By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The third annual St. Joseph Marathon is two weeks away.
St. Joseph Sports Commission Executive Director Brett Esely says registration for the marathon has been fast and furious once again
"You know in our first two years we have always had runners in our field from 20 plus states,” Esely says on the KFEQmunnity show. “A lot of people don’t look at these events that way, but I always say runners are a different breed, they’re crazy.”
Esely says this marathon has attracted three different demographics, national runners who want to run a marathon in different states, runners from the area
"The third demographic, and I’ve said this a lot, I said this when we started this event, this event has given motivation to people that have always said I want to run a full marathon someday,” Esely explains.
Esely says those are not running to win or qualify for the Boston marathon which this will help qualify for but running to solely take that from their bucket list.
Esely tells people to not let the word marathon scare you off from registering, because there are other options aside from the full marathon
"We have a half marathon, so that’s your 13.1-mile race, and that year after year continues to be our most popular race, you know you have folks that want to run a half marathon, you have folks that maybe are running a half marathon that are building up to a full marathon, but that continues to be our most popular race distance,” Esely says. “We obviously have your traditional 5k, 3.1 miles, we also feature a 10k which is 6.2 miles.”
Runners can also register to run the marathon as a relay in a five-person team, with the route broken up into five segments.
Registration is still open on the St. Joseph Sports Commission’s website.
You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.