As debuts go, Allie McLaughlin’s proved dynamite.
The 31-year-old from Colorado Springs, Colo., crushed the field in her debut trip on Mount Marathon, and she crushed the women’s record too.
McLaughlin, whose mountain-running pedigree is powerful, clocked 47 minutes, 9 seconds on the journey up and down the 3,022 peak in Seward to whack 39 seconds off the 2015 standard (47:48) by Emelie Forsberg.
And McLaughlin’s winning margin of 5:26 over runner-up and two-time defending champion Hannah Lafleur of Seward (52:35) was the largest since seven-time champ Cedar Bourgeois of Seward won by 5:24 back in 2005.
McLaughlin, a World Mountain Running champ who has twice won the Pike’s Peak Ascent and recently won the Broken Arrow VK (vertical kilometer) in California, seized the race from the outset. Halfway up the mountain, the former University of Colorado runner owned a lead of 1:44 on Olympic Nordic skier Rose Frankowski of Anchorage. At the turnaround rock atop Mount Marathon, McLaughlin’s lead over Frankowski ballooned to 2:58. And McLaughlin did not relent on the downhill, where her time of 12:52 ranked fourth in the field.
McLaughlin also wiped away the 30-39 age-group record of Seward’s Carmen Young (50:54), which had stood since Young won in that overall record time in 1986.
Coupled with the men’s win by two-time champ Max King of Bend, Oregon, Outsiders swept the senior races for the first time since 2015, when Forsberg and her partner, Kilian Jornet, both won in record-setting times. Forsberg is Swedish, Jornet is Catalan, and the couple currently lives in Norway.
Women’s top five finishers, from left to right, Klaire Rhodes, Meg Inokuma, Christy Marvin, Hannah Lafleur and Allie McLaughlin. Photo by Joel Krahn/Mount Marathon
Lafleur, 33, was sixth to the top of the mountain, then employed her customary blazing downhill – fastest in the field at 11:38 – to pass four rivals and claim second place.
Two-time champ Christy Marvin, 41, of Palmer, cranked the second-fastest downhill (12:31) to move up two spots in the second half of the race and finish third in 52:45. That kept alive her remarkable streak of never finishing lower than third. In nine appearances at Mount Marathon, she owns two wins, two runners-up and five third-place finishes.
Pretty good day for the Marvin crew. Besides Christy’s podium, son Coby won the junior boys race and dad Ben finished ninth in the men’s race.
Women’s rookie Meg Inokuma, 42, of Palmer, fresh off an age-group record in the Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb on Bird Ridge, rocked her debut. She earned fourth place in 52:51.
Klaire Rhodes, 24, of Anchorage, who won the Bird Ridge race, matched her fifth-place finish of a year ago and clocked 53:09. That sliced 1:27 off her personal best in the race.
Frankowski finished sixth in 53:19.
Find complete results here.
The Mount Marathon race ascends 3,022 vertical feet in about 1.5 miles on July 4th. Here is a video render of Mount Marathon heading up and down the race trail. pic.twitter.com/9S8YBXeLnZ
— Ben Matheson (@benmatheson) July 1, 2022