Close to 1,000 runners will show up in Maggie Valley Saturday night (Aug. 25) for the 23rd annual Moonlight Race, a 5-mile event that at one time was one of the country’s premier short races.

The 8-kilometer race (4.96 miles) is on an “out and back” course. It is known to participants as a “down and up.”

It starts on U.S. 19 (Maggie Valley’s Main Street) near the entrance to Ghost Town. Runners cruise downhill for approximately 2.5 miles, then turn around and begin a 2.5-mile ascent, finishing in the Ghost Town parking lot. It’s a tough race.

Michael Musyoki of Kenya holds the course record, set in 1986, at 22:41. This averages just a tick over 4:30 per mile. For those with ordinary abilities that may seem a phenomenal pace, and for Maggie Valley it may be. It does not, however, even crack the top 50 times in the world for that distance.

Fiftieth is 22:29, held by Nick Rose of England. Rose also holds the 10th best 8K time, 22:14, set in Los Altos, Calif., in 1981. The world-class runner ran several times in Maggie, but his best ever finish was 22:44 in 1984, attesting to the difficulty of the race.

Many other world-class runners have participated in the Maggie Valley Moonlight Race over the years. Craig Virgin still holds the U.S. National Championship 10,000-meter record of 27:39. He won Maggie in 1982 with a time of 22:47.

Charles Dotson of Lake Junaluska, a 78-year-old local running phenom, plans to make this year’s Moonlight Race his 23rd in a row. Dotson is one of the founding members of the defunct Haywood Road Runners Club, which helped sponsor the Maggie race for years. He credited Waynesville resident Reimar Steffan, who used to manage Waynesville Country Club, for bringing world-class runners to Maggie Valley and creating a national caliber race.

“It was Reimar’s efforts and energy that created a world-class race,” Dotson said.
And Maggie was world class.

Ken Young of Petrolia, Calif., who keeps the “Analytical Distance Runner” website at www.mattoleriver.com, said Maggie was one of “the” summer races of the 1980s, both in terms of competition and prize money.

The $24,750 purse of 1990 was the largest in the country for an 8K that year. Four Moonlight races made the Top 25 money list; 1990, 1993, 1991 and 1989. The overall purse total through 1997 of $97,900 is fifth on the all-time money list. In the early 1990s the race was broadcast on ESPN.

The inaugural (1979) race director was Wood Fowler of Maggie Valley. The Moonlight began as a local race but grew quickly under the direction of Steffen. It was hard work, but a labor of love for Steffen.
Steffen was race director for about 10 years.

“Until I ran out of steam,” he said.

Reimar said the logistics were mind-numbing. Lining up sponsors, printing T-shirts, luring racers, scheduling clinics and arranging lodging.

“It was a year-round job,” Steffen said. “There were 1,200 to 1,300 men and 600 to 700 women competing.”

Steffen said he worked to make the race a two-day event and there would be clinics on the Friday before the race led. Those were often led by notable runners like Rod Dixon of New Zealand, Craig Virgin and Herb Lindsay.

Many top racers were paid appearance fees and stayed with area families for the race. Steffen got a scare from Dixon one year.

“He was staying with us and borrowed my jeep to go for a drive. He got stuck and didn’t make it back until about 20 minutes before race time,” Steffen said.

Dixon’s best Maggie time was 22:44 in 1981. That is real close to Musyoki’s record (22:41) because the race was actually five miles (8.047km) in 81.

Maggie’s purse has always been evenly divided between the men and women. “There was no choice, with runners like [1984 Olympic silver medalist] Grete Waitz,” Steffen said. Waitz was only one of the stellar women athletes to participate at Maggie. Three-time winner Margaret Groos is a former world record holder in the 5,000-meter indoors and a 1988 Olympic Trials marathon winner. North Carolina’s own Joan Nesbit won the race twice in 1989 and 1992.

Gary Lance of Waynesville directed the race during its transition stage in the early 1990s. When Lance started, the race was still paying big purses and was not always winding up in the black.

“It was difficult to just break even,” Lance said.

Lance put in a lot of hard work and made a lot of friends, but “the time came when we had to say, ‘we can’t afford you anymore,’ to elite runners.”

Lance said it’s not the top runners in the country that spectators line the sidewalk to see and cheer. It’s their friends and neighbors  people they know. There is a lot of local and regional support for the race, Lance said.

Bob Henry of Maggie Valley agrees. Henry has been directing the race, with the aid of the Maggie Valley Chamber of Commerce, local businesses and the technical expertise of the Asheville Track Club. He said the race has a regional flavor now.

“It’s for local and area runners who want to come, do the race, maybe spend the night in the Valley and have breakfast at Joey’s Pancake House,” he said.

According to Henry, it’s still competitive with collegiate runners from the area participating and an infusion of new sponsorship from Mountain Bank.

“We’ve actually increased the prize money this year,” Henry said.

The Maggie Valley Moonlight Race seems to have returned home, with more local ownership. The race still draws a large number of racers and spectators. Henry estimates that there were 900 or so runners last year and probably 400 more for the 4K walk.

For more information or an entry form call 828.926.1686.

 

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