Marine Corps Marathon prize money

Marine Corps Marathon: 30K 

runners in 6 days,

In the third-fastest registration time ever, the Marine Corps Marathon signed up a capacity 30,000 runners in six days for the October race.

In the first 24 hours after the sign-up opened April 7, 23,793 participants had joined the field — about 991 people per hour.

.

“It’s the 35th anniversary and runners gravitate to anniversary years,” said Rick Nealis, the race director and a former Marine. “Once you take away the 45 percent first-time marathoners traditionally that we have, the other half are veterans, and some of them come back every five years because we try to make the anniversaries a little more special.”

This year also happens to be the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon, in which the Greeks warded off the invading Persians, sparking the mythical story of the Greek soldier Pheidippides, who supposedly ran 26 miles to Athens to spread the good news — which set the distance for the modern-day marathon.

The Marine Corps Marathon has expanded from a single race to an entire weekend of activities. This year’s event list includes a children’s run, a separate 10k race, two festivals, and a fitness expo, which last year drew 93,000 people, making it the Washington Convention Center’s second biggest event of 2009.

Race officials expect close to 100,000 spectators and 4,700 Marine and civilian volunteers to join the 30,000 runners over the course of the weekend leading up to the Oct. 31 race.

More than 80 charities will purchase slots from the Marathon this year and form teams that raise money for various causes.

One such charity is the Semper Fi Fund, which provides financial aid to injured Marines.

“We fill that gap between what the government provides and what the family can afford,” said Angie McCrary, the community outreach manager and last year’s Semper Fi Fund race coordinator at the Marathon. “It could be help with a car rental, hotel, airfare, home modifications, transportation modifications. There’s nothing we won’t do as long as it helps with the quality of life for the service member.”

Last year the organization fielded a team of more than 500 runners and raised more than $400,000, the highest amount of any charity in the field.

Marine Maj. Mark Van Skike, who has been on three tours of duty in Iraq, is signed up to help the Semper Fi Fund raise money in what will be his third Marine Corps Marathon.

“When I first ran [15 years ago] I was a brand new second lieutenant, and I did it because it was a challenge,” Van Skike said. “I ran it five years ago because I was posted in the area and I wanted to see how I could perform 10 years later, and I ran in the memory of my dad [a former Navy man] and a fellow Marine that had been killed in Iraq. This year I’m running for injured Marines.”

Fun facts about the Marine Corps Marathon, courtesy marinemarathon.com:

Famous finishers of past Marine Corps Marathons:

• Talk show host Oprah Winfrey

• Former Vice President Al Gore

• Journalist Ted Koppel

• Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty

• Former senator John Edwards

• Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas

Four men have run in every Marine Corps Marathon since the inaugural race in 1976, earning the nickname “Groundpounders”:

• Will Brown, 61, Raleigh, N.C.

• Matthew Jaffe, 68, Rockville, Md.

• Al Richmond, 67, Arlington, Va.

• Mel Williams, 68, Norfolk, Va.

Will Brown, one of the four “Groundpounders,” is a distant relative of Rene Gagnon, one of the Marines in the famous flag-raising picture at Iwo Jima. Incidentally, the marathon’s iconic finish occurs every year at the Iwo Jima monument, which is officially named the Marine Corps War Memorial.

The race earned the nickname “The People’s Marathon” because it is the world’s largest marathon not to offer prize money.

The first marathon took place Nov. 7, 1976, and featured 1,175 runners. It has since grown more than 25 times its original size, to 30,000 runners.

Currently it is the fourth largest marathon in the United States in terms of finishers, and the eighth largest in the world.

The 35th annual race will be held Oct. 31. The 26.2-mile course begins in Arlington, Va., and winds through Washington, before ending at the Iwo Jima monument back across the Potomac River in Rosslyn, Va.

(source:armytimes.com)