It is July 4th, Seward and the start of the 97th running of the toughest 5K in the world, the Mount Marathon 5K. This is the women’s Wave 1, the fastest women of the field. The lady leading, wearing bib 1 was 20 years old on her first run here. She finished 26 in 2018. In 2019, she placed 12th. She placed in the top first in 2020, 2021 and 2023. She also placed 21st in the 2023 World Trail Running Championships held in Austria. In 2024 she placed first and became the first woman in history to break the 50 minute mark. Women’s Wave 1 started at 11:05 AM.
This is Mount Marathon. You go up on the left circle the flag on top and come don on the right. Sounds easy? Runners chose their own paths to the top, there is no set course. You have to see it to believe it.
This is first race I have been to where they line up the ambulances (four) and have a medi-vac helicopter on standby. We saw some pretty serious “road rash” from the rocks. The runners were covered in mud from running in and through creeks, snow drifts and dust.
The Fourth of July parade started at 1:00 led by the Seward Police Department. This town of 2,500 residents grew to almost 30,000 on that day.
One of the parade entrants.
A kinda tall guy just strolling down the street . . .
Racers were still finishing during the parade, two hours later. You can see a lady running down the left side of the street. There were runners on both sides of the parade.
A turkey, no, an eagle driving a 4×4.
An old Ford truck. The only Ford in the parade.
But I have to admit, the Chevys looked very good today!
Chewbacca made an appearance and did not even scare the little girl!
The Seward City band playing on the back of a . . Chevy truck.
Cathy watching the Jumbo tron. We watched the men’s first wave at 2:00 from this spot. This was placed opposite the finish line. We assumed we could just turn around and watch the finish, but when we turned around, there was a sea of people with the same idea. There were a lot of press on hand and the entire race was televised with super telephotos and quad copters. Unbelievably, we saw the leader ski down the long, narrow snow drift (see slide 2) on his way down. All I could see without the large screen was a yellow dot. The drift was at least a block long and he looked like he was wearing skis. This was his sixth win in a row. Not even sweating . . . .
Well, it is Seward. And Seward is all about salmon.
Travelling with the Schinglers 