The Maui Oceanfront races included a marathon, a half marathon, a 15K, a 10K and a 5K---so basically a race for everyone!
There wasn't much of an expo, you just picked up your race # and t-shirt at a hotel.
The course was beautiful--mostly flat with some steady inclines and declines (nothing too steep), with mountains on one side and water on the other. The problem I found with the course was that for the half marathoners and the 10K runners it was an out and back-which is fine, but there wasn't really enough room on the side of the road for all of the runners (the course was open to traffic). There were a couple of water stops that offered both Gatorade and water and plenty of volunteers. It got hot and humid in a hurry, which was expected, but the breeze off of the water was nice to have. And seeing whales was the highlight of my race--a very common occurence in Maui in January! After crossing the finish line, you received a medal then walked over to the finisher area to get some water and snacks.

We stayed in Kula at the sweetest little AirBnB cottage, which was about 30-40 minutes away from Lahania, the start of the race. So early on race morning we woke up, quickly changed and ate some breakfast then headed to the race start to take advantage of free parking. Getting there so early, we went on the hunt for a cafe to get some good pre-race coffee. There was only one cafe open but the coffee wasn't so great, but the owners were very friendly. No biggie, just wish more businesses had opened for pre-race coffee!

My race:
Just as the sun was coming up we lined up at the start line. The half marathon and the 10K were both out and backs that started at the finish line in Lahaina. The half marathoners took off first then I'm pretty sure the 10K runners just took off at the same time, it didn't seem like there was any true start for the 10K--no big deal. We ran out of Lahaina and onto the main road. Coming up on mile 2, there were a group of runners flagging down a police car coming up behind us. There was a runner down, and CPR was being performed (a couple of days later the race director later let us know the man was a the local hospital and was doing well). Not exactly something you want to see-ever-it definitely shook me up a little bit.

The middle of the race was uneventful. I was running slower than usual-it was humid-and I was taking in all of the scenery, and you know, whale watching-no big deal ;)

Just after mile 5 my stomach gave me all sorts of trouble. I have never had to stop mid-race and use a portapot, but I finally had to. I don't think my stomach agreed with the milk in my coffee earlier in the morning. After, ahem, relieving myself, we continued running toward the finish line. My goal is always sub-60 minutes, but when that passed I went for a goal of sub 65 minutes. It was a close one but I finished (per Tyler's watch) in 1 hour, 4 minutes and 26 seconds. Officially, my race time was 1:06:24.

We got our medals (see picture), some snacks/water then headed to the car to leave--we had a plane to catch and were worried that traffic would be bad. Luckily, we sailed through traffic and had some time to stop at an overlook to do some whale watching--there were SO MANY WHALES!

Notes about my star ratings of this race:
1. I like a big expo-I like to walk around looking at different vendor's booths, learning about new products/races; the packet pickup folks weren't the friendliest (not mean, but just seemed like they'd rather be elsewhere)
2. Race management-holy email overload. I stopped counting how many times a week I would get an email from the race company-I actually started deleting them because there would be so many duplicates sent out. I only started saving/reading them the week before the race for packet pickup info/race day instructions. Otherwise the race was very nice, although as mentioned above, the course was a bit tight at times.