Book about grueling Equinox Marathon plumbs the crazy heart of Fairbanks

The Equinox: Alaska's Trailblazing Marathon

By Matias Saari; Racing Rabbit Press, available at Skinny Raven Sports in downtown Anchorage; 2016; 472 pages; $25; equinoxmarathonbook.com 

For more than 20 years, I've lived along the Equinox Marathon course in Fairbanks and have spent hundreds of hours biking and running all parts of it, including six race finishes.

The route is both as punishing and beautiful as claimed, passing through narrow root-infested ski trails, rutted four-wheeler routes, and some 3,000 feet of climbs and descents. Muddy single track gives way to gravel roads, and the little pavement is mostly on downhill sections late in the race when it hurts most.

A quintessentially Fairbanks event, it's held the third Saturday of September when freezing temperatures at the start are common and thick fog, driving rain and even snow are not unheard of. In a town where the climate can be extreme and so can the people, our marathon is every bit as bonkers.

I'd known for years that five-time Equinox champion Matias Saari was working on a history of the race and assumed that when it finally came out, it would probably run 150-200 pages. So when a 472-page tome arrived on my doorstep, I wondered if a work that exhaustive could hold up.

It does. "The Equinox: Alaska's Trailblazing Marathon" is a lively account of the state's oldest marathon that turns up plenty of nuggets about the race's founding and early years and provides a forum for dozens of participants to share their experiences. Saari, who was a sportswriter for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for several years, puts his reportorial skills to work in short, tight chapters filled with drama and humor. It's a book for anyone who has run the race or who appreciates good sportswriting.

[Saari wins Equinox Marathon a record-tying 6th time]

Saari begins in 1963 when the idea of holding a marathon was cooked up by a quartet of University of Alaska students and coaches. What became the Equinox was initially envisioned as a community event intended as much for hikers as runners, explaining why the route travels to the top of Ester Dome. The motivation was to offer entrants views of the Alaska Range, and was not, as many have understandably believed, simply an act of sadism.

In its early years, the Equinox was a huge event in what was then a much-smaller Fairbanks. As Saari notes, most residents lacked television and computers and were far more physically active than today. Consequently, most considered it an all-day community outing and well over a thousand people turned out. Hundreds of kids ranked among the finishers during the race's first decade.

By the 1970s, it was more of a running race and the hiking division tapered off, although a fair number still walk every year (a friend of mine who has both run and walked once told me it hurts just as bad either way, so you might as well run and get it over with).

A highlight of the book is the account of the 1992 marathon, when deep snow fell throughout the week leading up to the race. The day before it was scheduled to take place, officials canceled the event. A number of entrants refused to accept this ruling and ran it anyway, post-holing much of the route. Some of them still insist their finishes should count in the records.

Saari hurtles through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s with stories drawn from News-Miner coverage and his own interviews with contenders and people who simply run for the joy of it. He also pays tribute to competitors who have passed on and provides inspirational stories from individuals who have endured severe setbacks and returned to the course. Surprisingly, given his own dominance of the event over the past decade, Saari devotes a scant 23 pages to his own quest for victory. This is a book about a beloved race, not himself, but this is one of the rare cases where a bit more about the author would have been appreciated.

[Saari's record-setting victory]

Through his interviews and personal observations, Saari provides readers with good insight into how complicated the Equinox can be to plan for. The wide-ranging conditions require a broad range of skills. Trail runners can be thrown off by the pavement near the end of the course, while road runners can find themselves almost incapable of navigating the narrow trail sections. Depending on one's conditioning, slamming up Ester Dome can earn an insurmountable lead or cost too much energy, resulting in a bonk later on. Similarly, hammering down the hill after mile 17 can either be the way to pick off people who went uphill too quickly or a recipe for excruciating cramps. Critically, what works well for one person can completely undo the next runner's efforts. Those looking to this book for advice on how to run this and other races will find conflicting viewpoints.

The 1983 winner, Patrick Cross, told Saari he decided going down Ester Dome that "this is not a race. This is like an obstacle course." And veteran mountain climber Jeff Benowitz, no stranger to danger, said "every time I do the Equinox there's a point where I think, 'I'm going to die.' "

Like the Equinox, this book will mostly appeal to Fairbanks residents (the race has never drawn many entrants from elsewhere). This shouldn't stop others from diving in, however. In telling the story of the Equinox, Saari has also tapped into part of what makes this scrappy little town in the middle of nowhere a place that a certain kind of person finds impossible to leave. The Equinox is as crazy as our climate. It's something that simply wouldn't happen elsewhere.

• • •

A quick disclosure: Fairbanks is a small town and it's virtually impossible to be involved in anything without crossing paths with others on the same circuit. As a cyclist and runner, I've known Saari casually for about a decade, and I also know quite a few of the people mentioned in the book. Saari briefly quotes an article I wrote in 2006 about mountain biking the Equinox route. Because of my off-and-on participation in the race, I probably enjoyed this book more than I would have otherwise, but I'm confident I would have submitted a positive review regardless. There's a slideshow and book signing at 6 p.m. Oct. 11 at REI in Anchorage.