HONAUNAU — As the sun was coming up over Mauna Loa on Saturday morning, more than 200 walkers, runners, joggers and even some strollers were getting ready at the starting line of the Keoua Honaunau Canoe Club’s 36th annual Mac-A-Thon
HONAUNAU — As the sun was coming up over Mauna Loa on Saturday morning, more than 200 walkers, runners, joggers and even some strollers were getting ready at the starting line of the Keoua Honaunau Canoe Club’s 36th annual Mac-A-Thon walk and run.
Awaiting them at the finish line on Honaunau Beach Road was a breakfast of homemade macadamia nut pancakes, cooked up fresh from scratch for all.
Kaili Hewalani Scardrough, 10, blitzed through the course with two of his buddies.
Sweating after the run, hanging out in the breakfast area, he said he was happy with his 5K performance. The hills were tough, he admitted, and he walked up some of them because of side stitches, but he finished second of his three amigos and had a much better outing than last year’s run.
“I think I did pretty good,” the young canoe club paddler said. “Next year, I’m going to try the 10K.”
Also at the finish line was Nolan Reed, a 28-year-old taking on the Mac-A-Thon for his first time and taking it on barefoot.
“All in, man,” he said on why his first race was sans shoes.
Though his first time joining the run, he’s a paddler himself and his late mother, a canoe club icon whose image graced the race day tank top given out to runners, blessed half the club’s canoes in her time.
And it wasn’t too tough on the heels, toes or arches. Reed said he’s kind of used to walking down to the beach, across lava rock, without padding below.
There were a few ouch moments, though, on the race trail.
“The loose gravel, kinda sticking up, protrudes though,” Reed said of the course. “But you just gotta persevere.”
Then he smiled.
“I came down here with no expectations, you know,” he said. “Just came down here to stay fit. Thankfully, we live in Hawaii, where it’s just an active lifestyle.”
The Mac-A-Thon is the canoe club’s largest annual fundraiser, said Kawika Spaulding, race director emeritus and canoe club treasurer.
Aside from the money, a big part of it is bringing out families and children to join in the fun and grab a few pancakes, Spaulding said. The race even attracts people from out of the state and even out of the country.
Spaulding said they had 67 people take part in the 10K and 145 people in the 5K.
“I think it’s pretty darn good,” Spaulding said.
In addition to getting in a good run and some pancakes, runners said it was the atmosphere of the whole event that keeps them coming back.
“It’s like a big community event rather than just a run,” said John Boyd of Honaunau.
Boyd said he first came out to the Mac-A-Thon nine or 10 years ago and the pancakes keep bringing him back.
The Mac-A-Thon, Boyd said, is a “real-life community event.”
Unlike other races, he said, this isn’t one where participants come to the starting line, run the 5K or 10K and then go home.
The event also featured music and a silent auction in addition to the run/walk and breakfast.
“It’s a whole morning of hanging out, relaxing,” he said.
Boyd added that it’s also an event that brings out the community.
“I think one really cool thing about this race is just all the people you see from the community,” he said. “This is where we live; this is where we work, and this is all the people that we see — the same people that we see at the grocery store and the library, the office.”
Spaulding said the event’s “down-home feeling” is a big part of what makes the Mac-A-Thon the Mac-A-Thon.
“We don’t get as big a crowd as they do in Kailua,” he said. “You know, they’ll put on a race and have five or 600 people, right? But the people we do draw, they actually want to be here.”
