By MATT PIKE
The fourth annual St. Joseph Marathon is on Saturday, starting in downtown St. Joseph and moving throughout the historic parkway system, before ending back downtown.
St. Joseph Sports Commission Director Brett Esely says this year's marathon will have record registration as runners hit the route
"We have already broken our record registration, which was last year's race which was 632, we expect about 700 runners on race day this year," Esely tells reporters. "How that breaks down is this, we'll have roughly 100 full marathoners, a little over 200 half marathoners, last year our 10k was the largest increase in race amount, this year we're trending towards about 125 10kers, and then our 5k race I would expect to have about 185 5kers by the time its all said and done on Saturday morning."
Esely says the area that has grown the most this year, compared to previous years, is the relay teams participating in the marathon.
"We'll have eight relay teams this year, we only had two last year, so those are teams of five they can be all males, all females, they can be a mix of males and females, and what those teams do is they split up the marathon route in fifths and every team member takes a fifth of the event," Esely explains.
You can still register for any of the runs until Friday. Race packets will be available to pick up on Friday at the St. Joseph Convention and Visitors Bureau or at 6am on race day, with the full and half marathons set to start at 7am
If you aren't interested in running, you can also volunteer for the event. Esely says each year around 300 to 350 people volunteer to help on marathon day.
"And those folks do everything and anything for us as greet our runners in the park, out on the route making sure our runners are safe, working eight stations, working award medal stands," Esely says. "So, in the true spirit of it takes a village, and it takes everybody, this is an event on the last Friday and Saturday of September that it definitely takes everyone."
For those that don't run or volunteer, Esely encourages those that live on the route to put up signs or play music for runners as they pass. Esely also warns drivers to be aware on race day.
"We do like to communicate that from the hours of 7am to 1pm on Saturday, about 14 unique miles of city streets will not be travelable," Esely says. "What we say about this is this, A have a plan, B if you have questions let us know, but C another beauty to our route is other than maybe three or four spots on our route, I don't know if there's a spot in St. Joseph that you have to get out on the route to go to, meaning cross streets, another way out of your neighborhood, we were really sensitive to that when we planned this."
You can not only register for the race, but view a map of the race out, as well as a timing chart of when runners might be in the area, by clicking HERE.
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