Valley athletes look forward to Seward tradition

WASILLA — The names Christy Marvin and Eric Strabel are well known in the mountain running circuit, especially in relation to the Fourth of July Mount Marathon race. Less known are the dozens of local athletes who join the best of the best on the mountain every year.

The race itself is a 3.1- to 3.5-mile scramble up and down Seward’s 3,200-foot-tall Mount Marathon, depending on the competitors’ chosen route. The quickest male racers descend the rocky mountain in just over 10 minutes, seemingly taking their lives in their hands for a chance to win Alaska’s most competitive mountain race.

There’s no prize money for the champion — just glory.

One young man hoping to soon break into that exclusive club of Mount Marathon winners is 20-year-old Lyon Kopsack.

“I’m excited to get out and race the fast guys and develop myself as a better runner,” he said.

Kopsack comes from a long line of mountain runners, starting with his grandfather, Dick Kopsack, who won Mount Marathon in 1960. His father Lance and uncle Braun also are veterans of the race, as is his mother, Judi Kopsack, whose father is the namesake of the Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb up Bird Ridge.

His younger sisters Brooklyn, Alyson and Jocelyn also run Mount Marathon.

“It’s about doing what we love and spending time together as a family,” Kopsack said.

With two years of university-level training in cross-country running and skiing now under his belt, Kopsack is fast approaching his grandfather’s fame. He took 12th in last year’s Mount Marathon race, moving up four places from the previous year’s competition and his first as an adult.

However, Kopsack said he has a little way to go before becoming a champion.

“I have a lot to learn — I’m only 20 years old, and I’m just trying to become the best I can be at what I do,” he said.

The race has come to attract some of the best U.S. and international athletes, which, rather than intimidating Kospack, inspires him, he said; so, too, do the local greats motivate him to train harder, run faster and do good work.

“I really look up to the Marvin family and what they’re doing,” he said.

Ben Marvin in particular, Kopsack said, has humbled him with his dedication to training and his family of five while working more than full time as an anesthesiologist.

“I just think it’s awesome when they perform really well in a race because they have their priorities straight,” Kopsack said.

Marvin finished 13th and less than 10 seconds behind Kopsack in last year’s race, and Kopsack said they would both be shooting for top 10 in 2016.

“Ben and I would be really happy with top-10 finishes and we’re both really capable of it,” he said. “If we’re both feeling good we’re just gonna push each other really hard.”

In the junior race, 16-year-old Alyson Kopsack said she would be working just as hard. After finishing 10th in the half-mountain event last year, she said she’s shooting for top 5 this go around.

“I know it’ll be hard because there’s a lot of good competition in there,” she said.

But with the whole Kopsack family traveling down to Seward “pretty much every weekend” for the last month or two, she said, they’ll be about as prepared for the races as they can be.

‘A big part of my childhood’

The Kopsacks aren’t the only racers who have come to view Mount Marathon as a family tradition.

Three-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey, who lives in Willow but grew up in Seward, said the race and associated Fourth of July events were always exciting for him as a young spectator. Though he was often away on the Fourth in his teenage years for wrestling tournaments, he said the festival-like atmosphere of the event always makes him a little nostalgic.

“It’s definitely been a big part of my childhood, so growing up and getting to come back and see and run in the race is pretty cool,” he said.

Seavey is on his third Mount Marathon race now, having received a sponsored spot with Wells Fargo in 2012 and 2015. Both years he finished the race in 1 hour, 6 minutes and change, and he’s hoping to come closer to breaking an hour this year.

“A solid middle-of-the-pack finish is what I’m going for,” he said.

Seavey said his whole family will likely be in town for the race and beyond as they celebrate his daughter’s July 7 birthday.

“We’re kind of making a family trip out of it,” he said.

Palmer High School graduate Aaron Dickson said he’ll be doing that as well with his wife, Sara — who also happens to have a birthday on July 7 — and their two daughters, though just for the one day.

Dickson, like Kopsack, comes from a running family and had a stellar running career in the Valley and as a University of Alaska athlete, though longer ago. He’s run the adult Mount Marathon race 12 times and ran his first junior race in 1996.

He agreed with Seavey that the event seems to be just as fun for the spectators as the racers.

“Everybody there seems somewhat excited whether they’re running or cheering,” Dickson said.

Other Valley racers

A few other Mat-Su residents made the top 35 of the roughly 350 runners in the adult races last year, including 2010 Palmer graduate Wylie Mangelsdorf and 2010 Colony graduate Heidi Friese (Doner). Mangelsdorf was 10th in the men’s race last year and Friese took eighth, but both runners will be out for the 2016 race. Mangelsdorf’s father said he would be in St. Louis, Missouri, during the race, and Friese said she was planning to take her one earned “Skip-a-Year” this year to focus on her and her husband’s new business, Pioneer Peak Trucking.

“I love the race, it is my absolute favorite race, but I just did a really bad job of keeping my head in the right place this year,” Friese said. “I’m pretty sure I’ll end up doing it again next year.”

Next in line in the women’s race are Palmer’s Alisa Kincaid, Wasilla’s Abby Jahn and Leslie Varys and Palmer’s Jane Baldwin. Wasilla’s AJ Schirack and Palmer’s Darin Markwardt are the only other two in the men’s top 35, with Colony graduate Allan Spangler — who finished 15th last year — traveling abroad.

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