As an aspiring basketball player yet to break the 5-foot height barrier, Jonathan Lyau decided to forego his first sport in favor of a newfound one at McKinley High School.

The then-4-foot-10 sophomore (he's now 5-2) found success in running, which he discovered as a result of training for his hoops game.

Today, the 45-year-old Honolulu resident will become the latest inductee into the Honolulu Marathon Hall of Fame.

He has won a record-15 of the past 16 Kama'aina men's titles since 1993.

"He set a new standard for that," said Dr. Jim Barahal, the Honolulu Marathon president. "His longevity, his loyalty and his sustained record of excellence is unparalleled ."

Lyau ran his first marathon in December of 1979, two months after running distance for the first time.

"Because of basketball drills I realized I had good endurance, so I saw a notice in the McKinley newspaper for cross country," Lyau recalled. "I thought, 'Oh, I can do that.' "

Before that, the longest distance he had run was a few laps around the field for basketball, "and I thought that was endurance ," he said.

On the first day of cross country practice, the team went on a scheduled 2 1/2-mile run. The team captain noticed newcomer was keeping up with the group, and asked if Lyau "wanted to run around the block again."

"I didn't want to say no. So I ended up running four miles," Lyau said. "The next day I was sore, so I rested the whole weekend. It felt like I ran the marathon."

Two months later he did.

"It felt pretty easy for me," Lyau said. "We went out really slow because we just wanted to finish it."

Then came the decision the following January, when basketball and track and field were in concurrent seasons.

"I thought, 'I guess I might be better at this than basketball,' " Lyau said. "I never tried out for basketball. I never played league basketball again."

Lyau continued running at McKinley, and running the Honolulu Marathon. He only missed four years — from 1982 through 1985 when he was a business administration student at the University of Hawai'i.

It was his return to a marathon-length distance after college that forced him to change his approach to running.

"I still couldn't beat the time I ran in high school until my fourth try," Lyau said. "I needed to change my training. I realized I needed to do the longer runs and pace myself better."

So he "experimented" on himself to refine a training program that he now shares as a coach for other runners.

"He's been around so long I actually raced against him, not in a marathon, but road races against him," Barahal said. "It's just amazing that he's still out there doing it. It's just phenomenal."

The time Lyau can dedicate to running has decreased recently. He runs up to 65 to 70 miles a week, cutting back in the past five years.

"I just want to stay healthy now; I don't want to overdo it," he says. "My mind says I can do what I was doing 10 years ago, but the body says I cannot."

With two young children — Spencer, 3, and Sierra, 6 — he splits training time with his wife, Kelli, also an avid runner.

"I'm slowing down each year, because of age and not enough time (to train)," Lyau said. "My wife runs now too, so we trade off. She did the Las Vegas (Marathon) and I watched the kids, so this weekend I'm running and she's watching the kids."