HONOLULU (09-Dec) — She’s already raced at some of the most storied marathons in the world, but for Sara Wessen Chang running in Sunday’s JAL Honolulu Marathon will be a truly special moment. Her father was a prolific marathoner and had raced in Hawaii, part of the family’s a deep connection to the state.

“My dad was Chinese American and Hawaii was where we went for vacation every year growing up, so we could be a part of the Hapa culture,” said Wessen Chang, referencing the celebration of mixed-race heritage throughout the Aloha State. “There’s so much Asian influence here, so I have a lot of memories of him running marathons in Hawaii in the tropical rain, and also them giving out rice balls on the side of the road. There’s such a unique culture there.”

Michael Chang passed away in March, 2024 due to frontotemporal dementia, a brain disorder. Wessen Chang and her mother, Barbara, 73, who is also a longtime marathoner, will be running the 53rd edition of the JAL Honolulu Marathon to raise money and awareness for the Association for Frontotemporal Dementia (AFTD) in Michael’s honor. Together they have already received nearly $15,000 in donations. (Their pledge page can be found at classy.org/fundraiser/6516652.) “My mom is at the age where her knees are giving her a little bit more trouble than they used to,” Wessen Chang said. “But just the fact that she can still be out there and complete marathons is really inspiring to me.”
AFTD is an official charity partner at the 2025 JAL Honolulu Marathon.

The 36-year-old Wessen Chang, who grew up in Sacramento and now lives in San Francisco, will be part of the elite women’s field (which includes two-time defending champion Cynthia Limo of Kenya) when the gun goes off well before sunrise at 5:00 a.m. on Sunday. She secured that designation thanks to a personal best time of 2:58:18 from the 2024 Chicago Marathon, which is part of the Abbott World Marathon Majors series. Prior to that race she had come tantalizingly close to breaking the three-hour barrier at two other Majors, clocking 3:02:10 in the Boston Marathon in April 2023 and 3:00:22 at the New York City Marathon seven months later.

“Boston was really special, since my parents had lived there,” Wessen Chang continued, whose father was a cardiologist who did his residency and served a fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge before practicing in California. “There was a lot of sentimental reasons. It was very validating just to run those miles that my dad had run and fulfilling a promise that I had made to him to run the Boston Marathon someday.”

Growing up, Wessen Chang played soccer, swam and skied. She became a serious runner after the COVID-19 pandemic and now trains as a member of the Impala Track Club, an all-women’s group in San Francisco. In addition to marathons and road racing she also enjoys trail running and has competed in the famed Dipsea Race in Marin County, California.

After her father’s death, Wessen Chang decided to take another try at breaking 3:00 in Chicago in October 2024. “It’s so funny that we set these very arbitrary goals, but I think I had wanted to break 3:00 for a while,” she admitted. “In Chicago I was finally able to get a couple more minutes off. That was the first marathon after my dad had passed.”  She added: “I wasn’t properly trained for that race, so I think a lot of it was mental will.”

Last year also marked a career change for Wessen Chang. Previously she’d worked as a curator for art museums, but she currently serves as an art and science specialist at to the University of California San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center and Global Brain Health Institute. “So now I’m working for the neurologists who treated my father and are really leading the field of FTD in terms of research and treatment,” she explained. “It’s been a real shift into healthcare this past year. But I’m learning a lot about brain health. I’m still producing art within that context. I manage art exhibitions and artist residencies and produce programming to raise awareness about brain health.”

An injury compromised Wessen Chang’s training this year, but she showed good fitness with a 1:27:59 clocking at the Berkeley Half Marathon in November. And she’s enthusiastic about the unique test that the Honolulu Marathon will present.

The race starts adjacent to Ala Moana Beach Park and winds through downtown Honolulu and out past the Diamond Head volcano crater, out and back along Kalanianaole Highway and through the Hawaii Kai community before finishing at Kapiolani Park in Waikiki. A variety of hills, plus the grueling humidity –even in the pre-dawn hours– make this one of the most challenging races in the country. “I live in the Bay Area and we have a very mild climate. It’s mostly cold and foggy,” Wessen Chang said with a laugh. “It’ll be a tough race, but I’m really excited.”

“I’ll be happy if I’m around the three-hour mark,” she added. “I’m just really looking forward to running in the dark and under the stars, which will be a spiritual experience. I’ve never run that long in the dark. And then the test of the humidity will be a challenge. I’m looking forward to the challenge and thinking and feeling my dad’s presence throughout the course.”

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