For nearly 30 years, Rick Taniguchi has cut a conspicuous figure in the annual sea of humanity that is the Honolulu Marathon starting area.

To be sure, he's not hard to spot: He's the one facing the wrong way.

It was 1979 when Taniguchi, one of dozens of behind-the-scenes organizers who make the event possible, first assumed control of the starting operations. Back then, the sea was more of a tidepool, a field of just a few thousand athletes, mostly local, who bought in to then-race director Jack Scaff's gospel of good health through distance running.

As the race has grown, so too have Taniguchi's responsibilities. (An independent telecommunications consultant, he is also responsible for the marathon's massive communications system.) Taniguchi and his crew put in months of careful preparation — capped by six or seven hours of intense, detail-oriented work — to ensure that the 20-minute span that marks the passage of some 25,000 pairs of feet across the starting line goes off without a hitch.

Like the offensive lineman he sometimes resembles, Taniguchi is only successful if the results of his work go unnoticed. His anonymity — race day bellow and bluster notwithstanding — is a testament to his obsessive avoidance of calamity.

"Rick is incredible, our unsung hero," Honolulu Marathon Association president Jim Barahal says. "He has so much experience handling our starting area, which is one of the most complex operations in the race, that we never have to worry about it. He just does what he does and he gets it done."

While minor and unpredictable incidents inevitably occur — a runner once tripped and broke his leg, a vehicle once stalled at the last minute and had to be pushed off the race path — the marathon has never gotten off to a bad start on Taniguchi's watch — no small feat given the size of the field and the innumerable variables that can come into play.

For example, while the marathon's traditional 5 a.m. start time allows most runners to avoid the midday heat and makes possible the dramatic fireworks show that signals the start of the race — a singularly spectacular kickoff among major marathons — it also means that debris and other obstacles can go unnoticed in the pre-dawn gloom.

"It sounds grotesque, but if there's an obstacle on the road when the marathon starts, we're looking at another Wal-Mart situation," said Taniguchi, referencing the Black Friday rush that resulted in a Wal-Mart employee being trampled to death in Long Island. "Just one spill can create a catastrophe."

Thoughts like this drive Taniguchi to try and anticipate every possible manifestation of Murphy's Law.

The worrying begins in early October as Taniguchi and other marathon officials begin meeting with representatives from the Honolulu Police Department, neighborhood boards and local businesses to strategize ways to minimize the impact of the massive event. By the time race weekend rolls around, Taniguchi will have a good idea where each of the 120 volunteers (most from the Hawai'i Jaycees and Lion's Club) and 425 police officers will be at any given moment.

The countdown begins in earnest early on Saturday morning as Taniguchi rouses his volunteers and heads down to the starting area fronting Ala Moana Beach Park to post race banners and begin assembling equipment. At 8 a.m., he makes a thorough check of the communications system. A series of meetings takes up much of the afternoon, then it's off to bed for a four-hour power snooze. By 10 p.m., Taniguchi is back in the 4-mile radius surrounding the starting area, coordinating with police to remove any illegally parked cars. An hour later, he reports to the control area on Ala Moana and Pi'ikoi to oversee the setting up of barriers to keep runners off the neighboring high-rise properties.

Volunteers begin reporting around midnight, as police officers shoo away homeless people from the assemblage of 160 Sani-Toi portable toilets, which still need to be stocked.

The activity steadily rises over the next few hours as staffers erect the lift that will hold marathon officials, select media and invited dignitaries high above the starting line.

By 2 a.m., the first shuttle busses start to arrive, slowly filling the empty boulevard with anxious if sleepy racers. After a brief lull, the dignitaries and sponsors start to arrive and Taniguchi has to make introductions and present lei, one eye always scanning the scene to make sure all is going according to plan.

Around 4:15, motorcycle escorts usher in the wheelchair races to the start, initiating a palpable buzz among the growing crowd.

"That begins the crescendo," Taniguchi says. "Everybody gets excited because they finally see some action. You can see the rustling and hear the noise level rise when the come through."

Over the year, Taniguchi has honed a fine understanding of crowd psychology, which he incorporates into his race-day strategies. As the start draws near, he begins the progressive removal of ropes separating the various levels of runners (self-seeded according to projected finish time) allowing the adrenaline-fed athletes to slowly meld into a single crowd. Timing is everything.

"We have to get the ropes out of the way so nobody trips and falls when the race starts, but we also have to limit what we call 'sardine time,' " he said. "We control the advance at selective intervals. If you keep people packed together like that for more than a couple of minutes, someone's going to start shoving and all hell can break loose."

Thoughtful and laid back most of the time, Taniguchi can nonetheless summon the requisite ferocity when warranted. His imposing physical presence and drill-sergeant bark are usually enough to keep people in line, but once, few years ago, a photographer who had mounted a ladder on the course to get a high-angle shot ignored Taniguchi's repeated warnings to get behind the barricade. With the clock ticking toward the opening shot, Taniguchi grabbed the ladder and flung it over the barrier and into the adjacent media area.

"You can't resort to physical abuse, and you try to be friendly, but you also have to be adamant because people will try to get away with as much as they can," he said. "Our priority is to make sure we keep the runners safe."

Still, Taniguchi admits that he was awed the first few times he stood just beyond the starting line facing the throng of on-the-ready runners.

"It's kind of surreal," he said. "When I first did it, I was shaking in my shoes. I thought, 'What am I doing here? I'm going to get run over!' "

The elites are escorted from a separate staging area to the front of the pack just after the wheelchair racers depart at 4:55. Forty-five seconds before the gun goes off, Taniguchi and fellow race official Guy Inaba pull away the final rope.

The start itself does not involve a formal countdown. Instead, an announcer calls out 1-minute, 30-second and 10-second warnings.

"If we had a countdown, people would start pushing forward at '3,' " Taniguchi said. "Again, what is of utmost importance is having a safe and timely start."

Once the last racer has crossed the initial timing mat, Taniguchi and his crew begin the arduous process of cleaning up the war zone of abandoned garbage-bag rain gear, water bottles, gel packs and other runner detritus. Once that's complete — usually within two to three hours — Taniguchi heads to the finish line at Kapi'olani Park to make sure the communication system is functioning properly. If time allows, he'll sneak home for a quick nap through the mid-afternoon before returning once again to the park to begin the long process of picking up, inventorying and returning rental equipment.

Taniguchi's first deep, cleansing breath won't come until days later when everything is back in its proper place and he is assured that people from apartments and communities along the start are satisfied with the cleanup.

Again, there are some things only decades of experience can teach. A few days before the race, Taniguchi advises park superintendents and building managers to shut down their sprinklers. After the race, he tells them to run the sprinklers extra long to dispatch the smell left by hundreds of runners who unburden their bladders on the nearest available patch of green.

Taniguchi, who just turned 55, has mulled retirement from his race duties before, but Barahal and other race officials are loath to let him go. Even when he followed a promotion to Texas in the 1980s, he still had to return each December to make sure the start was managed correctly.

And, certainly, despite all of the time and energy the job requires, there is something in the yearly renewal of his tasks that keeps Taniguchi coming back.

"The Honolulu Marathon doesn't have the billion-dollar budgets and support from all the huge banks that other big marathons have," he said. "This is a race that relies on the generosity of the volunteers and the community. I think it's part of our culture to reach out and help, and we couldn't do any of this without all the support we get."

And so Taniguchi starts each race facing the wrong way, ever secure in the knowledge that someone's got his back.