Marathon Rating:
IN BRIEF:
Especially for those doing a 50 U.S. State Challenge, the Anchorage Marathon is a nice race and great intro to the fascinating State of Alaska, run on a mostly-flat course, partly paved and unpaved forest roads, part city parks and neighborhood streets. Anchorage is a small but culturally interesting city (particularly beautiful at this time of year when it’s full of flowering trees and when the Summer Solstice daylight lasts almost 24 hours) and serves as an easy travel gateway for a multitude of trips further into the interior of Alaska’s great wilderness.
THE PLACE:
It seems to me that everyone who’s ever been on a vacation or boat cruise to Alaska returns home raving about how beautiful and awe-inspiring the experience is. As someone who’s never been particularly fond of cold weather, I’ll admit to my ignorance in wondering what all the fuss was about, and I would hardly have expected that my own quick trip to Anchorage for the Anchorage Marathon would qualify me to glimpse just what it is that makes people love the place.
Even as a tourist for a mere 2.5 days in mid-June, confined only to the city proper–a relatively small yet important stepping off-point into the state’s vast geography of natural wonders–I actually did get a sense of what makes the Alaska experience so extraordinary.
(inset photos: flying over mountains, glaciers, and wilderness to arrive in Anchorage’s airport…)
To say that the State of Alaska is enormous is an understatement. Twice the size of Texas (or one-fifth the size of all the Lower 48 U.S. States, if you prefer), Alaska is a place with barely imaginable heights and distances, blessed with a diversity of astounding scenery and wildlife on a scale so large, you could spend a lifetime just trying to see it all.
The City of Anchorage, as it turns out, is kind of a gateway to all of that. As Alaska’s largest city with a population of roughly 300,000, it’s home to 40% of the state’s residents. As an urban oasis at the state’s South Central edge of the great frontier–with all of the familiar, man-made comforts of universities and hospitals, office buildings and hotels, restaurants and department stores–it serves both as the hub of the state’s modern economy, as well as a kind of base camp for tourists embarking from cruises or flying in to start adventures further inside the state’s interior.
However, unlike most U.S. cities, which sprawl their urban appurtenances from downtowns out into miles and miles of suburbia, Anchorage seems more condensed, more confined, more tangibly surrounded by wilderness and with wildlife itself.
As a visitor to this neat-and-tidy town, you easily sense this not only from the mountain peaks and coastal waters kept barely at arms-length by the orderly grid of streets, but also (as I was matter-of-factly told by cab drivers, tour guides, and National Park rangers in town) from the peaceful, yet obligatory, cohabitation of its human and wildlife residents.
This is a city with bears; approximately 250 black bears and 60 grizzlies known to live in the immediate area. Moose are commonly seen in city streets where they provide comic relief, but more often pose a hazard to drivers. Wild sheep, lynxes, foxes, and wolves make appearances in neighborhood yards, eagles can be seen overhead, and spotting beluga whales offshore or fishing for giant salmon in downtown streams are considered quite normal here.
The scenery is extraordinary and abundant. Besides the mountains, forests, and meadows seen only a handful of blocks from downtown in some places, some 60 glaciers and five huge national parks are all within a day’s drive. In fact, with 54 million acres set aside in the National Park system, nearly two-thirds of all the National Park lands in the entire U.S. are in Alaska.
So much more, then, was the lost opportunity for me not to have taken more time to see more of Alaska only stopping into Anchorage for a few days, knowing nothing of the huge infrastructure hosted by locals to show you their state’s treasures which start just out of town. In retrospect, my schedule didn’t allow me to make the trip longer than it was, so some day, I’ll have to make plans to return and “do it right”. But take my advice, please, and don’t make the mistake I made, journeying to this faraway exotic but American place (four time zone hours different than my home in New York City, and a good 8-11 hours of flight time even with a single, quick connection) and make it just a weekend trip.
If you have the opportunity, you would be wise to make the Saturday morning marathon just the start of a weeklong adventure in Alaska, spending the weekend in Anchorage and taking off in any direction to explore what lies beyond with a vacation for the whole family.
One of the wonderful things about the Anchorage Marathon is timing: just a few days before the summer solstice in June. Although there are other northern cities in the world–for example, Helsinki, Reykjavik, Stockholm, or St. Petersburg–which celebrate their famous June “midnight sun” when daylight is visible for almost 24 hours, with the exception of St. Petersburg, none of those other places offer to the marathon traveler a race event that coincides with this natural phenomenon. So, what you get with the Anchorage Marathon, in theory, is long days, great summer weather, and a location that gives you easy entry to a week or two vacationing and exploring the great outdoors.
(inset photos: still plenty of daylight in Downtown Anchorage between 11:15 PM and 12:30 AM…)
As long as the weather is clear–and for me this was the case for all three days in Anchorage during which the sun shone brightly in a picture-perfect blue sky–the extra long nights provide a surreal and a golden, sunset-glow throughout the city’s streets and parks. This time of year can also bring, as I saw firsthand, comfortable temperatures in a range of 65-70° F, which offer a break from the sweltering summer weather many of us from other parts of the world know only too well.
