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Allie McLaughlin crushes Alaska’s Mount Marathon Race course record

"You're not a mountain runner until you've raced down this," says McLaughlin

allie mclaughlin

World champion mountain runner Allie McLaughlin of Colorado Springs won Monday’s 94th Mount Marathon 5K race in Seward, Alaska. Not only did McLaughlin win the women’s race, but she set a course record of 47:09, taking 39 seconds off the previous record held by Emilie Forsberg. McLaughlin was fresh off a remarkable performance at the Broken Arrow Skyrace, where she won the Vertical K, and placed second in the Broken Arrow 26K, held in mid-June. 

McLaughlin had joked about going for the course record at Mount Marathon, but didn’t actually expect it to happen, she told the Anchorage Daily News. “It started clicking in my head and I thought, that’d be cool. But I never thought I’d be able to go fast enough on the downhill to hold it,” McLaughlin says. “And just did what I thought I could do and I got it.”

In the men’s field, Max King of Bend, Ore., won his second Mount Marathon men’s title with a time of 43:37. He became the race’s oldest winner to date, at 43.

Photo: Instagram/alliemc3

Mount Marathon is well known within mountain and trail running circles and is the “oldest U.S. mountain race” according to the race website. Folklore has the race originating as a bet between two “sourdoughs” (people who have lived in Alaska for many years) as to whether it was actually possible to run to the top of Mount Marathon and back within an hour.

McLaughlin felt she could handle the uphill, but was concerned she’d lose speed on the downhill sections. “I thought I was going slow, but I just thought don’t stop, keep moving forward and you’ll get down,” she said. The race has meaning to the athlete and the community: “You’re not a mountain runner until you race down this. So now I feel like I’ve entered the club,” she adds.

Track athlete Allie Ostrander, who is from Seward, explains the “race she gets asked most about” in a popular Youtube video:

Ostrander calls Mount Marathon the Superbowl of mountain running, and her entertaining voiceover helps us see why this race is so well known and hard won.

 

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