TRAVEL & EXPLORE
Whiskey Row Marathon challenges even seasoned distance runners
Prescott’s Whiskey Row Marathon, Republic writer Bob Young’s latest addition to his bucket list,
lives up to its reputation as an ultra-marathoner’s marathon — challenging yet beautiful.
PRESCOTT — The Whiskey Row Marathon is widely regarded as one of the most difficult in the country.
Some refer to it as an ultra-marathoner’s marathon because it is so challenging that it appeals to those somehow left unsatisfied by simply running 26.2 miles. At 37 years old, it also is billed as the oldest continuously run marathon in Arizona and takes in all of what is great and quaint about Prescott.
The race starts in front of the Palace Saloon on historical Whiskey Row, then makes its way onto Copper Basin Road, into Prescott National Forest and up Thumb Butte Loop Road. The route rises from about 5,300
feet to almost 7,000 feet, where the vista of Skull Valley will take one’s breath away.
Assuming one still has breath to take.
Then the course drops down to roughly 5,600 feet, where runners turn around and go back over the hill.
Whiskey Row? More like Whiskey Ow!
When I added the event to Bob’s Bucket List, my menu of 12 destination events in 2015, I figured I had better get some advice about how to approach it.
And who better to ask about this monster in the mountains than Craig Davidson, who had run Whiskey Row 27 years in a row coming into the May 2 marathon this year?
Davidson, 61, who coaches distance runners at Northwest Christian School in Phoenix and has worked at the Runner’s Den store since 1983, even finished second overall one year, crossing the line in 3 hours, 5 minutes.
It’s no wonder he picked Whiskey Row this year to log the final 26.2 miles in his quest to hit 200,000 lifetime running miles. If that total boggles the mind, consider that he has run at least 1mile — and typically more than 12 — every day since Nov. 5, 1978.
That’s 361⁄ years of daily running through injury and illness and wife Irene’s labor. In his prime, he averaged 20 miles per day, every day, for a year.
So I wasn’t complaining about the easy, downhill, three-block jog to the start area from the Motor Lodge, a cool, retro-style motel my wife, Diane, and I picked for race weekend.
I met Davidson as the first hints of sunlight were beginning to catch the top of the Yavapai County Courthouse in the downtown square. Nearby, marathoners lazily stretched and stowed clothing in front of the saloon.
Davidson was wearing bib No. 28 with “Craig 200K” printed under the number. He reached into a pocket and pulled out 19 cents he’d found — a dime, a nickel and four pennies. He spotted the nickel and dime first, and found the four pennies nearby as he jogged over from his hotel.
Turns out the running streak isn’t the only string he has going.
His 19-cent haul kept alive Davidson’s streak of finding at least a penny on every run since April 4, 1983. Now he wouldn’t have to keep an eye peeled for the flash of a coin during the race in order to keep that streak alive.
“I tell people I don’t look for it, but they don’t believe me,” said Davidson, who figures the closest call he had during the money streak came when he got within a couple of hundred yards of his sister-in-law’s house in Minnesota when he found change in the snow.
In all, he has collected more than $9,400, mostly in small change, while running. But he once found a $50 gold coin on Bell Road.
Turned out his advice was golden, too.
Davidson told me not to start too fast. It’s standard marathon-running advice, but it is especially important at Whiskey Row, where hammering the hills early will come with a significant cost later.
Ron Rodriguez, another friend with Whiskey Row experience, warned me about going too fast on the downhill to the turnaround at 13.1 miles. That blows up the quadriceps muscles and leaves nothing in the legs for the climb back out.
“Coming back is more difficult,” Davidson concurred. “If you push the hills too much in the beginning, you’re wasted at the end. Coming back up through Skull Valley, that’s where it really gets tough.”
Davidson said that five years after his first attempt to run — when he trotted past four houses on his block in 1977 — he clocked what remains his best time in a marathon, 2 hours, 28 minutes.
He finished a 50-mile race in a scorching 5 hours, 37 minutes back in 1986.
“If I can run this marathon that fast, I’ll be happy,” he said, chuckling as we started out running together for the first couple of miles.
These days, finishing is good enough for him, especially at Whiskey Row.
It is a demanding course, but also gorgeous as runners ascend through Hassayampa Village, leave the asphalt and start into the forest on a well-maintained dirt road, then turn onto the rutted, rockier Thumb Butte road.
I had only one com- plaint: According to the description, the course tops out at an elevation of about 7,000 feet at 7 miles in. Ahem. I reached mile 7 and there was a bit of a dip, but then the road again turned up. And up. AND UP.
I was reminded of a call I received from a friend who had told me before going in for a vasectomy that the folks at his doctor’s office assured him the procedure wouldn’t hurt much. Me: “How’d it go?” Him: “They lied.” The top of the climb actually came at the 9-mile aid station, where they should consider having bags of frozen peas waiting.
On the bright side, it meant that the climb back out would be 4 miles, not the 6 I had anticipated.
The cool thing about an out-and-back course rather than a loop is that it gives those of us in the middle of the pack a chance to see the leaders as they go back in the other direction.
I was still almost 2 miles from the turnaround when Adam Folts of Phoenix came back up the hill in the lead with Prescott ultramarathoner Michael Versteeg hot on his heels.
Later, Versteeg said the lead flip-flopped between the two all the way back into town, and they were running shoulder-to-shoulder as they reached Court- house Square, where Folts put down a burst Versteeg could not match.
Folts won in 3:06:51. Versteeg, the defending champion, was just four seconds behind. Then Versteeg drove to the Valley and ran the 54-kilometer Sinister night trail race at San Tan Mountain Regional Park, where he finished third. See, now that’s crazy. Back at Whiskey Row, the women’s race wasn’t as close. Alyssa Shaw of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, won by more than 21 minutes.
Meanwhile, I was still far out on the course, but the advice from Davidson and Rodriguez was paying off. I passed a lot of struggling runners coming back up the hill, some who stopped at aid stations to stretch quivering quadriceps, hamstring and calf muscles.
I saw Davidson after I made the turnaround. He would finish his 28th straight Whiskey Row Marathon and join just five other people in the world credited with 200,000 lifetime miles, despite taking a nasty spill on the rocky Thumb Butte Loop that left him scraped and bruised.
“I think I was running too close to the ground,” he quipped.
Once I went back past the 9-mile aid station, it was (mostly) a fast and furious descent to the finish. As I approached the square, I remembered another nugget from Davidson:
“The key is to have fun,” he said. “That’s the big thing about this race. It’s the most difficult race I do every year, and I keep telling Laura (Winniford-Hodgins), the race director, ‘I’m not coming back.’
“And she says, ‘Well, we’ll see you the first part of May again next year, Craig.’ And she does.”
She might see me again, too.