POCATELLO — Local resident Penny Parrish won the women’s category of the Pocatello Marathon for the 12th time on Sept. 2, taking home first place during an event that organizers described as a huge success.
Parrish has only missed two Pocatello Marathons since she first started racing the event in 2008 and has finished as the top woman 12 of the 14 times she’s participated in what marks a staggering 85 percent winning percentage.
“Honestly I was pretty surprised this year because I did not expect to win this time around,” Parrish told the Idaho State Journal during a recent phone interview. “So I was definitely pretty excited about winning again.”
Parrish, who completed the full marathon, was one of 756 people to finish one of the event’s six different race divisions, which also includes a half marathon, 10-kilometer, 5-kilometer, 1 mile and 0.2 mile distances, according to Pocatello Marathon Director Mike Calley.
Calley said this year marked the highest number of registrations, 882, and finishers in the post COVID-19 era.
“We did really well in comparison to the numbers we had around the Covid years,” Calley said. This was not the highest participation that we have ever had but we had a significant number of registrations and finishers this year.”
Five different countries — The U.S., Canada, Denmark, Australia and the Netherlands — and 43 U.S. states had racers participate in this year’s Pocatello Marathon, said Calley, adding that Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Canada, Montana, Florida, California, Oregon, Texas and Colorado all had participation numbers that were in the double digits.
“This year was a huge success,” Calley said. “Things went very smoothly other than the weather didn’t do us any favors. We started with warmer than normal temperatures. It didn’t heat up any warmer than prior years but the warmer temps at the beginning of the day had some effects more so on the marathon category participants than others.”
Parish said she was surprised to win the women’s category this year because the race felt harder this year for reasons she couldn’t describe. Perhaps the warmer weather played a role.
“Just physically, it felt a lot harder on Saturday for some reason, I’m not sure why,” Parrish said. “I was still training and doing pretty high miles ahead of the race but there was just something about Saturday that felt really hard.”
The half marathon race category saw the highest number of registrations and finishers this year, said Calley, adding that a total of 322 people registered and 286 people that completed that category.
The current record holder for the fastest time completing the full marathon, Justin Park, of Sandy, Utah, also participated in the Pocatello Marathon this year and to the surprise of very few aside from Park himself finished first in the men’s division. Park actually started the race a few minutes late this year due to some funny circumstances, he told the Journal during a recent phone interview.
“I had a little bit of drama this year. When I got up to the starting point there were quite the lines for the porta johns,” Park said. “I knew that I was not going to get through the line before the race started and sure enough the gun went off when I was in line. I ended up starting the race about four minutes late.”
About halfway through the marathon, however, Park was able to maintain a steady pace and ultimately pulled away from the leader and never looked back.
“Despite the late start I was still able to finish in first place and was happy about that,” Park said. “It’s always great to go up to Pocatello and participate in this event. (Calley) and his team do a great job organizing this event and the people are the nicest people in the country. I had a great experience.”
Calley said there were almost no major obstacles or roadblocks that would have caused any hiccups to this year’s event, adding that he was inundated with positive reflections following the race last week.
“We just got so many positive comments from runners via email and on our social media,” Calley said. “We heard stories of their success and what it means to so many people. There were so many amazing stories from people who crossed the finish line about what brought them here and why they raced a particular distance. Seeing the joy on the finishers’ faces was definitely a highlight.”
Registration for the 2024 Pocatello marathon opens Saturday with the inaugural event pricing of $40 to participate in either the full or half marathon race divisions, Calley said.
More information can be found online by visiting pocatellomarathon.com.