Mount Marathon: 3,022 feet, and much more

The first time I was in Seward for the annual Mount Marathon race, my mom had won the lottery — the race lottery, that is, which is how most people enter the race.

It was her first time, too.

I clearly remember sitting in a white-walled restaurant with my parents on that cold and rainy Fourth of July, trying not to sway my mom one way or another. She’s not one to quit easily, and she knew how hard it usually was for people to get into the now-world-famous event — some runners have spent 10 years (and a lot more money) trying to secure a spot among the most dedicated and determined climbers around.

But the cold and uncertainty of it all on that Thursday morning in Seward deterred her.

“It’s up to you,” my dad and I said, not really sure of the risks the race posed anymore than my mom was.

I could tell she was thinking, weighing her options, both hands wrapped around a plain coffee mug. The clock was ticking and she had to decide.

When 11 o’clock rolled around, my mom was out there at the starting line on Fourth Street with the rest of the women, awaiting the sound of the gun. Moments later, she disappeared into the sea of runners pattering up the road toward the mountain.

About an hour later, my dad and I emerged from whatever gift shop or café we’d been patronizing and found a place among the thousands of other spectators near the finish line. At an hour-20 or so, my mom came sprinting down the road (as much as one can after scaling and descending a mountain at top speed), dirty and sweaty and grinning from ear to ear.

I was happy for her — and then I was jealous.

I could tell she was a part of something bigger, and also smaller: a community of people connected by, in some cases, little else but the mountain and their mutual desire to conquer it. I wanted in.

The next year, my mom and I drove down with her “3,022 ft” sticker slapped on the back windshield, each with our own goals in mind. The 2014 Mount Marathon race was my second freelance assignment for the Frontiersman, and my last before I was hired full -time. I interviewed friends and classmates — some of whom I’d never thought of as runners or racers — as well as athletes I’d come to think of as “famous” during my high school years. I may not have been part of the “in-crowd” of Mount Marathon finishers, but I was proud to champion the cause, however small, of these daring and caring individuals.

(In case you didn’t know, most mountain runners are really nice.)

Last year, I got to witness the first major influx of international runners to the race, watching world-class athletes say, “This is important,” just by showing up to Alaska’s prized Mount Marathon on our Independence Day. I watched as the Swede Emelie Forsberg crushed a 25-year-old record, right after Spain’s Kilian Jornet owned the men’s fastest time by more than a minute.

It was amazing, and unsettling. Seward was attracting outsiders — good for business and for growing the Alaska mountain running scene, perhaps, but it made a lot of people realize how much we wanted Mount Marathon to be our race. We wanted ownership of it like we did of the joke about the mosquito being Alaska’s state bird (no, it’s not really, and no, Minnesota, you can’t claim it).

This year, I, and hopefully many others, came to another realization. With David Norris’s win over everyone in his first Mount Marathon race — slicing 22 seconds off the record set by the Spanish phenom in 2015 — he reminded us of the spectacular level of competition we cultivate right here in Alaska.

Hearing Norris was 51 seconds ahead of Jornet’s record at the peak was exciting, but that was nothing compared to the sound of hundreds cheering as he appeared at the top of the road, smiling and sprinting to a world record. It was downright inspiring.

So too was Lyon Kopsack’s top-10 debut, as well as Christy Marvin’s take back of the women’s crown with a significant personal best.

But I was also in awe of two women whom I had never known until I read about them in our paper a few months ago, mourning the loss of their friend and four-time Mount Marathon finisher Renee Millard.

Amber Hays and Natalie Cadieux, I hope you believe me when I say I got choked up writing this. I am so proud of you for getting yourselves up and down that mountain with Renee’s and Dean’s ashes, for bearing witness to a woman whose greatness I’m sure I only got a glimpse of through you. Instead of hiding her away in your hearts, you said, “Here she is.” Thank you.

I finally conquered Mount Marathon myself for the first time the day before the 2016 race. I know what these runners put themselves through, and maybe even why — that sense of accomplishment is glorious, even if the peak is all socked in and you can’t see 20 feet in front of you. Even if you’re tired, muddy, bloody and sore at the end, it’s worth it.

Being born and raised in the Valley, perhaps I have an innate love of mountains that not all Alaska residents have. At times mysterious and magical, the mountains are also every day, and I love that. Each ridge I’ve climbed probably has equally awesome, hilarious and horrible memories associated with it, and Mount Marathon, I’m sure, will be no different.

I don’t know if I’ll ever run the race — I still can’t say if I’m more or less intimidated by it now that I’ve made it to the top of the mountain and back down in one piece — but I will say that it will always be an event worth watching.

Caitlin Skvorc is a Wasilla-grown reporter who sometimes goes incognito as a runner, hiker, skier and Ultimate Frisbee player.