By Gavin Kentch
Thursday’s Mount Marathon Race in Seward, Alaska, the 96th running of a race first held in 1915 to settle a bar bet, saw strong performances up and down the board.
In the men’s race, David Norris extended his lifetime unbeaten record in Seward — five starts, five wins, including two course records — with aplomb. Coming into this year’s race, the course record was 41:26, set by David Norris in 2016. Less than 41 minutes after the 11 a.m. start, the new course record was a staggering 40:37. There are only two men who have ever gone under 42 minutes on this course, David Norris and Kilían Jornet; Norris now stands alone among sub-41 athletes.
Norris did it by simply walking away from a strong and well-credentialed field (second-place Max King has a gold medal from World Mountain Running Championships and a slew of FKTs, third-place Jessie McAuley runs professionally for Arc’teryx) on the uphill, gaining nearly 3,000 vertical feet over roughly 1.5 miles in a staggering 29:47. He was nearly two minutes ahead of King and 3.5 minutes up on McAuley at the turnaround point, then plummeted back to the finish with deceptive ease.
Norris spent the final few blocks of the race giving out high fives to expectant children lining the course, smiling broadly as he followed his police car escort onto Jefferson Street and down Fourth Avenue. He barely looked winded at the finish, and was well into his finish-line interview by the time King came in. (Which is not to say that the 44-year-old King ran slowly! Indeed, his time of 42:52 was good for sixth all-time in a race first held during World War I, behind only Norris and Jornet in the all-time standings.) David Norris is very, very good at running up and down Mount Marathon.
The women’s race got the flagship 2 p.m. afternoon start spot this year; the genders alternate start times now, and have done so for the last several years, to ensure that each gets a taste of the larger, more-lubricated afternoon crowds (take note, Holmenkollen).
If the story of last year’s women’s race was experience — multi-time winner Christy Marvin, second-place Meg Inokuma, and local-girl crowd favorite Denali Strabel in third had an average age of nearly 40 (and a combined four children between them) — then the story of this year’s race was youth. Klaire Rhodes, 26, of Anchorage, a professional trail runner for The North Face, took the win in 49:49, despite setting foot on the mountain for the first time only last weekend. Kendall Kramer, 22, of Fairbanks, was second in 51:20, adding to a race résumé that includes first in the junior girls race in 2018. Okay, the ageless Inokuma of Palmer, 44, was third, in 51:59, so so much for that narrative.
Rhodes and Kramer spent virtually the entire ascent in lockstep; they chose different routes for the start of the climb, but emerged from the cliffs/roots section together, then pushed each other up the entire rest of the climb. Rhodes led nearly all the way up, until Kramer surged to pass her just before the turnaround point at approximately 3,000 feet. But Rhodes took a speedy line down the snowfield on the upper mountain, Kramer did not, and Rhodes was never threatened again.
Kramer’s teammate on the University of Alaska Fairbanks skiing and cross-country running teams, Rosie Fordham, had the lead pair in sight for much of the climb, ultimately reaching the turnaround point in third. But Fordham approached the terrifying descent with relative conservatism, a common theme for nordic skiers in this race saving themselves for their “main” sport, and faded to ninth by the finish. Her performance was very relatable for anyone who prefers grinding uphill to screaming down.
While Norris’s course record got all the headlines, Rhodes’s time of 49:49 was none too shabby. It was, in fact, the fourth-fastest women’s mark of all time, and made Rhodes one of only four women to go under 50 minutes in a race first officially open to women in 1963 (which is both many, many decades after the men started here, but also still nine years ahead of the Boston Marathon’s belated embrace of gender equality). The others are course record–holder Allie McLaughlin (47:09), Emelie Forsberg (47:48), and Allie Ostrander (49:19).
Notable current or former nordic skiers in this year’s women’s top-50 included, after Kramer and Fordham, Katey Houser in 10th, Lauren Fritz in 24th, and Sarah Freistone in 39th. In the men’s field, notable nordic skiers included Norris in first, Michael Earnhart in 7th, Tracen Knopp in 11th, Eric Strabel in 20th, Blake Hanley in 20th, Matias Saari in 28th, Will Mans in 30th, Oliver Wright in 41st, Owen Young in 42nd, and Tor Christopherson in 45th.
Anyway. Here is a photo gallery of some of the top finishers (plus some other athletes I could recognize)!
And here is a link to a Google Drive with photos of (nearly) everyone who raced in the men’s and women’s fields! All photos in this gallery are by Anna Engel, for Nordic Insights. Feel free to download and share; please credit @nordicinsights if you use them on Instagram.
Results and records: 2024 results | historic race stats (women) | historic race stats (men)
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
