Volcano Run: Stover finally gets best of rival

VOLCANO – Patrick Stover came with a winning plan Saturday for the annual Volcano Rain Forest half-marathon run and was able execute it almost flawlessly.

A Four Seasons employee from Kailua-Kona, Stover, 28, had been increasing his weekly mileage, and loading up his potential in long distance events with serious training the past two years.

It all paid off when Stover outlasted Big Island long-distance mainstay Billy Barnett to win the half-marathon in 1:18.50.

“It was all about the time,” Stover said after finishing a half-dozen steps ahead of Barnett. “I thought if I could go under 1:20 I would have a chance to beat him and before we started, I said, ‘I want to go under 1:20,’ and Billy said, ‘Let’s do it.”

As is often the case, Barnett ran a predetermined pace and let Stover take the lead most of the way, but this time he couldn’t break down the leader late in the race and Stover was able to pull off the win, the first time he’s beaten Barnett apart from a 10K victory once before.

Bree Wee, 37, a first-grade teacher in Kailua-Kona, dominated the women’s event, winning comfortably in 1:28.

“I wasn’t thinking about winning, I was just thinking about holding my stuff together,” Wee said after competing in her third event in as many weeks. She ran a 22-mile road run two weeks ago and competed in a 10K a week ago.

Wee has been running, and running, and running. Her weekly training is up to a minimum of 50 miles and will sometimes increase to 100 miles.

“I try to run everyday,” she said, “it’s been like this for the last 10 years and I just keep adding more to it. My goal is just to run, to build on the base I have and to get better over time.

“A plan?” Wee said. “There’s no plan for me, I just go run at the pace I can, the pace I train at. It worked out today, it’s just the result of the daily work.”

Wee may have been on a singular mission in the women’s competition, but Stover and Barnett have some shared history.

Over the last few years on these and other long distance events, they have consistently entered many of the same races.

“I don’t know how many times (he has run against Barnett),” Stover said, “but it’s been a bunch. Yeah, he usually gets me, wears me out and runs me down.”

In that sense, Stover is in a large group as Barnett, who has a 1:15 half-mile time as his career best, is among the most accomplished long distance runners on the Big Island.

After Stover announced his game plan just before the start of the race, he took the lead and stayed there much of the way through the out-and-back course in Volcano that offers glimpses hear and there of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

At the 11-mile marker, Barnett caught and passed Stover.

“Whenever he’s done that in the past, he’s been able to break me,” Stover said, “I couldn’t get back in front, but this time when he went by I thought, ‘No, not this time.’”

Stover dug deep and made a final push that thrust him past Barnett at about the 12-mile mark and he held the advantage the final 1.1 mile.

“I’m happy for him,” Barnett said, “he’s been putting in the miles, really working at it and he got a reward, I think that’s very cool.”

Stover said he paid the physical price to earn the win.

“I was hurtin’ out there,” Stover said of the final two miles, “but at that point I was just pushing with everything I had. The strategy, the thinking you’re going through helps distract you from the physical discomfort, but not for long, it’s always there and it never goes away.”

Barnett made no excuses, but he has been training with long, slow runs for a 100-mile event in Arizona in October that was not the best training for a relatively short 13.1-mile run.

“He wanted it more than me today,” Barnett said. “I’ve been doing all these long runs and there’s a certain level of pain and discomfort that you have to go through to win a real competitive race and today, for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to get to that place.”

The two of them often run together and they both know they will see each other again, often, in months and years to come.

Stover won the BIIF cross-country title as a senior at Konawaena in 2006, then he dropped running for about five years before he started up again in 2013, “When I was out of shape and really slow and bad,” he said.

After two years he increased the quantity and frequency of his training, developing a serious approach geared toward time and efficiency that has begun to pay off.

“This means a lot,” Stover said. “Not just to beat Billy, but to get the time I was after and to beat him here, this is like his home course, so that makes it even more special, it’s like a team winning a road game. Great feeling.”

Make that a road run win, through the rain forest, on the rock.