Hapalua - Hawaii's Half Marathon
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Apr 11, 2027
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The Hapalua - Hawaii's Half Marathon, often called the Honolulu half marathon, is run on a Sunday in April by the Honolulu Marathon Association, the organisation behind the Honolulu Marathon. Hapalua means half in Hawaiian. The race starts at 6:00am at the Duke Kahanamoku statue on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki and finishes in Kapiolani Park. Runners head west on Kalakaua Avenue, turn onto Atkinson Drive past the Hawaii Convention Center and follow Ala Moana Boulevard past the Ala Moana shopping centre to a turn at Aloha Tower. They return along Ala Moana Boulevard past Magic Island and over the Ala Wai canal into Waikiki, run east past the Honolulu Zoo, and then climb Diamond Head Road, passing the Diamond Head lighthouse and turning at Triangle Park before descending to the finish in Kapiolani Park. The organisers say the course is mainly flat until mile 9, where it goes up and down Diamond Head. A shorter Hapalua Iki of 8.3 miles runs on the same morning. There is no time limit and every finisher receives a medal. The first Hapalua was held in 2012 with about 2,000 runners, and more than 12,000 people took part in 2026.
Typical climate for the race month — an estimate, not a forecast or a race-day record
April in Honolulu is warm and mostly dry: highs average about 28°C, lows about 21°C, humidity is around 67%, and rain falls on roughly seven days of the month.
The Race
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The Hapalua was conceived by Honolulu Marathon Association president Jim Barahal with a feature called the Chase, in which four invited top athletes race against 22 of the islands' best runners, known as Team Hawaii. Whoever reaches the finish in Kapiolani Park first, a Team Hawaii runner or one of the invited Chasers, wins the Chase.
In the sixth running Kenya's Philip Tarbei chased down all 21 Team Hawaii runners to post a course record of 63:27. He took down the 64:08 that his countryman Peter Kirui had set in 2015. Tarbei kept his title at the 2018 Hapalua, in 1:04:14.
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