Proclaiming, “Marathoners don’t give up,” Honolulu Marathon President Jim Barahal said the Dec. 13 event may wait until late November before determining whether to cancel what would be its 48th annual competition.

The world’s major marathons have, one by one, cancelled their events and Barahal, whose race is the last on the 2020 calendar, said, “If I was a betting man, which I am, it (a live race) is probably not gonna happen. But runners never give up and, certainly, marathoners don’t give up, so we just keep planning. We’re taking this a day at a time, which is what everybody in the community is doing through (COVID-19) in their own lives.”

With 60 days before the scheduled beginning, Barahal said, “Given the fluidity of the COVID-19 situation, it is still to early for us to say for sure (that) we could do this or not. I think if it were to be next week, we wouldn’t have a typical event, obviously. We’d still say it is not likely, but we are still planning for it and, hopefully, the situation will change and, given our plan to keep the community and the participants safe, perhaps there would still be an opportunity to put the event on.”

Regardless of whether the live race goes on, Barahal said there will be a “a very robust group of virtual events” to be announced shortly.

Barahal, who is a physician, said the 26.2-mile race, which has drawn more than 33,000 entrants for each of the seven previous runnings, has more than 10,000 entries, but the vast majority of them were received pre-pandemic in January during the discounted-price period.

So far, entries from Japan, which annually amount to more than 16,000, number just 400, he said.

If the race is approved under prevailing city and state guidelines at the time, Barahal estimated the actual field would likely number 5,000-7,000 and said, “I think we have a great plan, we have distanced people with ‘wave’ starts, re-designed aid stations, the choke points and the finish-line area.”

A “wave” start, he said would avoid a mass gathering by sending out runners in smaller groups and masks would be mandatory at the start and finish.

Barahal said he believes the race has the capacity to rapid test its entrants before competing and the race director, JJ Johnson, has a workable plan for runners to carry their own water bottles and use largely self-service aid stations along the course route without volunteer staffing.

Barahal said, “It (the race) certainly wouldn’t be as big as it has been in the past, so I think we could have a plan that would be safe.”

Barahal said, “The fact that we haven’t canceled is not posturing, we’re not delaying. We are working and we are planning. We’re like the runners, we’d like to to see life return to some semblance of normal. We want to begin opening up the economy because we think it is important. Tourism is important, but we want to do it in a manner that ensures the safety of the community and the participants to the greatest extent possible.”