We had a few reliable holiday traditions growing up: glögg and Swedish songs at Christmas, fondue for New Years, and Mt. Marathon in Seward for the Fourth of July. While we’ve been able to recreate the edible ones after I moved from Alaska, it’s impossible to duplicate the experience of small-town Seward on race day. Ever since I can remember, and 29 times in the last 34 years, my dad has run Mt. Marathon, the second-oldest foot race in America.

Throughout my childhood, we would drive down to Seward to spend the Fourth enjoying an Orange Crush, watching the parade, and watching the runners come down the chute near the end of the race. Since I began running more seriously in 2000, and began trying trail runs when we moved to Los Angeles, I’ve been interested in giving Mt. Marathon a shot. It’s become notoriously difficult to get into, and when Aimee and I visited Alaska in 2004, we saw the spectacle that is the auction, in which coveted slots in the race (ten each men’s and women’s) are sold to the highest bidders, usually for between $500 and $1000, the night before the race. I’ve applied in the lottery for a few years but never had any luck; I think the success rate is about 7%, leading someone to quip that the only thing harder than running the race is getting in. I applied this year, but half-hoped I wouldn’t get in, as I’d already had a trip to Alaska planned for the previous month, and would be moving across the country four days after the race. Naturally, this year of all years I got lucky and was one of the few chosen in the lottery, so I had to take my chance when it was handed to me.

The chute is the enduring image of the race for me, a cliff face leading into a sloping gravel path that brigns the runners off the mountain and into town. The other 99% of the course had always been a mystery to me, until two weeks ago, when we all went up to Anchorage and dad and I took a day trip to Seward to scout out the course.

We half-walked, half-ran the course, and I have to say, I was pretty intimidated once I saw what happened after the initial climb onto the base of the mountain. It began with hand-over-hand climbing, scaling a face covered with roots and low-hanging branches, then onto narrow trails through the bushes, then an endless-seeming face of bedrock and gravel with a series of false summits that made me wonder if we’d ever reach the top.

During this training run, we had time to observe the ptarmigan cackling on the hillside, and turn around and look out at the breathtaking 270° vista of snow-covered peaks around Resurrection Bay, resting on a perfect blanket of cloud cover that completely obscured the town of Seward below. I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any time for reflection on race day.

If going up was eye-opening, coming down was downright frightening. We made our way down a fairly sheer face, over an unreliable mix of bedrock (good grip, no give) and loose gravel (fun and easy to run on, but also conducive to a little too much speed at points). Once the trail became all loose rock, you could really get up a rhythm of plunge-stepping down and making good time, but it was tough to make sure you were still in control. I learned on race day that this was apparently not a consideration for many people, though I tried to keep it in mind. We figured out our routes and made our strategies for race day, and then headed back to Anchorage.

It’s tough to prepare for a mountain race in a flat landscape, and even more so when you’re also packing and preparing to move across the country. I did my best by incorporating an ever-increasing number of repetitions of the local Mar Vista stairs, and ten days after we arrived back from our first trip, Grace and I flew back to Anchorage for the race.

We stayed at the same B&B in Moose Pass my folks have been staying at for years, home to the infamous “bug puzzle” that so stymied Aimee when we visited before we were married. Nine years later, I was happy to take Grace there, and she enjoyed the “friendly bear” outside:

The night before the race, we attended the pasta feed and auction at the high school, where Grace got to play outside in the shadow of the mountain, and run around and dance in the gym with some new friends.

After the auction (top bid $1000, no men’s number went for under $750), Dad and I stayed for the safety meeting that is mandatory for all rookies. It was a slightly dated but no less convincing collection of footage that played like a Scared Straight for mountain running. Watch these people, runners and spectators alike, get frightening injuries, and be more careful than they were. I took it to heart, then picked up my number and we headed to the B&B to get some sleep.

The day begins with the junior division (ages 7-17, little daredevils all of them), then the women’s race, then the parade, and finally the men’s race, starting at 3:00. It was nice not to have to worry about sleeping through the start, but on the other hand, we got into Seward at 9:00 am to secure a good parking spot, and had plenty of time to contemplate the upcoming race as the day wore on. And much of that time, Grace was my mom’s responsibility, which was an equally energy-heavy challenge. If she hadn’t been able to occupy Grace with swinging at the park and visiting the Sea Life Center, we wouldn’t have been able to do the race.

