Klaire Rhodes three-peats as Women’s Mount Marathon Champion

SEWARD, Alaska (KTUU) - In a highly-competitive women’s field of Mount Marathon, there is often jostling and swapping of positions on the podium. One runner who has yet to be knocked off from the top in recent years is Anchorage’s Klaire Rhodes.

“I’m super pumped,” Rhodes said after victory. “I’m a little surprised, my race was not really shaping up to turn out this way early on.”

With blistering downhill speed, Rhodes was the first down 4th Ave. for a third consecutive year, clocking in at 49 minutes and 55 seconds. She becomes the first woman ever to run two sub-50 minute races, running 49:49 in 2024.

“Oh, it’s so awesome, this race was really my like introduction to trail and mountain running,” Rhodes said. “Every year it’s like a homecoming for me, so to kind of cement myself in the race’s history is super meaningful.”

Throughout the 5-kilometers and 3,000 feet of elevation gain, there are a few different routes a runner can take. Rhodes may have hurt her time with her path on the way up, but certainly made up for it on the way down.

“It being a muddier year, it’s common to take this line to the right on the lower mountain called the ‘B Line’, which I’m not super familiar with,” Rhodes recounted. “I thought I knew where I was going and I ended up kind of leading me and Kendall Kramer and maybe a few others a little bit astray. We were in a pretty rugged off-trail area, so I was a little worried at that point, I thought my race was maybe over...”

“I know that Rosie [Fordham] and Kendall are more cautious on the downhill, so I wasn’t too worried being close to them at the top and they kind of got to the top and then go left and I don’t know what their strategy is there, but I usually just go right down. So, I did that and pretty quickly got up in front of them, but I was more worried about Christy [Marvin] coming because I know she’s a super good downhiller. So, I really just had to push as hard as I could. I’m not the best downhiller on the day, I’m kind of good enough, so that was my strategy is to do just enough to hold my spot.”

Perennial podium finisher Christy Marvin placed second (50:51), Shauna Severson placed third (51:22), Denali Strabel took fourth (51:44) while Emma Cooke-Clarke (52:25) rounded out the top five of the women’s race. Click here for a recap of the men’s race.

“Everyone ran so fast today despite it being a muddy year, so I’m super proud of all the women,” Rhodes added.

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