SEWARD – Saturday's 88th edition of Mount Marathon will be long remembered for a record-setting foreign invasion – Spaniard Kilian Jornet and Swede Emelie Forsberg ravaged the record book – and yet those international stars were far from the only racers who rocked.
A slew of Alaskans likewise delivered Fourth of July fireworks on the 3,022-foot mountain.
The redoubtable, ageless Ellyn Brown, 62, of Anchorage wrecked her own record in the women's 60-69 age division, clocking 1 hour, 8 minutes, 12 seconds, on the journey up and down the mountain. That merely slashed 46 seconds off her previous standard of 1:08:58 in 2013.
And that swift time Brown produced came even as she stopped twice on the downhill to stretch her cramping calves.
Otherwise, Brown said, "I felt really good. I kept getting in a slow train (of runners) and then passing people, and that usually doesn't happen.''
Another masters runner who roared was Wendy Sailors, 46, of Anchorage. In her 23rd appearance in the Fourth of July race in Seward, all Sailors did was finish 10th in 1:00:26 to hatchet 1:48 off her previous personal best. The 10th-place finish tied Sailors' best and came a remarkable 13 years after her previous 10th-place finish.
Sailors said she was diagnosed with celiac disease at 40, when she was living in Fairbanks.
"I stopped eating gluten, and I started running faster,'' she said.
She also shed about 10 pounds for this year's race – 10 pounds she did not have to carry up a mountain that averages a 34-percent grade.
Meanwhile, former three-time junior champion Denali Foldager-Strabel, 25, who grew up in Seward, seized redemption Saturday to put the personal disappointment of 2014's race behind her. Foldager-Strabel finished fifth in 56:16, butchering 2:51 from her previous record (59:07 in 2012) and rebounding from last year's 12th-place finish in 1:03:10.
"I just wanted a PR,'' she said in the finish area. "I didn't care about anything else today. Just control what I can control.''
And even though Najeeby Quinn, 35, of Anchorage, dropped one spot and finished fourth after debuting with a third-place finish last year, her 55:34 still was 43 seconds faster than she clocked in 2014. What made that astonishing was Quinn spent most of the week in bed with bronchitis. Good health no doubt would have permitted her to reduce her PR even more.
"My legs felt good,'' Quinn said. "I just didn't have the lungs to back it.''
Speed proved the order of a day when thousands of cheering fans lined Seward's streets and hundreds hiked onto the mountain to watch the race.
The eight women who clocked times under one hour tied last year as the most sub-60-minute times by women in a single Mount Marathon. Also, the 55 women who ran faster than 1:10:00 were the most in race history. The previous standard was 42 women in 2010.
Forsberg's 47:48 knocked 2:42 off Nancy Pease's previous record of 50:30, which stood since 1990.
Men motored too. The 20 men who ran faster than 50 minutes came up just short of the 22 men who clocked faster than 50 minutes in 2012. But the 75 men who crossed the finish line in less than one hour marked the most in race history, surpassing the 66 who did so in 2010.
Jornet's blistering 41:48 lopped 1:07 off the previous record of three-time champion Eric Strabel, whose standard was 42:55 in 2013.
Also among the blazing set was race rookie Nick Elson, 31, of British Columbia, who debuted fifth in 43:46. Elson, a mountain climber who in the last couple years has begun running mountain and trail races, attacked the downhill until fatigue left him wobbly.
"My plan was to just take risks and run as fast as I could down,'' he said. "The second half, my legs were pretty toast. I was struggling to stay on my feet.''
Rookies also took sixth and seventh place among men. Matt Shryock, 28, of Anchorage, finished sixth in 44:44, and Adam Jensen, 34, of Anchorage, finished seventh in 45:21.
Seward's Fred Moore, 75, extended his race record for finishes to 46 – he has run every race since his debut in 1970. And yet again he beat his age – Moore, who owns the 70-79 age-group record, clocked 1:13:01, or 73:01.
Roger Kemppel, 73, of Anchorage nearly ran his age too. Kemppel clocked 1:14:20, or 74:20.
And Matt Kenney, 44, of Anchorage, who in 2012 suffered a traumatic brain injury and broken tibia in a fall at Mount Marathon, continued his inspiring comeback. He clocked 1:59:00 to slash 27:27 off his time in 2014, when he returned to run Mount Marathon for the first time since nearly dying in the race he loves.
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Foldager-Strabel said she saw Forsberg during the junior race Saturday morning and gave the Swede some advice.
"She looked kind of petrified and terrified,'' Foldager-Strabel said. "I said, 'Just have fun.' Looks like she had a lot of fun.''
Christie Haupert, 39, of Anchorage, slashed 2:57 off her debut time from last year to finish 14th among women in 1:01:45. She improved on her 16th-place finish in 2014 and, courtesy of a fall on the descent, finished with less skin than she started.
Haupert scraped and bloodied both knees and finished with trails of blood down her shins. Haupert figured she must have been leaking pretty steady, she said with a laugh, because so many encouraging spectators told her otherwise.
"I must have looked like utter carnage because, running down the street, everyone said, 'You look awesome!' '' Haupert cracked.
Reach Doyle Woody at dwoody@alaskadispatch.com and follow him on Twitter at @JaromirBlagr