If there's pressure to live up to their hype, two of the Honolulu Marathon favorites are providing no indication of it.

Kiyoko Shimahara of Japan is back to defend her title and determined to win again.

Kenyan Margaret Okayo, record holder at the prestigious Boston and New York City marathons, is making her Honolulu debut and long-awaited return to running.

Shimahara, 32, told translator Ryohei Hashimoto there is no pressure and that she wants to win again. She won last year in 2 hours, 32 minutes, 36 seconds.

Okayo, who took a few years off after her mother's death and family issues, is ready to resume her career. Okayo won New York in 2001 and 2003, and Boston in 2002.

"This one will give me the morale for the next one," said Okayo, 33.

This will be Shimahara's fourth marathon of the year and third since August. She was second in the Yokohama Women's marathon in mid-November in Japan.

Shimahara said her body is fine and the past few weeks have focused on recovery and speed training.

"Even for a terrific athlete who rebounds better than most, that's a lot," said David Monti, editor and publisher of Race Results Weekly, who is here to report on his seventh marathon.

Okayo ran two half-marathons in October and November, turning in 1 hour, 11-minute performances. Her fifth-place finish at a Portuguese race in October showed her she could still run. She won a half-marathon in Italy in November, finishing in 1:11:54. Okayo has trained in Italy this year and likes it there because her coach lives there and he knows her training and diet.

"I want to run my best," Okayo said. "I don't know about the time, but I want to run my best."

Shimahara, who trained for four months in New Mexico because of the altitude and cross-country like conditions, set the course record at the Hokkaido Marathon in Japan in 2:25:10 in August. Had the weather been better, Shimahara said she could've turned in a better time.

Akemi (Ozaki) Ishige, the 2007 Honolulu Marathon runner-up from Japan, was second to Shimahara at Hokkaido. In third was Kaori Yoshida of Japan, last year's runner-up in Honolulu.

Also in the elite field is Svetlana Zakharova, a 39-year-old Russian who ran here from 1996 to 2002. She won in 1997 and 2002 and was runner-up in between. Kenyan Pamela Chepchumba was ninth in March's Tokyo Marathon and was 10th last month in a half-marathon in India.