42 years later, Arctic Valley Run still one of Alaska's most grueling races

As the running calendar expands with the growth of perilous but popular mountain runs, one of Alaska's oldest races remains one of its most grueling.

For 42 years, the Arctic Valley Run has made quads quiver, knees ache and lungs feel like busting.

The 12.6-mile round trip from Moose Run golf course to the top of Arctic Valley Road is a torture test, one with 2,500 feet of climbing followed by 2,500 feet of descent, about half of it on a gravel road.

The tradition continued Saturday when a small but hardy group of 91 runners gathered for a race created by the Army in the 1970s, when the running calendar probably could have fit on a single page.

Halfway up the steep ascent, runner Ivan Cuevas could feel the burn.

"Your legs feel like lead, like you're carrying metal," he said. "It can get mentally challenging too. If I find myself alone I start thinking, 'Why am I doing this? I could be home having brunch maybe. A beer. Pizza.'

"It seems like it's never gonna end."

Things didn't get better once Cuevas turned around and headed downhill.

"Coming down it's mostly the knees," he said. "The shock on the knees."

Cuevas, 36, is a member of the Army National Guard and works right next to Arctic Valley, so every week or two he and a few other guardsmen go for training runs on the road. He finished Saturday's race in 2 hours, 7 minutes, and figured it will take him a couple of days to recover.

Cuevas was about 38 minutes behind two-time champion Shane Hargis, a member of the Air Guard who finished in 1:29:27.

The race record is a breathtaking 1:06:44 set by Olympic skier Jim Galanes in 1982, back when the Arctic Valley Run attracted some of the city's top runners.

"It used to be if you were a runner in this city, you ran that race," said Michael Friess, the 1997 Arctic Valley champion and the coach of UAA's successful track and cross-country teams. "At that time, the race was meaningful and people put value on it."

Now, it's one of many choices. The night before the Arctic Valley Run, the Twilight 12K and Skinny Mini 6K in downtown Anchorage attracted more than 2,000 runners. And Saturday morning at the same time Arctic Valley was happening, nearly twice as many people competed in the Government Peak Climb at Hatcher Pass.

The Arctic Valley Run doesn't attract the city's elite runners, who know a hard effort there can exact a serious toll.

Government Peak is an arduous mountain race with a ton more climbing than Arctic Valley — 3,500 feet in three miles — but it has no downhill component.

That's probably why you see Mount Marathon champs like Christy Marvin and Eric Strabel at Government Peak instead of Arctic Valley. Top runners who go full-bore at Arctic Valley would still be hurting when Mount Marathon rolls around on July 4, Friess said.

"When you're looking at that kind of downhill sustained at that speed, you're gonna have a lot of damage to tissues," he said. "Who wants to run that race and try to recover from it to run a Fourth of July race or Crow Pass (later in July)?

"If you're really running it, it's gonna take a lot out of you."

The Army started the Arctic Valley Run as a way to bring the community together, said Ellis Alston, sports director at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. These days most of the runners who compete are military members.

The race is held on military land, and according to JBER's public-affairs department it's the fourth-oldest footrace in Alaska. Mount Marathon in Seward dates back to the early 1900s, the Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks is more than 50 years old and the Mayor's Marathon in Anchorage is a year older than Arctic Valley.

Kim Olmsted, the assistant race director for the Anchorage Run Fest, said she trained on Arctic Valley Road in the 1990s when she was training for the Boston Marathon.

"I got to Heartbreak Hill and I was like, you call this a hill?" she said.

Julie Michels, a regular on the Anchorage running scene, did Saturday's five-mile race, which goes halfway up the road and back.

She raved about the low entry fees — $15 in advance, $20 the day of the race, which makes the Arctic Valley Run one of the city's cheapest races. T-shirts are another $15.

The spread at the finish line included the usual assortment of muffins, fruit, protein bars and sports drinks, and sitting on a nearby table were rows and rows of gold trophies. For both the 12.6-miler and the 5-miler, trophies are awarded to the top three men and top three women in each age group.

"It's the only race that gives a trophy," Michels said.

Saturday's winners were Hargis and Elaine Jackson (1:53:23) in the 12.6-mile run and Mark Fineman (36:44) and Chelsea Scheuerman (37:21) in the 5-mile run. Scheuerman placed second overall in the shorter race, a feat made more impressive by the fact she had a baby two months ago.

"It's a great race," said Jackson, a 36-year-old Army National Guard sergeant who since February has led a small group of runners on training runs every week or two.

"We did it years ago and last year decided to do it again," she said. "I think it'll become an annual event for us."

When Friess won Arctic Valley in 1997, he finished in 1:14:50, a time he said was one of the slower winning times at the time.

He said it would take a commitment from an elite-level runner to challenge Galanes' enduring record.

"It has to mean something to you for you to say, yes, I'm going to really run hard in this one," Friess said.

Fineman, 46, said he did the 12.6-mile run years ago and needed a couple of weeks to fully recover.

"This is a tough race," he said. "If you can do (the full one), you're in really good shape."

Friess agrees. Arctic Valley Road is such a good test of fitness that running hard up the road — but not back down it — is part of the preseason training for UAA's championship cross-country teams.

"I don't have a team that's in shape until they do that," Friess said.