Participants go to great lengths to run in the rain at the Juneau Marathon and Half Marathon

Roger Pine was wearing a trash bag with a strategically ripped hole for his neck while standing in the rain just moments before setting out from the starting line of the Juneau Marathon and Half Marathon on Saturday morning. But the resident of College Station, Texas, had a perfectly valid reason for the impromptu wet weather gear.

“I just got off a cruise ship 20 minutes ago,” he said while walking to the starting point in the parking area at Savikko Park, almost directly across the channel from where his ship was parked.

The decision to be among about 65 people participating in the full marathon wasn’t quite as hasty, but “whenever I’m on a trip I look it up” as part of a larger quest, Pine said.

“I’m doing one in all 50 states and because our trip was ending today I was like ‘I gotta go for it,’” he said, noting Alaska is the 29th state he’s run a marathon in.

Every state and race is a different experience, Pine said, singling out as particularly notable the Pikes Peak Marathon in Colorado that begins at about 6,300 feet above sea level and ends at the top of the 14,115-foot mountain. As for Juneau’s course that contains a few gentle hills of 75 to 150 feet, he said it “looks great” — or at least as much as he could see of it through his glasses in the rain.

“I’m hoping the weather will clear a little bit so I can see some of the views,” he said.

This year’s registered field of more than 85 participants was the largest in the history of the marathon that originated in 1992, but about 20 people didn’t pick up their race packets and thus presumably didn’t participate — perhaps due to the weather, said David Epstein, the race’s director. He estimated about 170 people participated in the half marathon, with about 30 additional people who registered not showing up.

One out-of-towner showing plenty of eagerness to show up for the full-length race was April Goulin, who as a resident of Carcross, Yukon, had to complete a marathon course just to reach Juneau due to a landslide on Tuesday that blocked the South Klondike Highway leading to Skagway.

“We had to go the long way,” she said, referring to driving with her husband Cody through Whitehorse and Haines Junction in the Yukon before turning south to Haines to catch the ferry to Juneau.

The Juneau Marathon was her first, following half marathons in Ottawa and Detroit, and it held more appeal than some other course in The Last Frontier, Goulin said.

“A lot of marathons in Alaska go up mountains, you don’t run along the ocean,” she said. “So this seems like a nice scenic way to do it.”

Like most participants interviewed, Goulin said she had scoped out her post-race meal options and settled on carbo- and protein-heavy Russian fast food at Pel’meni in Merchants Wharf.

“We’re going to go eat lots of pierogies,” she said.

Also running a marathon for the first time was the father-daughter duo of Richard and Aspen Olson, who’ve been taking part in shorter races at her urging since moving back to Juneau three years ago. He said the original thought was to run the half marathon, but she prevailed in signing up for the full course.

“It’s just to push yourself, to challenge yourself, and to have a goal and see how far you can push your body,” she said.

Their objectives for the day were modest — pizza at The Island Pub unless “there’s a mass crowd over there” and finishing the race in less than five-and-a-half hours, Richard Olson said.

“We’re trying to make it back before the awards ceremony,” he said.

The overall winner of the marathon was Connor Arnell with a time of 2 hours, 52 minutes and 27 seconds. The victory came three weeks after he won the Goldbelt Tram-Mount Roberts Trail Run, but he said this was his first marathon and it was more of a struggle than he expected.

“I’m kind of surprised at how it was rough, but I’m kind of surprised at how good I felt the last little 100,” he said.

“It’s tough because a lot of people run the first half too quick. So even though I’m telling myself ‘Hey, chill, chill, chill’ you still kind of get dragged into it. My pace like on the second half, slower for sure, but I’m surprised at how good I held on even when it was really tough.”

Arnell said he didn’t have any specific post-race meal and activity plans, beyond “taking it easy for sure.”

“Maybe some French toast,” he said. “I love French toast.”

Shalane Frost of Fairbanks won the women’s category with a time of 2:58:21, but like Arnell she said the going got a bit tougher for her during the second half of the course and she didn’t quite achieve her goal of breaking the women’s record of 2:51:33 set by Juneau’s Shannon Gress in 2014.

“I was on pace at mile 13, but I just haven’t really run pavement enough for my hamstrings to handle it,” Frost said. This was her third marathon, with the other two being at the Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks that features a considerable amount of trail running and 3,285 feet in elevation gain.

Running in Saturday’s marathon meant a chance to visit Juneau for the first time, Frost said, so she plans to spend the rest of the weekend participating in much less strenuous tourist activities, including a post-race meal at a place that features a brewery.

“I’m camping in Auke Bay so I’ll probably just go hang out,” she said “But tomorrow I booked myself on a boat tour in Tracy Arm. So I’ll be able to chill out and look at some glaciers.”

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.