If you ask Pete Eshelman, he’ll tell you that the goal of the Foot Levelers Blue Ridge Marathon is simple: finish the race.
“I always say it’s complete versus compete,” the race co-founder and director of the nonprofit Roanoke Outside said, referring to the course’s more than 7,000 feet of elevation change. It’s the most elevation change of any road marathon in the country, and the toughness of the race has become a point of pride for racers and organizers alike.
But Eshelman’s mantra will carry a different meaning both for runners and race organizers on Saturday for the 15th running of Roanoke’s marathon. Inclement weather forced the mid-race cancellation of the 2023 event, and with dry skies predicted for this year’s running, optimism abounds.
Between 600 and 700 runners will race the marathon — that’s 26.2 road miles in and around Roanoke — on Saturday, and more than 3,000 will compete in associated races; the marathon also sponsors runs at the 1-mile, 10-kilometer, half-marathon and double-marathon distances on race day, and “America’s Slowest 5K” on Sunday. There’s also an option for “The Full GOAT,” or completion of all 101 race miles in a week’s time. Those runners will complete the double marathon Saturday, the 5K Sunday, and the rest of the distances throughout the week prior. The big race goes off at 7:35 a.m. Saturday.
This year, Eshelman said, race organizers are better prepared for weather with the implementation of a flag system at the race’s aid stations, situated roughly every 2 miles. In the event of a thunderstorm or other event that could impact runner safety, they now have the ability to pause the race without canceling it entirely. It’s just another facet of Roanoke’s claim to a top-notch marathon experience, Eshelman said.
“We kind of position ourselves as this kind of boutique marathon that has all the amenities of the big races,” he said. (New York’s marathon drew nearly 50,000 runners last year and Boston about 30,000 last week. The Blue Ridge Marathon is capped at 750 runners.)
Racers will come from all over the world this year, Eshelman said, noting registrations from Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Guatemala and Canada, as well as a good number of states. About a third of the field will be local.
In 2022, the Roanoke Regional Partnership and Roanoke Outside Foundation estimated a $1.2 million economic impact on the city. That same study found more than 1,500 visitors to the region for the marathon and surrounding events.
The marathon course (map here, road closures and detours here) begins and ends at Elmwood Park in downtown Roanoke and traverses all across the southwest and southeast sections of the city, dipping into Roanoke County to climb Roanoke Mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway’s mountainside loop.
Alfredo Huerta will be one of a handful of runners in the field who have completed each running of the race to date. The 34-year-old Martinsville police officer said he didn’t quite know what he was getting into when he registered for the inaugural race in 2010.
“I didn’t do any research. I just saw that it was in Roanoke,” Huerta recalled. “So I show up the day of in 2010, and I was excited. But at the halfway mark, I knew that I had made a terrible mistake.”
He hadn’t trained properly and certainly wasn’t as prepared as he should have been for the hilly terrain. But he finished.
“Once I finished that race, it was the most amazing feeling,” he said.
The next year, Huerta was back. And the year after. And then he began racing other marathons all over the East Coast. He’s raced Boston five times and is yet to miss the Roanoke race. In 2020, when the marathon went virtual due to COVID-19, Huerta completed the course on the day the race was scheduled. Last year, he opted to keep running despite the official cancellation.
“My streak is still alive,” Huerta said, his smile palpable over the phone.
For Huerta, the community of distance running keeps drawing him back. And because he felt that first in Roanoke, he’s committed to coming back as long as he can.
“Nobody knew who I was there, and nobody knew anyone,” he said. “But the way that everyone encouraged each other without knowing who they are, where they come from — it didn’t matter what color skin you had, we were all cheering each other. … You feel like you’re a nobody, but in a sense everybody’s looking at you through a different light.”
While Huerta looks to extend his streak, David Kosub will be a first-timer in Roanoke on Saturday morning in a way. The Silver Spring, Maryland, native is blind due to a degenerative retinal condition. He will be the first visually impaired runner to complete the race. Kosub, though, is no stranger to the 26.2-mile mark; this weekend will be his 20th marathon.
“You can imagine what it’s like to be me by closing your eyes and trying to run,” Kosub said with a chuckle.
Kosub trains mostly on a treadmill and runs with a guide runner; Saturday’s will be Kristin Garri, a repeat participant from Washington, D.C., in a pairing that race organizers helped facilitate. (A guide runner’s function is to help the visually impaired racer stay on course and avoid obstacles, usually with verbal cues.) He said the attraction to the Blue Ridge Marathon stemmed primarily from his desire to visit the Star City. Roanoke has long been on his list of places to visit, Kosub said, and the marathon seemed like a good excuse for a family trip to the mountains. He hasn’t raced a marathon in a few years, and Roanoke’s smaller field was a factor as well.
“I told everyone I was getting back on the marathon calendar in 2024, so here I am,” Kosub said. “It just seemed like a nice way to kind of jump back into the swing of things.”
Kosub wasn’t aware of Roanoke’s claim to be America’s toughest marathon when he registered.
“I didn’t even know about the elevation … and then I looked at it more and was like, ‘Oh. What did I get myself into?’” he said.
But, Kosub quickly added, he’s up for the hills.
“I like the idea that it provides that extra challenge,” he said.
That challenge is mitigated, Huerta said, by the thousands of spectators at the event. Once the first couple of miles up and down Mill and Roanoke mountains are complete, runners head into Roanoke’s neighborhoods. There, the streets lined with supporters help get him through the later miles.
“The energy overall that weekend is amazing,” Eshelman agreed.
And it’s an opportunity for Roanokers to show off.
“The biggest thing at this point is really just to come out and roll out the red carpet, roll out the Southern hospitality,” Eshelman said, adding that it’s something he thinks his city does quite well.
For Huerta’s part — and he’s run all over the country — Roanoke’s is still his favorite marathon.
“I get to brag on it no matter where I go,” he said.
