It’s anyone’s race at Charlottesville Marathon

The title is up for grabs. Nearly 2,000 runners from all 50 states and seven foreign countries will be racing through the streets of Charlottesville this morning, but the defending champions won’t be in the pack.

Aaron Paul and Peggy Kern cruised through the hilly 26.2-mile Charlottesville Marathon last spring, but who will be the winners of today’s seventh annual event is any body’s guess.

“It is an open field,” said Francesca Conte, who directs the marathon and half marathon along with her partner, Russell Gill.

If anybody could guess, it would be Conte, who along with Gill, is a professional long-distance endurance runner. Both race the 30-, 50- and 100-mile events.

“[Paul] was in school, but now he has moved,” Conte said of the 25-year-old who raced to last year’s finish line in 2 hours, 36 minutes and 39 seconds. “The girl that won the marathon last year was all the way from California.”

This year, one of the runners who shows a lot of promise is a University of Virginia student, James Erickson.

“He ran one of our trail races,” Conte said. “I am pretty sure that this is his first marathon, but he is a very fast runner.”

Erickson, an art major who runs on the Cavaliers cross country team, has the stamina.

“Because it was so hard, the trail race that he did with us took him as long as it would to run a marathon,” she said. “I know he can run that long doing really well, and I know he is good on the hills. So I think he has a really good chance of running a fast time.”

Paul and the other runners in the marathon and the half will have to face the challenge of Charlottesville’s hills, from the Downtown Mall, past the Rotunda and out to Garth Road and back. They also will be running on this week’s warmest day.

“You never know what the weather is going to do here in April, so a few years ago we moved the start to 6:30 a.m.,” Conte said.

Most of the half marathoners will be done by 8:30 or 9 a.m., she said, and most of the marathoners should be back at the finish line between 11 and 11:30.

“So we are still in the safe zone,” she said, “especially this time of year.”

To make sure the runners have plenty of beverages, director of race logistics Marty Roddy was out on the course stocking the 14 water stops with water, Gatorade and what seems like 30,000 cups.

“Even if we do have any issues, we have Dr. Bob Wilder from the UVa Runners Clinic as our medical director. He has a medic or a nurse at each of the water stops. No other marathon does that yet.”

So that just leaves the course itself.

“There are some hills,” Conte said. “You can’t really have a marathon here in Charlottesville without encountering some hills, unless you do the same loop 10 times.

“I think the beauty of the course way overshadows the fact that there are hills.”

The scenic route travels past Albemarle County horse and wine country, with their views of the mountains and downtown neighborhoods awash in spring flowers and blooming dogwood trees.

“There minds will sort of wander, and they don’t realize how many hills there are,” Conte added with a laugh.

In all seriousness, it is the scenic course that has garnered a lot of national attention.

“Runner’s World, which is sort of the running bible, voted us as one of the top 10 best new marathons in the United States,” Conte said. “That was huge.”

This year the magazine featured the race again in its “Races and Places” section. Even the New York Times listed the local race in its five best destination marathons.

“That means here is a marathon where you can go and have a vacation,” Conte said. “One of them was Hawaii.

“But you know, once you travel, you realize how many people have heard about Charlottesville and want to visit either for the natural beauty or the history or the architecture. There are a lot of people who do want to see Charlottesville.”

A lot of people also are coming to see the Dave Matthews Band this weekend.

“It has been extremely difficult for runners to find hotels in Charlottesville, because there is a Dave Matthews concert going on,” Conte said, explaining that may be why the number of registered runners were below last year’s figures. “We usually fill up the hotels ourselves with our event every year. With the concert and a lacrosse tournament, it has been very difficult for runners coming from out of town to find any place to sleep.”

Sleep time, however, is over.

The race is afoot and Conte is hoping that the community comes out to join her and some 250 volunteers to the cheer on the runners, including two from New Zealand.

“We always want this to become more and more of a community event,” she said. “We really want people who live on the course to be proud of this event.

“People come out with their kids and watch the race, and that is what I think really makes this special. We are looking forward to great things.”