By Gavin Kentch
Klaire Rhodes is making a habit of this. For the second year in a row, the Anchorage native simply ran away from a deep women’s field on the prodigiously steep flanks of Mount Marathon, opening a lead that she kept to the finish to claim the win in the continent’s oldest mountain running race.
Rhodes’s winning time this year was, unofficially, 50:31, slightly off the 49:49 she clocked in 2024 to set the fourth-fastest women’s mark in race history. Second place went to the ageless Christy Marvin of Palmer, in 51:22, who destroyed worlds on the downhill to close a 2:03 gap at the summit turnaround to well under a minute by the finish. Third was Kalie McCrystal of Squamish, British Columbia, 52:13, a strong showing for the race rookie.
“So impressive to throw down a performance like this when you’re not from this state” Andrew Kastning said of McCrystal on the really quite well done broadcast, injecting some home cooking into the proceedings.
(I don’t know if you know this, but Alaskans really like Alaskan athletes. Ask any of the 10,000-plus spectators on the streets of Seward today for their views on David Norris, of Alaska, taking back the men’s course record from Kílian Jornet, of not-Alaska, a few years ago. They will have thoughts on this.)
Fourth went to Meg Inokuma, also of Palmer, in 53:35. Fifth was April McAnly, of Eagle River, who used the day’s second-fastest descent, behind only Marvin, to move from tenth at the top up to fifth at the finish.
The ages of your women’s top five today were as follows:
Klaire Rhodes, 27
Christy Marvin, 44
Kalie McCrystal, 37
Meg Inokuma, 45
April McAnly, 43
Pour one out for McAnly, who was fifth overall and yet just third in the women’s 40–49 division. Seventh overall, Viviana Mina of Eagle River, didn’t even make this age group podium. Tough crowd.
Marvin, 44, a three-time champion here and mother of three, had some thoughts on this dynamic.
“I may not be as good as I once was, but I’m experienced as I ever was,” Marvin told Holly Brooks (43 years old, mother of two, two-time champion) in the finish pen after the race. “And so I take that experience in and I use that to my advantage where I might otherwise be physically lacking.”
Marvin added, “So often we let our nerves get the best of ourselves and talk us out of what we’re actually capable of doing. And I think it’s so important to remember that just representing your best self is all that anyone can expect of you, even you on race day. And so to just go out there, have fun with it, know that you put the work in. … I have a different race every year based off of my training and I’m able to be fairly consistent just because of that positive outlook. And so that’s what I want to share with kids: Just go have fun with it, be positive.”
Okay, enough age obsessing; back to the race itself and your race winner.
Rhodes, who had top-five results here in all of 2021–2023 before taking what was at the time a surprise win last year, once again employed the tactic of dropping the field on the climb. The North Face runner, who has qualified to represent the U.S. at 2025 World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Spain, hit the halfway point of the ascent in 20:08, trailed by Kendall Kramer (USST/APU) in 20:41 and McCrystal in 20:53.
Marvin was another 20 seconds back of McCrystal, whose day job is working as an attorney when she is not crushing climbs.
Marvin knows the mountain, however, and kept McCrystal within sight, ultimately passing her while scrabbling up a particularly vertical part of the climb nearing the top. At the turnaround point it was Rhodes in first in 36:59, ninety-plus seconds back to Kramer in second (38:34), then Marvin and McCrystal nearly together another 30 seconds in arrears (39:02 and 39:05, respectively).
Kramer ran the descent like an elite nordic skier who wanted to avoid injury going into an Olympic year, viz., prudently. Rhodes ran it like a pro trail runner with a large lead who was probably holding back just slightly. Marvin ran it like she was angry. (Anyone who knows Marvin personally will be quick to tell you that she is as kind as her race face is terrifying.) 3,000 vertical feet and just 12 to 13 minutes later, the result was that Marvin had put 49 seconds into McCrystal to move up to second overall.
“I feel like we started out really hot on the road and I was around Rosie [Fordham] and Kendall,” Rhodes said of her race today.
“And then I kind of found myself alone. I expected them to be with me a little bit longer. And I was worried that I was going out too hard, but I just tried to stick with it and get as much of a gap as possible because I knew our local ladies would be charging behind me on the downhill.”
“I was so excited to do this race,” enthused McCrystal to Brooks a few minutes later. “I love the steep ups and downs. And seeing Jessie [McAuley] last year come third, who’s a friend of mine from home, really kind of inspired me to actually apply this year and go for it.”
She added, “It was such a blur on the race course, but it was so much fun just letting the legs go and bumping up and down off your butt [when glissading down the snowfield near the top of the mountain] and trying to chase these super fast women. I had a great time and I hope other Canadians see this and are inspired to come next year and the years after.”
Kramer would ultimately come across the finish line in ninth. I don’t want to make excuses for her, and the results are what they are, but Kramer ran the downhill in 14:59 last year and 16:48 this year; it seems fair to say that she was holding back somewhat. While the joke is that it’s a good thing that the course literally passes by the Seward ER, multiple people have been hospitalized following falls on the mountain.
Nordic skiers around Kramer included Rosie Fordham (UAF/Australian national team) in tenth and Katey Houser (Montana State) in 12th. Jennie Bender, a name recognizable to ski fans of a certain vintage, was 21st. Tatum Witter, until recently of the Dartmouth ski team, was 43rd.
Juniors race
The first race of the day was the juniors; boys and girls set off together at 9 a.m. for a shortened, but not easy, climb to the halfway mark and back. First across the line here was Vebjorn Flagstad, in 27:31. Flagstad is a top American junior skier who trains with Alaska Winter Stars and raced in Gjøvik on this year’s Scando Cup Trip. Second place went to Blaze Rubeo in 28:15, with Gabe Black third in 28:51.
The top junior girl this year was race rookie Calista Zuber, 14, who paced the field with a winning time of 32:14. Second place was Tania Boonstra, the 2023 junior champion, in 33:10 (yes she is related to Todd Boonstra, a three-time Olympian and USST mainstay in the 1980s and 90s. Both Todd Boonstra and Vebjorn’s father, Trond Flagstad, are former Mount Marathon champions.) Third was Wren Spangler, in 34:01.
What’s next
The men started at 2 p.m. Alaska time. Defending champion and course record holder David Norris, a man who has never lost this race, is the odds-on favorite, but anything can happen on the mountain.
Staff photographer Anna Engel is on site at mid-mountain today for both the men’s and women’s races (I don’t think she was there for the juniors, but don’t quote me on that. Nothing personal, just a lot of moving parts to make it down from Anchorage in time following a workday on Thursday.) We should have full photo galleries up here by the end of the weekend, probably, or Monday for sure. Anna will need to sort through thousands of images while car camping on the Kenai, which takes some time. Stay tuned.
Results (all races)
Livestream: women’s race | men’s race | juniors race
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