After waiting 2 years to defend her Mount Marathon title, Seward’s Hannah Lafleur is ready to race — and to celebrate the mountain

Hannah Lafleur has lived in Seward every summer since 2016 and year-round since December 2018 -- long enough for folks in town to recognize the woman who works for a kayak adventure company.

When you live in a small town, she said, people know who you are and what you’re known for.

When you live in Seward and are known for winning Mount Marathon, there is nowhere to hide.

“The other day I went to pick up the mail, and the postman asked if I was getting ready for the race,” Lafleur said.

For the record, Lafleur, 32, has been making weekly visits to Seward’s famous mountain since April. She hasn’t kept track of her times and she hasn’t done the whole course from start to finish but, yes, she has been getting ready for the race.

Mount Marathon, often called the toughest 5-kilometer race in the world, returns for the 93rd time on Wednesday -- three days after the Fourth of July, its traditional spot on the calendar.

Last year’s torturous scramble up and down the 2,974-foot peak was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic -- the first cancellation since World War II. This year’s shift to a midweek, post-holiday race was another concession to the pandemic, made to lessen the holiday weekend crowd in Seward, a town of 3,000.

[Bumper stickers say Mount Marathon is 3,022, but it’s not. It’s 2,974 feet]

A field of 800-900 runners is expected to participate in one of Alaska’s most famous and popular sporting events. That’s smaller than usual, because about 250 runners opted to defer their entry until next year, many because of the pandemic or because they don’t have the day off, race director Matias Saari said.

Lafleur is the defending women’s champion, a title she has held for two years without having to defend it yet. She won the 2019 race by coming from behind on the descent to beat two-time champion Christy Marvin of Palmer by 30 seconds. She was cheered by thousands as she came off the mountain and ran the few blocks to the 4th Avenue finish line in front of the Yukon Bar.

Seward loves Mount Marathon -- the mountain and the race -- and it loves when a local runner wins the race. It’s little wonder people around town are quizzing Lafleur in the days leading up to the race.

“It’s add a little pressure for sure, but I’m trying to think of the race itself as a celebration of all the time we’ve spent out there training on that mountain,” Lafleur said.

“... I feel as though everybody in Seward is Mount Marathon-crazed. We all love that mountain and we all love running on it. It’s sort of this shared experience we all have, and the race is just part of that. I feel like it’s an honor to be part of that group of people who counts it as a special place and a special day.”

Lafleur is from New Hampshire and earned a degree in environmental science from Colby College in Maine. She started working for Kayak Adventures in the summer of 2016 and quickly developed an affection of her own for Seward and its mountain.

She watched her first Mount Marathon race that July, “and I thought, that looks pretty cool,’ " she said.

She returned the next spring and started running with a lot of the locals. They talked about the race a lot and urged Lafleur to enter -- no easy task, given how difficult it is to secure a spot in Mount Marathon, which is limited to 375 men, 375 women and 300 juniors. For a race rookie like Lafleur, sometimes the only way into Mount Marathon is paying big bucks for a bib at a prerace auction.

“The week before the race,” she said, “a bunch of friends and coworkers gave me an envelope with money in it and said, ‘Go to the auction and get yourself a spot.’ "

So she did. She won a bib for $550 -- a bargain in an auction that often draws four-figure bids. The money in the envelope covered most of her entry fee, she said.

“It made me really motivated,” she said. “I wasn’t just running the race for myself.”

Lafleur finished seventh in her rookie run with a time of 56 minutes, 41 seconds. In 2018, she was fifth in 54:02. In 2019, she won it in 53:24.

Lafleur, the operations manager at Kayak Adventures, said she spent much of 2020 battling running-related injuries, including a foot sprain, but was able to start running again this spring.

On June 20, she placed fourth in the annual Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb at Bird Ridge, a three-mile race with 3,400-feet of climbing. The race ends at the top of Bird Ridge, meaning no downhill, which is Lafleur’s strength.

“I hadn’t raced since January 2020, so I had a really hard time mentally focusing on the race,” she said. “I’m just excited to hopefully get into that race mindset a little better this week.”

A year ago on the Fourth of July, Lafleur stayed in Seward but hiked a different mountain -- a peak called Big Bear that looks down on Mount Marathon. She was glad to spend the day high in the alpine but she’s grateful things are different this summer. Vaccines and declining COVID-19 infections have brought tourists back to Seward and will put runners back on the mountain Wednesday.

“We’re in a better place,” she said. “I’m so grateful to be able to do it again.”

Mount Marathon start times

8:30 a.m. -- Junior race

11 a.m. -- Women’s race

3 p.m. -- Men’s race