There’s a peculiar allure to running 26.2 miles of undulating dirt trails around Lion Mountain and Beaver Lake before pounding the asphalt of East Lakeshore Drive to the finish line, but at the Two Bear Marathon in Whitefish, participants are drawn back year after year.
Entering its 10th year, the homegrown marathon has evolved through the years, transforming along with the burgeoning network of trails built by the Whitefish Legacy Partners.
And while the year-to-year variability of the point-to-point course keeps the race interesting, it’s not the main attraction for the event’s clutch of perennial runners.
Instead, it’s the community of participants, volunteers and spectators who make it so special.
Markus Lehr, of Germany, has a habit of taking “running vacations” in the United States and Canada, and has clocked fast times at numerous big city marathons. But after running the New York marathon and finding himself slightly overwhelmed by its crowds, he decided to pare down the size of the marathons he was running.
“So I started looking for a scenic marathon with fewer runners. And this was the Two Bear,” Lehr said. “I ran it first in 2007 and since then have come every year, eight times now.”
In 2008 and 2009 he won the event, chalking up a Two Bear personal record of 2 hours, 56 minutes. Another year, he barely made his sub-3 hour goal, scratching out a 2:59:59.9.
One year, Lehr fell ill and couldn’t run, so traveled to Whitefish anyway, just to volunteer.
“In general, I like the layout of the course, the trail and forest, the hills, the paved part. It’s always challenging from start to finish,” he said. “But what I like most is the people there. People in town, runners, volunteers and race directors. They treat me as a friend and make me feel so welcome. Just like coming home. Last year I remember there was a couple which traveled all the way from Scotland to Whitefish, in order to get married. As I asked them why, they said: ‘because this here are the most wonderful people in the world.’”
Seth Carbonari has run the Two Bear Marathon every year, and frequently places in the top 10. But more than his finishing times, he remembers vignettes of the smiles and grimaces etched on the faces of runners who embrace the spirit of the event, accomplishing the marathon distance through true grit.
Like the time in 2005 when Gary Hanson ran the race, clocking a sluggish 7 hours, 5 minutes. Again, it wasn’t Hanson’s time that made his Two Bear finish extraordinary.
In May of 2002, while preparing to run the Bloomsday race in Spokane, Washington, Hanson was struck by a car and suffered serious injuries, including a traumatic brain injury. He spent almost two months in a Spokane hospital recovering from his injuries, and worked daily to rehabilitate physically and return his body to top condition, shuffling around the health club track.
In 2005, he was determined to complete the Two Bear.
“He had a tough run, but at the finish everyone had stuck around and started cheering like crazy for him as he came through,” Carbonari said. “It’s not just the top guys that have the blistering times who make it special. There are people out there that are just putting everything they have into this event.”
Another year, Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial took a nasty spill on the trail section of the course, finishing the marathon with blood caked on his leg.
“He took a heck of a fall, but he gutted it out. That’s the kind of event this is. It’s the hometown marathon and the organizers do a great job of putting it on,” Carbonari said. “It’s really fun with a great atmosphere and you get to see a bunch of your friends helping out at the aid station.”
“It was my 11th and last marathon and it was the hardest marathon I’ve ever done,” Dial said.
Jacob Deitz stepped in as the Two Bear race director this year, and said he’s focused on growing the community support that has existed for the past decade while building the event into an even more popular, energetic marathon.
“My focus is to build on the momentum and really strengthen the connection to the community,” he said.
Last year saw the most participants ever run in the half-marathon and full marathon, with 349 runners. This year, he expects around 300 participants, and hopes those numbers continue to grow every year.
Still, the event has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 2004, when Brad Seaman and two other runners, armed with topo maps, a GPS and bear spray, spent six months in the summer and fall of 2004 getting lost in the Stillwater State Forest, trying to figure out how to string together 26.2 miles circumnavigating Whitefish Lake.
Eventually, they accomplished the first part of their goal and mapped out a challenging, scenic course for a marathon. Next, they chose a weekend when the fall colors were at their peak, and the Two Bear Marathon was born.
“I can’t tell you how many times we got lost, but we found a way,” Seaman said.
The Two Bear Marathon is hosted by The Wave and is supported by its sponsors, and 100 percent of race entry fees are donated to The Wave Scholarship Fund, a program that allows community members who wouldn’t otherwise have the means to enroll at the facility on a sliding scale.
“That’s probably what I’m most proud of. The Two Bear was originally started and continues to be today The Wave Scholarship Fund, which is how we reach out to community members who otherwise couldn’t afford a membership,” he said.
And with the sprawling Whitefish Trail project – a 55-mile system of buffed out singletrack that wanders through state trust lands around Whitefish – continuing to develop, the marathon will continue to realize its potential, Deitz said.
“It has really evolved with the Legacy Trails. It used to be on Legacy Trails to Beaver Lake and then hopped on the roads, but now it’s on trails all the way to Woods Lake,” he said, adding that this is the first year that the course will follow the same route as the year before. “We definitely want to grow the marathon and expose people to these trails. It’s been a big push since I started this job, but I’m determined to take this on because it has such great community impact potential.”