KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Lee’s Summit resident John Pitzel will line up for his 200th half-marathon Saturday morning as thousands of people hit the streets for the Garmin Kansas City Marathon, which starts and ends along Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard between the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Frank A. Theis Park.
“It just sort of happened, you know,” Pitzel said of his impending milestone.
It was more than 12 years ago when Pitzel, 62, took up running.
“I had always been physically active, but I wasn't being active enough, and I was starting to get more of me than I wanted — put it that way,” he said. “... The big thing started when I was 50. I said, ‘I'm going to mark this by doing something slightly outrageous. I'm going to run 500 kilometers of races before I turn 51.”
The reality of trying to rack up more than 310 race miles proved daunting.
“I signed up for just about everything,” Pitzel said. “I was doing 5Ks, 10Ks, half-(marathons). I did a full (marathon) and, at the end of it, I'd done 48 races in the 52 weeks. It was 508 kilometers total, so I made it, and I said, ‘OK, the half-marathon is the one I like.’”
Pitzel traveled around the region — he’s now run half-marathons in 25 states and Bermuda — and discovered that the 13.1-mile appealed to him, because “it's long enough to make a drive worthwhile, but it's short enough that there's food at the end, which is kind of the key.”
The annual marathon is also key to the Kansas City Sports Commission.
“It is the largest funding mechanism we have as a nonprofit,” President and CEO Kathy Nelson said, “so this race truly fuels everything that the sports commission does.”
For the first time since 2013, organizers expect more than 10,000 runners Saturday.
“That's a lot,” Nelson said. “That's a big marathon. We haven't had 10,000 runners for over a decade, so for us to get back to that 10,000 point is a big deal.”
Pitzel’s excited for such a big crowd.
“You get to see Kansas City at four mph on foot,” he said.
During the half-marathon Saturday, Pitzel will serve as the three-hour pacer, which he has done for 41 previous half-marathons, providing a seasoned runner to help guide newcomers to success on the long-distance route. Along the way, he’ll offer advice, support and encouragement.
“I'm going to tell really bad jokes, keep their minds off what's going on and offer tips on how to run the course, because a lot of the folks that I pace have never run a race of distance before,” said Pitzel, who will be running the Kansas City half-marathon for the 11th time. “We talk about how to manage the water stops, how to run, what to look for — how to essentially run the race of that distance.”
It’s a role he relishes.
“That's been fun, getting people to realize their dreams,” Pitzel said.
But he’s also excited to realize one of his own, one he never really set out to accomplish.
“You start totaling it up,” he said, “and it's like, ‘That's a lot of shirts. Oh, we're at 185? OK, now we need to start planning,’ because I wanted Kansas City to be (No.) 200.”
But Pitzel is not stopping there.
“I'm going to be doing the Des Moines half-marathon the day after Kansas City, so that'll be 201,” he said. “It's like, ‘Well, are we going for another 100?’”
Pitzel, who ran 26 half-marathons in 2022, said his knees hold up and he doesn’t plan to slow down.
Course maps for each of the Garmin Kansas City Marathon races, which also include a 5K and 10K, are available online along with expected road closures.
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