first time because you're in control of that performance, of your fitness, of your destiny. It gives you control. And so my 18 year old self, honestly, I think I did the right thing. I think my dad is an inspiration, although I thought he was crazy to run. The guy be out there without his shirt and he's running. You know, it's embarrassing when you're a kid, but the fact that he was running planted something in my mind that there's another way to go here. And, you know, I had my six to eight weeks where I was a goofball, wasn't studying and, and I found running and through That I found a goal every day and I found a discipline and a motivation and a way of controlling my life, my fitness, my motivation. I learned not to blame people. I learned to be self sufficient. I learned that I was the captain of my own ship and that I could learn to define accomplishments in any number of ways. And, and I want to say one last. So I don't think I change it. But I'll tell you one thing we say about this race. We have no time limit. 2017, we had the fastest time in the United States, 2 hours, 7 minutes and 59 seconds. Our winner. And we had the slowest time in the United States, 17 hours and 20 minutes. Our last finisher. Wow. We're proud of that. And what we say, what I say and what I truly believe, it's not just marketing. I say that in our own life because that you asked me about my 18 year old self and now I'm 70. And I see in our own life we redefine who we are and, and what our goals and what our accomplishments are constantly. And if you're not, you should because otherwise you're going to be too hard on yourself. So we're all, you know, someone asked me the other day, you know, you know, you know, you say you're, you're a good person, you're a good man and say I'm a work in progress. We're all works in progress. And so we've decided with the marathon that we let each individual define their own accomplishment. I don't pass judgment on it because if you told me when I ran my first marathon in 1973, Jim, when you're 70 years old, you're going to walk a marathon, it's going to take you 11 hours and you're going to consider that a great accomplishment. I'd say, come on, man, what are you talking about? Right? Inconceivable. And you know what? I don't think I could do that now. So we let people decide what's important to them, what's their own accomplishment. We applaud that, we celebrate that they're out here for a million reasons. We'll never know all the reasons, but we know there's a thread there. It's a process of self discovery. It's a process of being a work in progress. It's finding an active, healthy lifestyle. It's often in memory of somebody who paved the way. And so that's why we love this event so much and we'd love to provide that platform to people to find their own accomplishment to find joy in life and in being alive and in celebrating life and whatever that entails with the marathon. So that's, I think, a spirit that hopefully is kind of permeating this event. And I think, you know, my 18 year old self somehow luckily put on those shoes one day and got to the middle of the University of Michigan campus, called the Diag and put my hands on my knees and said, you are pathetic. And instead of saying, I'm never going to do this again, it hurts, I said, you need to do something about this. And I think everybody's going to be out there on Sunday, got to that point. At one point we say I'm moving in a different direction and so it's going to be a real celebration.

Wow. That was very, very special, Jim. And I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show today. I am truly looking forward to this race and I look forward to reporting back on how I did and what the experience was like for myself. So thank you so much. And for everyone watching or listening, where's the best place they can learn more about the Honolulu Marathon? Stay up to date with what's happening for the years to come for this race. Yeah.

Let me give you myself, no ww.honolmarathon.org Perfect.

I will make sure to link that down below. And for everyone watching, thank you so much for tuning in. I will talk to you soon.