Anchorage Daily News

Recalling her humbling debut at Mount Marathon in 2000, Elizabeth Hooper of Anchorage can nearly laugh herself to tears. Back then it was hard to measure which she was more full of at the race start, bravado or naivete. By race end, misery snuffed both.

The summer before, Hooper and some friends, like thousands of spectators, had driven to Seward to check out the annual Fourth of July race up and down the 3,022-foot mountain. They found the race pretty cool, but, really, how hard could it be?

"We were on the grass watching, thinking, 'If these people can do it ...' " Hooper said.

So she and three of her girlfriends made a pact to run the race in 2000. All four signed up the next spring. But only Hooper toed the starting line -- and endured the agony that was her journey of 1 hour, 44 minutes, 41 seconds, good enough to nail down 157th place.

"I didn't realize how difficult it was,'' recalled Hooper, 42. "It was so hard. I wanted to quit within about five minutes. I wanted to duck into the woods and sob.

"I was so intimidated, so out of my league.''

But she also was intrigued. The race wrecked her, sure -- she could hardly walk the next day -- but it also left her exhilarated. She knew she could do better, particularly since she didn't possess an athletic background and was starting from scratch in the sport. She'd only taken one pre-race hike on the mountain.

Hooper began training harder and smarter. Some of Mount Marathon's best runners offered pointers. And she kept lopping huge chunks of time off her time, so much so that last summer she clocked 1:06:21 to finish 19th in Alaska's most prestigious mountain race.

Matthew Kenney of Anchorage understands what drove Hooper.

He got his first taste of mountain running in 2003, dove into it in 2004 and made his Mount Marathon debut in 2005 by clocking 1:06:33 to finish 88th among men.

Kenney dropped his time to 1:01:41 in 2006, and last year slashed his personal-best time to 55:14 to finish 35th.

Like so many others who have been seduced by the challenge of mountain running in general and Mount Marathon in particular, steep slopes, and the quest to test themselves, kept drawing Hooper and Kenney back.

Their prodigious improvements on Mount Marathon, especially considering neither became a runner until adulthood, are testaments to discipline, hard work, ambition and tapping some natural talent.

Kenney, 37, who drives a truck for a beer distributor, always enjoyed hiking. His buddy, Steve Parrish, talked him into doing a mountain race late in the summer of 2003. Like Hooper, Kenney suffered in his debut. But as a former high school and college football player and wrestler -- Kenney starred in both sports at Service High -- he found that competition, particularly against himself and against the clock, stirred him.

"After that, (he and Parrish) really started getting into it,'' Kenney said. "Every year, I continued to get more and more motivated. Last year, I was dead set on breaking an hour on Mount Marathon.''

In the winter prior to last season, he began joining mountain-running stalwarts like Brad Precosky and Barney Griffith for Sunday morning hikes up Bird Ridge, south of Anchorage.

"He'd slimmed down and gotten the bug,'' said Griffith, a perennial top-10 finisher at Mount Marathon. "One time, I couldn't keep up with him and I thought, 'I better get with it.' "

Kenney, who wrestled at 171 pounds as a high school senior, had ballooned to well over 200 pounds around the millennium, thanks in part to three surgeries on his left knee. He hit the gym and began shedding weight. Hiking with Parrish further slimmed him.

By last year, his commitment extended to strict dieting.

"Going out for dinner, I'd order chicken Caesar salad -- no cheese, no croutons, no dressing,'' Kenney said.

" 'No taste,' my wife (Gretchen) said.''

But he was down to 164 pounds for Mount Marathon last year, the lightest he'd been since he was a high school junior. By then, he had fully embraced a mountain-running lifestyle -- hard workouts, sound diet, goals to attack.

"With wrestling, what I enjoyed most were the workouts,'' Kenney said. "Matches were great. And races are great, but talk to any of these (mountain-running) guys and they'll tell you what they enjoy most is the workouts.

"A lot of it is just an all-around satisfaction with being healthy and feeling that way. For me, it's also about setting a goal for yourself, and beating yourself. It's like wrestling -- sure, you're wrestling another guy, but you're really wrestling your body.''

Like Kenney, Hooper was motivated by her first race.

"I felt like I had done so poorly, so I had to redeem myself,'' she said. "It was cool enough, and I liked the people, so I figured I'd try it again.''

Advice from the likes of six-time Mount Marathon champ Precosky and Griffith, as well as former race champion Brian Bethard, helped.

"She dug in deeper and got serious, and made great improvements in her fitness,'' Griffith said.

Hooper, a Realtor, said she loved to use hikes as "stress relievers'' when she was raising her two kids, who are adults now. Training and racing allowed her to spend more time in the mountains she loves.

"This is kind of like a new phase of my life,'' she said. "It's like another added dimension.''

She has begun competing in triathlons, and in the last year has completed two Half-Ironman triathlons. In November, she plans to race the Florida Ironman -- a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run.

Neither Kenney nor Hooper expects to run as fast Friday as they did last year. Hooper has focused her training for the year on the Ironman. Kenny figures a few added pounds and adjusting to a new work schedule will cost him a couple of minutes on Mount Marathon.

But they're both mountain runners for life.

After all, Hooper named her English yellow Labrador "McHugh'' after a favorite place, McHugh Creek.

And Kenney named his beagle "Rubye.'' That spelling comes from Rubye Foldager, one of the twins from the Seward family that is a fixture on Mount Marathon.

Besides, the license plate on Kenney's truck reads: MTRUNR.

Find Doyle Woody's blog online at adn.com/hockeyblog or call him at 257-4335.

This week in the Anchorage Daily News

TUESDAY: In the last decade,the men's 40-49 record has been broken again and again and again. On Friday, the man who did the most damage, Anchorage's Barney Griffith, goes after the 50-59 mark.

WEDNESDAY: Columnist Doyle Woody looks at whether we might see a changing of the guard among champions. Anchorage's Brad Precosky has won six times since 1999 and Seward's Cedar Bourgeois has won four straight.

THURSDAY: Sizing up this year's men's and women's fields.

FRIDAY: Snow on sections of Mount Marathon make scouting the course critical.

SATURDAY: Full coverage of the men, women and junior races. Video and photos on adn.com/sports

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