The Royal Victoria Marathon started out as a way to spare the local lean-and-sneakered set yet another ferry ride to the mainland for road races.
Pragmatic to be sure, but not nearly so heroic-sounding as the birth of the endurance event in 490 BC, when Greek soldier Pheidippides made the 42.2-kilometre jog from Marathon to let the folks back in Athens know the hometown team had been victorious in battle.
In the late 1970s, Victoria's keen runners didn't have much choice when it came to road races, according to the Victoria Marathon Society president Bob Reid, who has been involved with the marathon from Year 1 as a volunteer, and at times a competitor.
"We were always travelling from here to 91原创 to do a marathon," says Reid, referring to the then newly formed Prairie Inn Harriers, a club whose Sunday runs left from, and ended at, the Saanichton pub.
Reid recalls when, after one of the Harriers' lunchtime runs out of the downtown-YMCA/YWCA, members Gunner Shaw and Alex Marshall came up with the idea that has now become an annual tradition.
"Let's do our own here," the pair suggested.
Next Sunday's RVM marks the event's 30th anniversary.
The first Royal Victoria Marathon took more than a year to plan. In September 1979, the Harriers organized a half-marathon from the Empress Hotel to raise seed money for the marathon in September 1980.
Early in the marathon year, the downtown Y offered a free nine-month clinic to prepare participants for the Sept. 20 marathon. The word easily spread among Lower Mainland and 91原创 Northwest runners that the City of Gardens was hosting a marathon.
On race day, 750 competitors showed up at Mile 0 on Dallas Road to await the 7:30 a.m. start gun, a military cannon half-way up Beacon Hill. Among them was Victoria's Al Howie, who had just run the Edmonton Marathon. He then spent 11 days jogging the 1,500 kilometres back to make his hometown's first marathon. Howie would finish 14th.
The course was twice out-and-back to Willows Beach with Surrey's Tom Howard the first home of the 681 finishers. Howard was somewhat disappointed with his 2:21:45 time.
"Victoria has a very difficult course. You can't do your best time on it. There is a strong wind and the hills -- and too many sharp turns," he told the Times 91原创 post-race.
The original course remained until 1985 when organizers sought to raise the marathon's profile by shifting the start and finish lines to the provincial legislative buildings. The course took a loop downtown, a sweep through Beacon Hill Park, then out-and-back from Cook Street and Dallas Road to the Royal Victoria Yacht Club and finishing back along Dallas to the legislative buildings. Apart from a few tweaks, that's been the course ever since, according to Reid.
Another major change came the following year. The marathon moved to the Thanksgiving weekend to spare runners the higher summer hotel rates that spilled over here from 91原创's Expo 86.
What Reid remembers most about those early years was the comparative simplicity of staging the Royal Victoria event. The first year there was only the marathon, now there are three other races-- a half-marathon, an eight-km and a kids' run. All four combined are expected to attract more than 11,000 runners next Sunday.
"It was easy to manage," Reid says.
There was none of today's red tape such as road-closure permits from the city and Oak Bay. Nor were there liability insurance certificates as now required by the city, Oak Bay, the legislative buildings, the Fairmont Empress and Victoria Conference Centre, as well as B.C. Athletics, the governing body for road racing. Insurance premiums now cost $12,000. Those were non-existent in the race's first few years, according to Reid.
More police are involved now for traffic and intersection controls as well as piloting the race lead vehicles.
"In 1980, we had one cop, now we have 40," Reid says.
The Royal Victoria event has become a business with a $750,000 budget, says full-time general manager Cathy Noel. More than $300,000 of that alone goes toward the high-tech running shirts that competitors now receive instead of the generic cotton T-shirts.
The event shirts are a good investment, Noel says. Runners rave about the quality -- and wear them elsewhere. All of which is good publicity for the Royal Victoria, she adds.
Part of Noel's job is marketing the race and its three-day trade fair in other marathon cities. The job is made that much easier by such endorsements as Runner's World magazine touting the Royal Victoria as one of the top 10 destination marathons in North America. Also, the race is known to have the highest percentage of participants of any event to qualify for the famed Boston marathon, Reid says.
There's competition among venues to attract both the elite runners chasing four-figure prize money and the lifestyle or just-thrilled-to-finish runners. On the same weekend as the Royal Victoria, there are 12 other marathons including Kelowna, Chicago, Ottawa, Spokane and Long Beach, Calif.
Nonetheless, all the good public relations and promotion over the years has paid off, according to Royal Victoria race director and running-store entrepreneur Rob Reid. When he first became involved with the event over a decade ago, fewer than 10 runners from his hometown of Toronto would register to run in the race. Now, they number in the hundreds, Reid says.
"We've become known as a strong destination marathon," Reid says.
The local economy benefits with 80 per cent of the competitors from out of town. Reid estimates they'll pump as much as $6 million into Victoria next weekend.
This year -- and for the first time -- organizers closed off the half-marathon field at 5,400. They also expect to fill the eight km and kids' runs by race day. The marathon isn't likely to reach its 4,000 cap, according to Noel.
"It's a safety issue," she says, explaining why the more-the-merrier dictum doesn't apply to road races.
"We don't want them tripping or colliding or being pushed off course. The streets are only so wide."
Noel points to the soft economy as one reason for this year's high numbers. People are sticking closer to home, she believes. Also, running is a relatively cheap sport.
Further, the popularity of marathon clinics helps more and more first-timers realize they can go the distance, Noel says.
"It's a challenge to your mind and body," she says, explaining the lure of the marathon for others -- and herself.
Last year, she ran the Toronto and Olympia marathons. Race day here is too busy for Noel to lace up for her own marathon.
Royal Victoria's veteran race announcer Steve King readily grasps the challenges of a marathon. The Penticton man organized many of the Okanagan's now established races -- and often ran them
"It's a way to be a warrior without getting into real fights," King says.
The marathon is the runner's version of Mount Everest, according to race director Rob Reid. "Everybody likes to see what potential they have as a physical being."
Sometimes just finishing is the goal, even, as in one case Reid cites, if it means missing the actual marathon.
At one mid-1990s race-eve dinner, word spread that two people were running the course in the dark. The husband and wife had been called back to Atlanta by a family crisis, and would be unable to stay for the next day's race.
There was no way the Victoria race hosts were going to let the visitors reach their goal without a cheering audience. Many at the dinner went out to applaud them.
"Runners have a common link -- getting to the finish line," Reid says.
Reid drove out to the race course in his van, meeting the couple about five km off the finish.
He escorted them to the finish with Neil Young's Long May You Run blaring from his van. At the finish, Canada's '70s-era marathon man and 91原创 sports hall-of-famer Jerome Drayton hung their finishers-medals around their necks.
Reid has heard that the husband often tells what happened to them in Victoria when speaking at other marathons.
"He's a great ambassador for the spirit we put into assisting people reaching their goals -- and crossing the finish line," he says.