But there’s another curious benefit of both the mild temperatures and long daylight hours to the growing season in Anchorage, such that you get the visual treat of kaleidoscopic color in the city’s landscaping, from a profusion of late flowering trees such as crabapple and cherry blossoms (which have usually come and gone by early April in the Lower 48 states), oversized lush greenery, and (almost freakishly-large) flowers growing along streets and hanging from lamp post baskets, for which apparently Anchorage has a long-standing reputation.
Granted, Anchorage is not a big city. But at this time of year it IS a city filled with people from around the world. Thus, part of the charm of the Anchorage Marathon is that, like the city itself, there is something cosmopolitan and welcoming for visitors from far-flung places (indeed, it has become the de facto Alaska marathon for those doing a 50 state marathon goal) but not without maintaining certain frank, frontier folksiness.
THE RACE:
True to this small-town style, as runners are brought from their downtown hotels in classic yellow school busses, the starting line area at the Bartlett High School makes no effort to be a big city affair. True, it has the typical peppy talk and dance music over the sound system to calm nerves and get runners excited before the 7:30 AM start. But it also has atypical announcements over the loudspeakers such as the earnest warning: “All runners, please note that the port-a-potties in the back row are not to be used…repeat, not to be used. They are locked and we have lost the keys”. Or, with a little less official seriousness, “Runners, we have all 50 states represented here today except one…we think West Virginia did not get our email”.
Likewise, after a conventional performance of the U.S. national anthem is done, a pleasant surprise comes with the singing of the equally lyrical Alaska state song [by the way, how many people in other places know their own state song? I heard the Alaska anthem completely and proudly sung no less than three times that weekend, including by the tour bus driver at the end of a trolley tour!] With the final words of that anthem praising Alaska’s “simple flag of the last frontier” ringing in the ears, one can not help to realize that – just like the small scale of the city within the large scale of nature around it, the Anchorage Marathon is less about the town and more about showing off its location at the edges of that natural splendor.
This, in some ways, is what makes this marathon so interesting. Not to be confused with a trail marathon, which in my experience is an often rugged and lonely affair for the runner, this version of a “city” marathon is more of a sampler tour through the outstanding scenery that Anchorage residents take for granted. While keeping a congenial atmosphere among runners and enthusiastic fans at aid stations, it also provides a one-on-one trip through a remarkable variety of natural settings, traversed though segments over mountainside gravel roads, shady trails in hiking areas, and paved bike paths through municipal parks.
Along the way, the runner is treated to, what I was grateful to see, a taste of Alaska and the pristine wilderness that lies beyond. The course’s wide range of scenery never ceases to amaze, from surprising vistas of tall aspen stands and evergreen forests, to bridges over gushing mountain streams; from fern-laced woodlands to clutches of colorful wildflowers, flowering trees, and wild berries.
The route, it seemed to me, was sincerely laid out, neither looping nor resorting to an out-and-back, switchback, or any of the sometimes discouraging “mileage add-ons” runners find in the course route, which most often serves only the needs of the organizers’ convenience in other marathons. Also, unlike other marathons, which, like Anchorage, include a half marathon in their running events, this marathon course is kept completely separate from the half marathon course, which happens concurrently somewhere else in town. Except for the marathon relay runners – whose start areas in this race attracts none of the usual complaints since they are barely noticeable – the entire marathon course is dedicated to the full marathon. Half-marathoners, whose race starts at 9:30 AM (two hours later than the full marathon’s start), share space with the marathoners only at the finish line and post-race party area.
Speaking of which, another nice feature of the Anchorage Marathon is the fact that, after spending most of the race in mostly rustic settings, the final miles of the course become a gradual “return to civilization”. Running along rivers and lakes and then through more “formal” city parks (which in Anchorage does not mean clipped topiaries; rather it means “more”: more intensive greenery, more flowers, and all of it more intentionally-placed along more generously laid-out shaded allées and bike paths), the route suddenly starts to get more active with an uphill climb past cheering fans, a stunning view high above the Cook Inlet, and onto the finish line in Delaney Park.
There, amid DJ music and an MC, first aid tents and a thousand finishers and their families against the backdrop of the small city skyline, the Anchorage Marathon suddenly looks and feels familiar like so many others. Not that that is a bad thing and, to be fair, a photo with Miss Alaska and tents offering runners everything from local beer to free grilled cheese sandwiches being made on the open grill, still shows the delightful quirkiness of the city and their very particular kind of marathon.
But in that moment, one is brought back to reality and realizes that the course just completed–however wild and beautifully scenic–may be the allure of Alaska itself: reveling in its grandeur and sheer magnitude, knowing that beyond the marked course somewhere out there a wolf or a bear is not too far off, but also knowing all along, that back in town, just a few miles through the woods, you can safely return to a delicious grilled cheese sandwich and a big party of humans waiting to welcome you back.
