Colony grad continues stellar running record with marathon win

WILLOW – When Allan Spangler graduated from Colony High School in 2005, he never imagined he’d someday be running at the professional level.

“If you asked me when I was 18 what I’d be doing in 10 years, it wouldn’t be this,” Spangler said by phone Monday.

Last weekend, he set a record in the Willow Winter Solstice Marathon with a time of 3 hours, 14 minutes and 16 seconds, more than 50 minutes ahead of the runner-up. The race was actually 2 miles longer than a standard marathon, too.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done a winter running race before, this is totally a first,” Spangler said.

Though the race is fairly new and hosted just 22 total competitors (excluding half-marathon and 5-kilometer division participants), Spangler’s performance in the marathon was just one in a string of high finishes this year.

Not surprisingly, that’s gaining him attention by the professional crowd.

Before the Willow marathon, he got a call from Brent Knight, another high-level runner and cross-country skier, who asked him what his plans were for next year. Puzzled, he inquired further, and Knight got to the heart of the matter, asking if he’d be interested in a spot on the national Salomon Running team. Knight recently moved to Minnesota, and the team was looking to keep a representative in Alaska.

Spangler could hardly believe his ears.

“It just totally came out of nowhere,” he said.

But when he thought about it, running for Salomon sounded exactly like something he wanted to do. So in 2015, Spangler will officially be a professional runner, going wherever Salomon sends him to run marathons and ultra-marathons all over the country.

While he’s excited to improve and travel with the team, he’s also interested in the opportunities the team will afford him to increase his “web presence.” He’s already set up a website —allanspangler.com — and an athlete page on Facebook, and is thinking about starting a podcast on trail and ultra-running.

But this is just the beginning.

“I have no real well-drawn-out plans for where this going,” Spangler said.

Maybe not, but he has a good resume to start with, just from his performances in the past year.

He first caught the public’s attention in the annual Mount Marathon race in Seward, a famous destination for Fourth-of-July festivities. In his rookie run, Spangler took eighth-place behind returning stars such as Eric Strabel (also a Colony graduate), Matias Saari and Matt Novakovich, all of Anchorage. Spangler ran the 3-mile race in 49:21.

His next major feat was a first-place finish in another longtime tradition, the 24-mile Crow Pass Crossing. Spangler’s time of 3:01:44 is the fifth-fastest time on record for that course, and more than 10 minutes faster than his time last year, which earned him sixth place.

After an 8-mile stint in the Turnagain Arm Trail Run — he was runner-up to Strabel — Spangler took on his biggest challenge up to that point: the Resurrection Pass 50-miler.

He was the first to cross the finish line in 6:22:03.

“I’d have to say it was after the Crow Pass and Res Pass races that I thought ‘maybe I should take this a little more seriously the next year,’” he said.

From that point on, Spangler started to see more 50 milers in his future. He traveled down to Flagstaff, Arizona, with Wasilla runner and fellow Res Pass competitor AJ Schirack in October for the 55-kilometer Sky Race. While it was a good experience, Spangler said he took a wrong turn at mile 6, losing 16 minutes, 400 feet of elevation and more than a few places early in the race.

“At that point I pretty much conceded and just tried to enjoy the scenery and the run,” he wrote in a Facebook message after the race. “There were a few more unmarked intersections along the course that required me to just stand there and wait for a local familiar with the trails to catch up and show me the way but other than that the rest of the race went smoothly.”

He came in 11th place overall at 7:04:56.

The next new competition on his list is The Rut, a 50-kilometer race in Big Sky, Montana, which he plans to run Sept. 4-6, 2015.

In the meantime, it’s just a matter of staying motivated and keeping up with training and his job as a facilities engineer for ARCTEC Alaska.

“So far it seems to be working,” he said.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.