That includes about 2,000 runners who will be entered in the full marathon. Runners from around the country and beyond. Running veterans and, surely, some rookies trying for the first time to see what they can put into — and get out of — a 26.2-mile run.
Linda Quirk was one of those endurance running newcomers once upon a time.
She was 35 when she ran her first marathon at the suggestion of her brother. Now 56, she’s been just about everywhere with the sport.
“(I) got hooked and never looked back,” she said.
That is why she is in Kansas City this week. Quirk, from Jacksonville, Fla., will run the half-marathon Saturday, using KC’s relatively hilly course as training for her next endeavor.
Her goal for 2010 is to become the first woman to complete the 4 Deserts endurance series in one calendar year. That’s four 150-mile runs, each completed over seven days, featuring the Atacama Desert in Chile in March, the Gobi Desert in China in June, the Sahara Desert in Egypt in October and a final trek in Antarctica in November.
Quirk recently accomplished her goal of running a marathon on all seven continents within one year.
“When I finished that, I kept thinking, well, how am I going to top it?” she said. “So you graduate to the next level.”
Quirk linked with BP last year and speaks on behalf of BP gasoline with Invigorate as part of the product’s “younger for longer” message.
That’s also how she explains her drive to keep pushing herself through running.
“The motivation is because I love it and because it keeps me younger,” Quirk said.
So she’ll be back at it Saturday and has plans to run the New York and Philadelphia marathons before the year is out to continue her training for the deserts.
And for those first-time marathoners Saturday, Quirk encourages them not to worry about their times and just have fun — so they, too, can get hooked on running.
“It’ll propel you further on in your life to do something even more exciting,” Quirk said. “It’s like my motto: ‘If you can see it, you can do it. If you believe it, it will happen. So just dream big.’ I say that all the time. I’ve been dreaming big forever.”
•NOTES: Kevin Wicker, director of local events and development for the Kansas City Sports Commission, said registration numbers were around 9,600 for the event’s various races (marathon, half-marathon, marathon relay, 5K and kids marathon), as of Thursday evening.
“We’ve already way surpassed last year’s numbers,” said Wicker, who expects the final number of entrants to be close to 10,500.
By his count, runners from 46 states and eight countries had already registered.
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