By Rich Sands, @sands
(c) 2022 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved

HONOLULU (11-Dec) — As the sun began to rise here this morning,
Ethiopia’s Asefa Mengstu made a decisive late-race move to win the men’s
division of the Honolulu Marathon. Bere Ayalew made it an Ethiopian
sweep, taking the women’s title by more than three minutes. Both runners
earned $25,000 for their victories in what was the 50th running of the
race. On a windy morning with start temperatures at 74F/23C, 14,645
runners set off on America’s fourth largest marathon.

MENGSTU GETS AWAY

The race started at 5:00 a.m. local time –two hours before sunrise–
with the men setting out at a fairly conservative pace. This allowed one
of the competitors in the concurrently run Start to Park 10-K to open up
a gap and appear to be leading. In reality, pacemaker Reuben Kerio was
at the front of a pack that included Mengstu, Shifera Tamru of Ethiopia
and Barnabas Kiptum of Kenya, along with American 1500-meter runner Eric
Avila, who was racing the 10-K. (Avila competed in the elite section of
the Kalakaua Merrie Mile on Saturday.) They reached 5-K in 15:24.

Avila pulled away from the marathoners to win the 10-K in 30:09, as the
longer race continued eastward away from Waikiki Beach. They hit their
own 10-K mark in 30:30, and then entered a long stretch along the
Diamond Head volcanic crater and the Kalanianaole Highway, where the
wind grew stronger.

“The wind was very bad,” Mengstu said. “I’ve never seen anything like
this before. It surprised me how tough the wind was.”

With sunrise still more than an hour away, the four runners cut through
the dark. While crowd support was strong on most of the course, there
were periods when the only sound besides their footsteps was the crowing
of wild roosters nearby.

The halfway point was reached in 1:06:38, and Kerio’s work was done.
With the wind picking up, the pace was slipping above 5 minutes per
mile. Soon Tamru began to fall back and he would eventually drop out.
After the race he indicated that he was struggling with leg pain.

Kiptum continued to lead, with Mengstu hovering just off his right
shoulder, shielding himself from the brunt of the wind. They remained in
this pattern through 30-K (1:35:02), when Mengstu began to run alongside
his rival. Shortly after 35-K (1:50:52), as the sun was starting to
shine, Mengstu made what would be the race’s pivotal move. In a matter
of minutes he opened up a lead of more than 100 meters on Kiptum.

Though the victory was essentially locked up (by 40-K his lead had grown
to an insurmountable 1:52), it would be a grueling finish. Up the
incline at Diamond Head on the way back into town he appeared to be
struggling for the first time. Thanks to a wave of cheers from the
masses of runners coming from the opposite direction, Mengstu –who was
racing for the first time since finishing 10th in Frankfurt in April–
regained his composure. “When I was passing the other runners, they were
supporting me and it was helping me,” he said.

Mengstu crossed the line at Kapiolani Park in 2:14:40, ending a streak
of Kenyan men’s champions at Honolulu that dated back to 2007. Kiptum
(2:17:45) came through just over three minutes later and Yuhi Yamashita
(2:27:27), a sub-elite runner from Japan, was a distant third.

“Between 33 to 35 kilometers was when I had planned to start to push,”
said the 34-year-old Mengstu, who ran his PB of 2:04:06 in Dubai in
2018. “It was very hard to be alone and to push over the last 5
kilometers, but it was my target to win and that’s why I survived it.”

LONELY SECOND HALF FOR AYALEW

In the women’s race, Ayalew and training partner Abebech Afework ran
stride-for-stride through 5-K (17:39) and 10-K (35:02). “There was no
pacemaker, so it was better for them to run together,” said Yirefew
Birhanu Derb, the coach of their Addis Ababa-based training group, which
also includes Mengstu and Tamru. “They would help each other with the
wind, that was the plan.”

In the eighth mile, the 23-year-old Ayalew began to pull away,
accompanied only by a male runner. She reached halfway in 1:15:42, with
a 38-second lead over Afework. A second man joined her in the 15th mile,
but within a mile Ayalew was running solo.

Ayalew, who set her PB of 2:22:52 second-place finish at the ASML
Marathon Eindhoven in the Netherlands in early October, maintained her
composure and looked remarkably swift in the final stretch. “It was
really difficult today with the wind and to run the whole way with no
pacemaker,” she said after clocking 2:30:58 as the fourth overall
finisher. “And the up and down [of the hills] was also very challenging.
I was trying to run a good time.”

Afework clocked 2:34:39 for the runner-up spot, and Eri Suzuki (2:47:42)
of Japan completed the podium. Defending champion Lanni Marchant placed
sixth in 3:02:15. “Whenever I went under six-minute pace I couldn’t
breathe,” said Marchant, a 2016 Olympian for Canada. “Then I said,
‘There you are, COVID.’ I had COVID last summer.”

Jacob Allen of Kingwood, Tennessee, and Christine Greer of Honolulu were
the winners of the wheelchair races. “It’s windy, but it’s part of the
challenge,” said Allen, who is originally from Ukraine. “It was better
than last year, because last year was bad. I was slipping [due to the
rain]). This time it was dry.”

PHOTO: Bere Ayalew of Ethiopia wins the 2022 Honolulu Marathon in
2:30:58; race ambassadors Allison (left) and Julie Chu are the tape
holders (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)

PHOTO: Asefa Mengstu of Ethiopia with race ambassadors Allison (left)
and Julie Chu after winning the 2022 Honolulu Marathon in 2:14:40 (photo
by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)