Marathon is not just a race, but a spectacle

With black paint covering his eyebrows and the lower half of his face, Yoshinori Hidaka of Fukuoka City, Japan, crossed the Honolulu Marathon finish line Sunday in 3 hours and 43 minutes.

Hidaka, 41, wore the red-and-white striped jersey of Japan’s national rugby team — the Brave Blossoms — and assembled a fairly accurate impression of Michael Leitch, the team’s captain, who has characteristic bushy eyebrows and a 5 o’clock shadow.

He also carried a toy orange football and said he created a new sport called “maraby,” a combination of a marathon and rugby, that was played by finishing a marathon and then completing a rugby “try,” or score, by touching the ball to the ground. The self-proclaimed maraby world champion demonstrated after the race by dropping to one knee with an “oooff.”

Hidaka, a speech therapist, said he came to Hawaii on a team-building trip with co-workers, and that 10 of them ran the marathon. Although he finished first in the group, he was about 23 minutes behind his personal best.

“Honolulu Marathon is a festival,” he said. “Record time — no.”

Hidaka was among about 21,000 people who crossed the starting line Sunday, which was only a slight dip from last year, said Fredrik Bjurenvall, the marathon’s media director.

About 33,100 registered for the weekend’s marathon events, and about 19,000 — or 57 percent of them — were visitors. The weekend’s other events were the race day walk and the inaugural Merrie Mile, a 1-mile race down Kalakaua Avenue on Saturday.

Bjurenvall said the marathon created the Merrie Mile as a way for those accompanying marathon runners to Hawaii to participate in a race as well.

“This is a destination marathon,” Bjurenvall said. “A lot of people come with friends and family. It’s the most beautiful 1-mile stretch you can do.”

At the marathon finish line at Kapiolani Regional Park, Phil Krein, 28, of Waimanalo recalled some of the “wacky” characters he saw while completing his first marathon: a guy running in wooden clogs, a woman outfitted like a volcano and a man handing out beer to runners in Kahala.

“It was crazy,” he said. Krein began training in February for the Hapalua half-marathon and, heartened by his performance, decided to tackle the marathon. He lost 25 pounds of muscle mass while training, which included runs four days a week, and crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 7 seconds.

“It’s just one of those things you wanted to say you did,” he said. “I’m hurting.”

For Bob Roncska, 47, of Kailua the course felt a bit more humid than last year, and his finish time slowed to 4 hours and 5 minutes. But he delighted in the race festivities, such as the people playing drums on Diamond Head to encourage runners up the final hill, and the outfits — like a couple wearing large plastic soccer balls and a man with a full-body Pikachu costume — that kept him entertained on long stretches of the course.

“It makes the time go by much faster just by people-watching,” he said.

One runner attired in unlikely running gear was Megumi Suetsugu of Tokyo, who wore sandals she made herself and a faux-leather Native American dress adorned with frills, matching faux-leather calf covers and an orange pigtail wig.

Suetsugu, 40, said she bought the costume at Kmart to match her sandals and intended to be Tiger Lilly of Peter Pan but adopted a new identity as Pocahontas, which was what spectators were calling her.

She completed the run in 5 hours and 20 minutes, despite running only 10 kilometers every two weeks to train.

She said her homemade sandals were inspired by the book “Born to Run,” about barefoot running and the sandal-wearing Tarahumara Indians, and she said the race, her seventh Honolulu Marathon, was more fun in costume because of the support from the crowd.

The good mood of the event wasn’t lost on Amy Quiros, 53, of Kihei, Maui, who finished in 4 hours and 40 seconds. She said she prefers the Honolulu Marathon to the marathon in Kihei because of the large participation and festive spirit.

“It’s so well organized,” she said. “It just gets better and better each year. I just love it.”