Runners are flocking to this year's Lehigh Valley Health Network Via Marathon like never before.
More than 2,000 participants are registered for the Sept. 8 race, which is more than double any previous year.
Organizers say the significant swell is mostly due to increased interest in running the Boston Marathon following the bombings at the April race. Participants must run a certain time based on their sex and age in another marathon to qualify for Boston. And while there are dozens of Boston Marathon-qualifying races, the Lehigh Valley marathon has a high-qualifying percentage and is well timed with registration for the Boston Marathon, which starts the following day.
“The day of the Boston Marathon bombing, we saw a huge spike in registration numbers and the whole week after it just continued and continued,” Via spokeswoman Lisa Walkiewicz said. “We knew we were seeing something we hadn’t seen before.”
The Lehigh Valley marathon, which started in 2007 with 153 runners, has never previously had more than 912 runners, its high mark in 2011. This year, 2,037 runners are registered.
Another thing that’s changed about the race is where the runners are coming from. The race generally draws about half of its participants from the Lehigh Valley. This year, only 10 percent are from the Valley with 70 percent coming from out of state, Walkiewicz said.
One of those people is David Coligado. The 35-year-old Chicago resident just missed running a Boston qualifying time by 51 seconds in the New Jersey Marathon in May and is giving it one more chance next weekend.
He has a goal of running a marathon in each state — he’s at 37 now — but Boston was never on his must-list until the bombings.
“After this year’s events, I said this is a great reason to do it,” Coligado said.
He heard of the Lehigh Valley race through meeting Runner’s World magazine's Runner-in-Chief Bart Yasso — who created the Lehigh Valley course — at last year’s Chicago Marathon.
“Once I found out this is a net downhill course … I said this sounds like one where I could qualify for Boston,” Coligado said.
The Lehigh Valley marathon has the fourth-highest qualifying percentage of any Boston Marathon qualifying race, with 24.8 percent of participants qualifying, Walkiewicz said. It also has a faster average finish time than many races — 4 hours and 3 minutes compared with 4 hours and 32 minutes for the Chicago Marathon, she said.
Many Boston-qualifying marathons are seeing more participants this year, but few have been at the level of the Lehigh Valley marathon, Runner’s World Editor-at-Large Mark Remy said.
“There’s certainly a bump — which was to be expected — but not an enormous one, because qualifying for Boston is still hard,” he said.
Men under 35 must run a 3-hour, 5-minute marathon to qualify while women in the same age category must run a 3-hour, 35-minute race. The qualifying paces go up by five minutes per each five-year age group.
Remy will be among the Lehigh Valley marathon runners hoping to qualify for Boston. After running 23 marathons — including six in Boston — he had declared himself retired from marathons until the Boston bombings.
“It’s a sense of solidarity, or a big middle finger to terrorists of the world,” he said.
The Lehigh Valley marathon also has more participants than ever in its half marathon, which takes place the same day. The marathon course goes from Allentown to Easton while the half course is between Bethlehem and Easton.
The race, which had 881 participants in 2011 and 798 in 2012, has 1,059 registrants this year, Walkiewicz said. And like with the marathon, the half is seeing many more non-Lehigh Valley participants — a total of 52 percent, including 30 percent who are from out of state, she said.
In addition to attracting people interested in qualifying for Boston, regional and national marketing for the two races did significantly better this year, Walkiewicz said. Half marathons are especially growing in popularity, she said.
The increase of out-of-area participants is translating into good business for local hotels, Walkiewicz said. Most of the 10 hotels with which the marathon partners have sold many of their rooms for the weekend, she said.
Discover Lehigh Valley President Mike Stershic said there are still hundreds of available hotel rooms in the region next weekend though some have sold out — such as the Comfort Suites in Bethlehem — also due to it being Lehigh University’s first home football game.
“While some runners stay in hotels, other runners stay with friends and family,” he said. “We’ll see after the race how it turns out, but I’m optimistic we’ll do a lot of business that weekend.”
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