Two hours before the first runner turned down Wright Road in Volcano, headed toward the finish line at the Cooper Center, an unmistakable feeling of commitment and advocacy for the events about to unfold was already emerging.
For the support staff, this is a little like coming home again. Familiar settings, friends who share a core interest, faces from the past that cross the finish line five, six or seven hours after they started, elated to be there.
As best as anyone can recall — record keeping in the early years left something to be desired — Saturday’s renewal organized by the Big Island Road Runners, was about the 30th Hilo-to-Volcano ultra marathon, a little more than 31 miles from Coconut Island in Hilo Bay to the finish line up the hill, almost next door to the living, breathing volcano Kilauea at about 3,800 feet.
It didn’t happen every year at the start and there were some years that the race went up the hill one year and down the next, but interest never died and it’s fair to say over the years this global ohana of ultra marathoners has only grown and become more inclusive.
Everyone can feel like a champion in these events because finishing is its own reward for the ones just starting out and the continuing involvement, the development of relationships, the unspoken allure of the shared sweat and strain are victories for the veterans. People deepen the connection, paying it back to serve the event.
“It’s a worldwide community,” race director Bill Cotter said, “it’s the same here as it was in Lake Tahoe (his previous residence where he was, at times, vice-president and then president of Road Runners Club of America), you can go anywhere and you will see how much we all have in common.
“You might think it’s crazy,” he said, “but as we get older, yes we get slower, but we also can go farther, or want to, anyway. Wherever you go, these ultra runners come for the event but also to see their friends, old and maybe new.”
A morning mist hung in the air.
Volunteers were uniformly pleased with the meteorological conditions, it was like something you would order from room service after 31 miles uphill. Traffic cones were arranged to guide runners to the finish line, its location altered slightly from a year ago.
Others popped up canopies at the finish line, organized tables and chairs inside Cooper Center for runners to rest under cover, near a heater.
Back in the kitchen, the smell of homemade soups is inescapable. Steve Pavao, Lee Otani, Marie Kuramoto and Kim Furumo, all of them veteran runners, one of them a queen, are at work over 5-gallons pots, and not just any soup, almost all soups.
For runners Saturday, the hot soups at the finish line included potato, vegetable barley, chicken vegetable, vegetable chili, meat chili and broccoli and cheese.
Somebody mentioned the smiles on faces as people passed by and took in deep breaths at the kitchen.
“These (ultra marathoners) people, this community, is all about camaraderie,” said Pavoa, who has run the Boston Marathon (2009, a “once-in-a-lifetime event”), has run Hilo-to-Volcano “12 or 13 times,” and was happy being part of the support crew. “Once you get involved, you’re a part of a community, you end up getting to know people, maybe socializing with them, maybe traveling to the next thing, whatever, it’s a lot more than just being a runner.”
We have a lot of long haul runners on the Big Island, but there can only be one Queen, and she is also ours.
Setting up tables and chairs, organizing the food line, Marie Kuramoto might have been mistaken for just another volunteer, which she would say she is, but she is much more than that in the ultra runners’ community.
Kuramoto has more marathons in her, but she has already completed 95, and she is the only woman who has competed in every Hilo marathon. How does that happen? How does one get past the first one?
“My brother was a runner,” she said. “He told me one day he was signing me up, that I could do it.”
“I believed him,” she said. “He was right, I did it and then I knew, I knew what I could do.”
Apparently, that can be all you need to join this long run community, just a little belief?
“If you believe,” Kuramoto said, “you can do anything.”
And then you’re involved.
“Something happens,” said Filiesha LeRand, working at the finish line for Cotter. “When you start off in this, it has a way of opening you up to new things. You bond with these people, you might be running through the night with them, something happens, there’s a bond, it’s just there.”
The perception from the outside is that ultra marathoners are gluttons for punishment, but to them, because of the distances they run, sometimes they are simply happy gluttons.
Marathons and half-marathons may have cookies, candy, some electrolyte drinks, maybe some oranges.
“This is different,” Cotter said. “In marathons you go from little aid stations, form one to another. Here, and always at the larger ones, it’s almost like going from picnic table to picnic table, they all try to outdo each other with just the kind of food you need and it’s all delicious.”
For no extra charge, you keep the friends and you don’t need to worry about running off the food.
Questions? Whistleblower or other tips? Contact Bart at barttribuneherald@gmail.com
