Marathon courses lead you through sea-swept towns and concrete jungles, across open plains and over mountain ranges. But last night in Des Moines, Iowa, four seasoned marathoners ran 111 laps around the top concourse of the Wells Fargo Arena to hit that 26.2 distance…during a basketball game.
Chip Albright, vice president of marketing for the Iowa Wolves, dreamed of gathering some of Iowa’s most accomplished runners to complete a marathon during the Wolves’ game against the Birmingham Squadron. He explained that the indoor challenge would be a “fun metaphor” to cap off a long, and hard-fought NBA G League season.
The idea may have remained an idea forever if Albright hadn’t bumped into Chris Burch, race director of the IMT Des Moines Marathon, in a coffee shop. "I was going to pocket the idea because there is so many logistics in it and a lot of other things we are doing, but I walked into Smokey Row after waking up with it (the idea), and I saw Chris Burch in line," Albright told the Des Moines Register.
After getting the okay from the IMT Des Moines Marathon, Burch asked his marathon race committee, many of whom were training for spring marathons, if any of them would like to join the impromptu race. In the end, four Iowa-based runners—Jan Atchison (64), Dennis Haney (55), Kiersten Hathaway (47), and Bruce Huckfeldt (42) agreed to run the unusual marathon. Together, the group has run over 150 marathons, and two of them—Atchison and Haney—are members of the 50 States Marathon Club.
“You float the idea to some runners who are up for some creative challenges and we had some takers pretty quickly,” Albright said. “They wanted to make sure they walked it and know what they were getting into. Once they were able to do that (they said), ‘yeah, we got this.’”
While the group was clearly fit to take on the challenge, Albright and Burch still needed to nail down the logistics of covering long distances indoors. Burch researched marathons held at arenas, and found that none had been conducted since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to the best of his knowledge, no marathon had ever been held during a basketball game before yesterday evening.
Using a good, old-fashioned measuring wheel, Albright and Burch settled on a quarter-mile-ish concourse on the 300 level of the stadium as the setting for the race. DMOS, an IMT Des Moines Marathon sponsor, provided a fluid table for the racers, who staggered their starting times so that all of them would finish around 9:15 p.m., when the final buzzer sounded for the Wolves-Birmingham game.
Each runner had someone counting their laps, and Burch hired True Time Racing Services to time each person’s race. However, it was up to the runners to decide if and when they would change directions during the race.
Iowa Wolves fans came to watch the race before the basketball game began with cowbells and signs, of course.
In the end, Atchinson finished in 4:44:43:12, Haney in 4:22:14.48, Hathaway in 3:22:39.87, and Huckfeldt in 03:45:35.91. As Haney reflected in an interview with KCCI8 Des Moines, everything about the race was atypical. "Running a marathon in the evening is very non-traditional. So, most marathons start in the morning. So, the time of day. Running a completely flat course is exceptionally unusual. And one that is exactly the same temperature the entire time is very unusual," he said.
Oh, and in case you’re invested in the basketball game, the Wolves emerged victorious with a 139-131 comeback win. They did not, however, run 26.2 miles.
Kells McPhillips is a health and wellness journalist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Runner's World, The New York Times, Well+Good, Fortune, Shape, and others.
