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Article: '70 race launched a July 24 tradition
- Article from:
- Deseret News (Salt Lake City)
- Article date:
- July 24, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Exactly 39 years ago this morning, James Santomier stood on the
steps of the courthouse in Farmington with 72 other people generally
described by their friends and neighbors and the population at large
as crazy.
It was 5 a.m. and the 73 people, all of them men, pointed
themselves in the direction of Salt Lake City and Hotel Utah, which
still existed back then, and took off running.
They were the first entrants in the Deseret News Pioneer
Marathon, Utah's first officially sponsored and annual 26.2-mile
run.
The marathon wasn't unheard of. It had been around since 1896
when an organizer of the first modern Olympics in Greece conceived
of a distance run from the town of Marathon to Athens to ...