ASHTON - Last year's Mesa Falls Marathon overall winner is on the list of runners again this year.
Jeff Shadley of Idaho Falls, who won last year's race with a time of two hours, 48 minutes and 55 seconds, will return to defend his title.
His time is just two minutes off the record set in 2005. The record time belongs to Pat Bragassa at 2:46:48. Bragassa won't be racing this year at the Ashton event, according to Dave Jacobson, race director.
Shadley will have some celebrity competition this year.
Team Beef member Dane Rauschenberg, an extreme athlete and author, will be on the course continuing his dynamic, young racing career and efforts to race in all 50 states.
Also signed up to run will be Anders Forselius, a Swedish freelance writer (Runners World, Sweden).
He is traveling around the U.S. with his bicycle and running a marathon in every state. He says he started with Boston Marathon in Massachusetts. He has run eight marathons - Boston, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Madison, Wis., Minneapolis, Seattle, Missoula, Mont., and San Francisco - and ridden his bicycle more than 4,000 miles between them.
He says he plans to run in the Mesa Falls event Saturday, then travel by bike to run in marathons in Boulder, Colo., Omaha, Chicago, Baltimore, Marine Corps (Washington, D.C) and New York before taking a Christmas break in Sweden and returning next year to complete his series.
Another 50 state racer, a woman from Virginia, is also rumored to be running the race, but Jacobson couldn't confirm it.
Jacobson says registration numbers for the long races are close to the same as last year. Tuesday morning, the marathon field was down about 20 from last year's total, while the half-marathon total was up about 20, he said. Last year 220 signed up for the long races, and 214 finished. The cutoff date to register is Friday night.
This year the race has added a 10-kilometer to its shorter races. Mile and 5K races also are scheduled as in the past. Signups for those races are coming in a bit ahead of last year.
The race has been heralded as one of the 50 best marathons in the country, and runners rave about the course and what they can see from it - wildlife, wildflowers and a landscape that includes waterfalls, rivers and the Tetons in the background. And it doesn't hurt the race's popularity being so close to Yellowstone National Park.
Another plus for the event is the fact it's a certified course and a qualifying race for other races such as the Boston Marathon.
The marathon starts in the woods northeast of Mesa Falls, travels along the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway past Lower Mesa Falls to Bear Gulch and onto the railroad grade there. Leaving the rail grade at Warm River, runners travel along the byway again to Ashton, where the race ends at the Ashton City Park. The half-marathon begins at Bear Gulch and continues the same route into Ashton as the marathon.
The short races start and end at the park, where the Ashton Chamber of Commerce sponsors vendors for food and other items.
To read profiles of some of the runners, see past records and results and find out more about the event, visit www.mesamarathon.com.
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