A 5k race is like a walk to the refrigerator for Santa Barbara ultra runner Jeffrey Stern. There’s nothing to it.
But the 5k Stern is going to tackle on Wednesday in Seward, Alaska is not your garden-variety race. This one goes straight up a mountain of narrow trails and broken shale and then back down.
It’s the iconic Mount Marathon Race, Alaska’s most famous footrace — if you want to call it a footrace.
It’s more of a scramble for survival. From the base to the lip of the mountain just before the summit rock, the average slope steepness is about 34 degrees and the vertical is about 2,675 feet in just 0.9 miles.
“I went up and down the mountain on Saturday and the prevailing thought I had was, ‘This is not as hard as they make it out to be,’” said Stern in an email to Noozhawk. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s treacherous, but well within my wheelhouse and my specific training has prepared me for race day.”
This will be the 93rd running of the Mount Marathon Race. It was canceled last year due to the pandemic. This year’s return will have fewer participants as more than 20% of the racers entered chose to defer their entries.
The course record is owned by David Norris, a professional Nordic skier, who is entered in this year’s race. He won the 2016 race in 41 minutes, 26 seconds. The women’s record is 47:48 by Emelie Forsberg in 2015.
Stern is one of five racers sponsored by Salomon athletic wear, which signed a three-year deal to be the event’s presenting sponsor.
“I’m the underdog, but that’s just the way I like it,” he said.
Stern has completed and won several long-distance events in his ultra-running career. Last month, he took first place overall in the San Lorenzo River Trail Run 30k and won the Calabasas Singletrack Stampede 22k. In May, he was second in the Silver State 50 Miler in Reno.
Closer to home, he won the Drum Canyon Ranch 25k Trail run in Lompoc and completed the 68-mile Back Bone Trail across the Santa Monica Mountains from Pacific Palisades to Point Mugu State Park in the fastest known time on the course.