We taped up our shoes to minimize the number of rocks that would get in; it wasn’t foolproof, but it certainly helped.

It rained off and on all day, and I was going back and forth between the short sleeve and long sleeve option I’d brought. I’ve learned never to underestimate my ability to overheat, so I decided on a short-sleeve shirt despite the fact that it was 50° and overcast and was raining not long before the start. It was the right choice; an hour spent slogging uphill in close proximity with a bunch of other runners kept me warm.

I’ve never run an out and back race where you can see the turnaround from the start. The mountain loomed over us as we waited to start up Fourth St., between the first wave at 3:00 and our wave at 3:05, I had plenty of time to contemplate the heights and think about what we were about to do.

I ran predictably and unnecessarily hard on the way to the mountain, somewhere near the middle back of the pack, and then made my way into the roots as we’d planned. As we headed up in a long, ever-changing pack, I felt like the preparation had certainly helped. I wasn’t running (or hiking) at full speed, but I was pushing myself and was keeping up with those around me, passing a number of people and getting passed by a few. I wasn’t prepared for the extent to which, at least where I was in the pack, the race would be a matter of simply following the person in front of you, and I mean right in front of you. My hand was almost stepped on by the guy in front of me in the roots section, because his back foot and my upper hand were both hoping to use the same branch. And as we ran up the trail, I got a very good look at another racer’s Mt. Marathon tattoo, complete with race route and hash marks denoting how many times he’d run the race. I can’t help but think its placement on his calf was intended for just such a moment, when it would be perfectly situated at the eye-level of the guy behind him.

I felt pretty good on the way up, tired but not exhausted, and I enjoyed the mental challenge of finding the right footing and trying to pass a few people if I could. Having fans along the route was great, and I wasn’t prepared to find them in some fairly precarious, windswept spots along the course. I particularly appreciated the woman who shouted “Go, cute glasses guy!” at the beginning, and the person who handed me a water bottle to grab a swig from me as I hiked up near the top. It was the same bottle the racer in front of me had been handed, and that would be handed to the guy behind me, as well. That’s camaraderie, or at least a powerful thirst.

I made it to the top in under 50 minutes, according to my watch, which made me feel pretty good, and then started down the mountain. My legs felt like jelly and I felt a little unstable as I took my first steps down the steep drop off that begins the downhill part of the course. Soon enough, I was into the loose gravel that gave way beneath my feet and encouraged me to speed things up a bit, but no sooner did I start to run a bit, I found myself getting passed, at breakneck speed, by runner after runner I’d spent so much energy passing on the way up. It was disheartening, but I also knew I was never going to be as crazy as they were, so I stuck to my game plan. I made it down the gravel sections and into the waterfalls, which were a lot of fun to navigate, sliding over them, jumping from one to the next, finding footing and grabbing branches to make it through as quickly as possible.

I found the cutoff for the cliff that we’d decided would be the safest way to get down the last section of the mountain, and in my enthusiasm, I slid part way down, slightly off-course, so I found myself at the edge of a cliff face with no footing below, just a drop-off. I had to pick my way sideways to get back on course, happy that was the only time I was in much danger of making a big mistake. I ran down the chute and past the crowds all heading back into town, and ran as fast as my very tired legs would carry me, down Fourth Street. I wished I’d been able to pass a bunch of people and really turn it on in the home stretch, but while I had the energy, my legs were just dead. I finished in an hour and twenty minutes, which, as the race director said to all the rookies, is an automatic PR. I felt great, and had a blast running the race. I cheered dad on as he finished, and we got our t-shirts and shower tickets before heading back to cut our shoes off and clean up.

I’m so happy to have had the chance to run this race, and would love to run it again someday, now that I know what it’s like. It was especially great to run it with my dad, and to finally be able to share in what he’s been doing all these years. This was a great year to run, too, as Eric Strabel finally broke the 32 year-old record in the Men’s Division, setting a new standard that will be hard to break.

It’s tough to explain what the course is like, but thanks to GoPro cameras (at least two of which I saw on racers this year), you can get a little sense of it. A chest-mounted video from last year captures the whole course, and another, from this year, showcases the last of the ascent and the craziness of the downhill (check out the video at 3:00 for the section where I almost went over the edge of the cliff). For a little more perspective, a few other videos show what the view is like for the spectator, including The Mt. Marathon Experience.