Running

2 races this week honor fallen runners

Marcie Trent was 77 when she died, killed by a grizzly bear while she and her son, Larry Waldron, were hiking at McHugh Creek in 1995.

She left an enormous legacy, on age-group record books and on Anchorage's running community. Suzanne Ray, a four-time Heart Run champion who dominated the road racing scene here in the 1980s and 1990s, called her the mother of Anchorage running.

Kalgin Koch was 22 when he died, collapsing from heart complications about 300 yards from the finish line of a mountain run near Anchorage in 2009.

His legacy was one of promise unrealized, as a student and an athlete. Twice a top-20 finisher in Mount Marathon, he was seven credits away from a degree in geology from the University of Arizona. He was "somebody you'd be proud of," a former teacher said the day Koch died.

Two races on this week's running calendar honor the fallen runners — Thursday night's Kal's Knoya Ridge Run and Saturday morning's Trent/Waldron Glacier Half Marathon.

At Thursday's mountain run, held primarily on military land east of Muldoon Road, Barry Koch sent runners off into the woods with what has become a prerace ritual: the sprinkling of his son's ashes at the start line.

"For everybody to take a little bit of Kalgin and finish the race for him," Koch said.

ADVERTISEMENT

The 11th annual race was renamed in Kalgin's honor in 2010, the year after his death. The tribute is a way "to help keep the thought of the life of this incredible kid alive," Koch said.

"… That ridge was our backyard when the kids were growing up, so he spent a lot of time there — fighting the enemy, playing, cross-country skiing — right in that same spot."

Kal's Knoya Ridge Run raises money for the Tom Besh Scholarship Fund, created in memory of the former UAA ski coach who died in a 1993 plane crash. Serendipitously, Barry Koch used to go on training runs with Besh, and Kalgin Koch attended East High with Besh's daughter Leah.

The race is close enough to Anchorage to be held at 6 p.m. on a weeknight, donations are taken in lieu of an entry fee and the lack of advance online registration means participation isn't "based on how quick you are on the keyboard," co-founder Bill Spencer said.

It's a deliberately low-key event, he said — one with a powerful reminder of life's unexpected turns.

The Trent/Waldron Glacier Half Marathon, a race that dates back more than 30 years, keeps alive the memory of the well-known mother and son who were mauled by a bear while hiking at McHugh Creek.

Like the Knoya Ridge run, the Half Marathon began as a low-key affair, said Anchorage Running Club board member Betty Cronin.

"People came down and afterwards we had cookies and results, and that was it," Cronin said.

The race was originally held at Portage Glacier but moved to Anchorage in 1987. After the deaths of Trent and Waldron, the running club renamed the race in their honor.

While Waldron was an accomplished runner and musician, Trent was the best masters runner Alaska has ever known, a woman truly in a league of her own.

She was a four-time USA Track and Field runner of the year in her age group, a 2001 inductee into USA Track's Masters Hall of Fame and the holder of numerous national and state age-group records.

In 1988, at age 70, Trent set a national age-group record in the marathon with a time of 4 hours, 11 minutes, 54 seconds at the Napa Valley Marathon in California.

Later that same year, she set a national age-group record at the half marathon now named for her with a time of 1:58:27.

Trent set the record two days after an 18-mile training run. "I was worried about my long run the other day," she told the Anchorage Daily News, "but it was an easy record to break."

One of the original members of the old Pulsator Running Club, Trent was a key figure in Anchorage running and a particularly important figure for women, Cronin said. Trent began running at age 51 in the late 1960s, long before it was common to see women competing in races.

By the time she died, Trent had set 29 Alaska age-group records and 11 national age-group records. The swath of her talent was staggering — her records ranged from 800 meters to ultramarathons.

"She was a great inspiration," said Cronin, who ran frequently with Trent. "… I imagine Marcie would still be running if she was alive."

Beth Bragg

Beth Bragg wrote about sports and other topics for the ADN for more than 35 years, much of it as sports editor. She retired in October 2021. She's contributing coverage of Alaskans involved in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

ADVERTISEMENT