Marathon work accelerates

Correction: A marathon is 26.2 miles. The distance was incorrect in this article and graphic about the inaugural Fort Smith Marathon.

FORT SMITH -- Patrick Pendleton said Fort Smith's inaugural marathon will have grit.

photo

A map showing the Fort Smith marathon route.

Pendleton, race director for the Fort Smith Marathon, said he hopes the first 26.3-mile event in the city, scheduled for Feb. 8, will draw as many as 1,500 runners.

The motto for the inaugural race, "This one's got grit," Pendleton said, refers to the city's True Grit lore. The race will be hilly, cold and in Fort Smith.

Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders broke the news about the marathon at a city directors meeting three weeks ago. He said he had been looking for an event that would involve the community and attract people to the city.

He said he found interest in the community for holding a marathon, but no one took the lead until last fall, when Pendleton and a group of avid runners took on the project.

"I see it as an event that will bring a lot of participants from local people and will bring them in from out of town," Sanders said.

Pendleton said he and other runners in the Western Arkansas Runners group had toyed for years with the idea of putting on a marathon. He said they have experience with conducting running events, having for years organized the Survivor Challenge 5K and 10K races in Fort Smith, which have drawn 1,500 runners.

"We've just grown into this event rather than just being a shot in the dark," he said of the transition from the Survivor Challenge to the marathon.

The event will consist of three races. It's modeled after the Hogeye Marathon scheduled for March 29 in Fayetteville. It will have the marathon, a half-marathon and a relay, which will consist of four-person teams that will each have a team member running a quarter of the marathon.

Hogeye Marathon Director Tabby Holmes said the Fort Smith Marathon will be a good addition to endurance running in Arkansas and will complement the Hogeye Marathon and the Little Rock Marathon, which is scheduled for Feb. 28, creating a "trifecta" of races.

Pendleton and a committee that grew out of the Western Arkansas Runners are organizing the event. And, about six months from the starting gun, he said work is at a sprinter's pace.

"It's a massive event," he said. "It's a complicated event to put together."

The committee has mapped out the course. It will start and end in downtown Fort Smith, winding through town eastward to Massard Road, where it will turn south into Chaffee Crossing before turning for the homestretch.

The course, which Pendleton described as challenging, will run through old neighborhoods; past the large, stately homes on Free Ferry Road; on winding Cliff Drive; down tree-lined streets; and over paved walking trails in Ben Geren Regional Park.

Pendleton said 1.5 miles of the half-marathon course will be on the golf course cart paths at Hardscrabble Country Club.

"It's a hilly course," he said. "This is one of the more scenic courses that you'll find."

The marathon will require more than 200 volunteers to register runners, set up and tear down the course, control traffic on the course, man the start-finish line, keep track of the race timing, prepare and serve the food, and clean up afterward, according to the Fort Smith Marathon website.

Organizers are getting help from Fort Smith, Pendleton said. The Fort Smith Police Department and Sebastian County sheriff's office will assign as many as 40 officers to the event on race day, he said.

The marathon has its own website, fortsmithmarathon.com. The race also has been listed on the website of marathons.ahotu.com, a database service that specializes in endurance running, and on the race calendar of Marathon Maniacs, an international group of marathon runners.

The ahotu marathon site lists six forthcoming marathons scheduled for Arkansas in the next six months in addition to the Fort Smith, Little Rock and Hogeye races.

They are:

• Arkansas Marathon, Oct. 4, in Booneville

• Midsouth Championship Marathon, Nov. 1, in Wynne

• White River Marathon for Kenya, Nov. 22, in Mountain Home

• LoVit Trail Marathon, Dec. 6, in Lake Ouachita

• 3 Bridges Marathon, Dec. 27 in Little Rock

• Mississippi River Marathon, Feb. 14, in Lake Chicot.

Metro on 07/28/2014

Upcoming Events