Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

By Emily Bayci, The Gazette

Thirty-four years ago, Tom Berg was running through Garden of the Gods with friend Martha Barton when they decided it would be a great place to have a race.

“It’s such a beautiful place with the red rocks, we thought there needed to be a race here,” Berg said.

A whirlwind of events followed and six months later, on June 25, 1977, about 300 people lined up for the first Garden of the Gods 10-mile race.

Berg, who served as race director for three years, said in the second year the publicity significantly increased resulting in around 1,800 participants.

For the next 33 years, the event grew in numbers and had several changes to the course location and set-up.

This Sunday, the 7 a.m. race starts and finishes at Manitou Springs’ Memorial Park.

“For me, the worst thing about becoming race director was not being able to run in the race,” current director Ron Ilgen said.

There were 1,200 registrants as of Tuesday afternoon, Ilgen said. Elite runners typically sign up on race day. The registrants are mainly runners from the Colorado area who are invested in the history of the race.

Like 66-year-old Joyce McKelvey of Black Forest, who has run the race with her husband off and on for the past 20 years.

It was the first long race the duo did together and is what sparked their interest in long-distance races and in the Triple Crown of Running Series.

“We thought it was a good starting point with the 10-mile distance but it proved to be challenging,” Joyce said. “It still tends to be my husband’s least favorite race,” she added with a laugh.

Many local runners take breaks from the race and come back to it, like Peter Maksimow of Maintou Springs, who moved away from the area for several years and Colorado Springs’ Connilee Walter, who first ran the race in 1993, but took off for several years when she was pregnant.

“I was really happy to see this race has stayed around,” Maksimow said.

Walter appreciates having a race close to home, which was a goal when Berg came up with the idea.

“Front Range citizens are blessed to have such spectacular scenery in our own backyard and in fact it is what first attracted me to the Colorado Springs community,” Walter said.

Berg, who is back as race announcer, is happy the essence of the race has stayed the same from the early years.

“That year (1978) there was a lot of good feelings, a lot of people who had never run before, it brought them together,” Berg said. “Those good feelings remain today. It’s a beautiful course, it’s exhilarating, it’s pretty challenging and it’s usually a pretty, sunny day.”