Boxers or Briefs? Runners show off during annual Underpants Run

KAILUA-KONA — Greg Scott, joggled the whole time. Not jiggled. Nobody there jiggled.

KAILUA-KONA — Greg Scott, joggled the whole time. Not jiggled. Nobody there jiggled.

Jogged, yes. Juggled, yep. Joggled, that too — but jiggled?

No way.

Not in this crowd.

“They’re all iron, man,” is how Ina Tagaloa put it, one of thousands who crowded Alii Drive Thursday morning for the annual pre-race Underpants Run, where toned racers and nonracers alike stripped down to their nitty gritties and ran a mile and a half in the name of good fun and gawking.

There’s a tradition behind it, and the event billed as a pre-race icebreaker actually acts as a local fundraiser. So, showing the goods in the name of a good cause, what could be better? Visually, it didn’t disappoint.

“Hold on bro, I gotta take a picture,” Tagaloa said, cutting away from an interview to get video of the bodies parading by that he’d post online to share everywhere.

Seriously though, he said when he returned. The whole atmosphere of the festive event is something to be part of, and the athletes are an inspiration to stay healthy and in shape.

“If you have a chance to come down here and feel it, you gotta do it,” he said.

Runners, some clad in costumes, glitter or paint, waltzed from Courtyard Marriott’s King Kamehameha Kona Beach Hotel to Uncle Billy’s and back. They yelled, they cheered, they interacted with — taunted? — the crowd. One even juggled. That was Scott.

There’s a sport, called joggling, where runners juggle while they run, which is how Scott tackled the course.

“The disadvantage of juggling the whole way was I couldn’t look around at the people as much,” Scott, visiting from San Luis Obispo, California, said. “It was hard to see all the other costumes.”

But juggling wasn’t a way to take his mind off the fact he was running in skimpy attire. Scott’s knocked out legit 5K joggling times wearing less, even.

“I’m probably wearing more clothes now,” he said. “My running shorts are shorter than these.”

Racers said they weren’t nervous about parading around in the bare minimum. Ironmen aren’t slim on confidence, after all, but there was also a strength in numbers component to it, too, they said.

“It’s not just the really fit people, anybody can do it, that’s the fun part of it,” said Winni Selvkov of the Netherlands, who took part in the race with her husband and 7-year-old son, all of whom were really fit, just like everyone else there. “We’re all on the same page. … Nobody’s watching anybody.”

They may have been watching a little.

“I think the real competition is with the outfits, really,” said Christine Scott, wife of the juggler Scott and who is taking part in the actual race on Saturday, but called Thursday’s warm-up a fun, low-key event to hang out before the big, 140.6-mile day.

“I think the only competition is who can hold their abs for the longest amount of time,” added Amy Olin, in from San Luis Obispo with the Scotts. “We were all sucking in our abs as long as possible.”

And as far as the costumes, some were so skimpy they were probably the opposite of costumes, which are, by definition, worn.

But that’s not the worst thing.

“There was a lot of eye candy for everybody, men and women,” Olin said.

Seriously though, underpants runs have raised over $270,000 for local charities through donations over the last 20 years. It started in 1998 by Chris Danahy, Tim Morris and Paul Huddle as a protest against wearing Speedos in inappropriate places, like restaurants, according to the event’s bio page, meaning the event goes down as an ultimate backfire or the best case of reverse psychology ever.

“Normally, you’re not allowed to walk in town in your underwear,” said Hennh Palshoj of Denmark, who isn’t racing Saturday but jumped into the underpants run for exactly the reason he laid out. “Why not? It’s Hawaii. It’s good.”

Email Tom Hasslinger at thasslinger@westhawaiitoday.com.