Ron Ilgen does not call the Pikes Peak Marathon a bucket list event.

“I guess I coined the phrase of a ‘death bed event,’” he said. “Where one day you’re laying there and thinking, What have I done with my life? And you can always say you ran the Pikes Peak Marathon.”

That captures the allure of the event set for its 70th running on Sept. 21.

Ilgen has gotten to know the history, the people and, yes, the allure as much as anyone. Before moving on last year, he had directed the marathon for 20 years, watching it grow into the world-renowned phenomenon it is today.

What started as an odd challenge attracting 14 people in 1956 is now “America’s Ultimate Challenge.”

Spanning 7,700-plus feet of vertical gain over 26 miles, the up and down dash along the 14,115-foot peak is annually attempted by up to 800 runners from America and far beyond. (Up to 1,800 come for the one-way Ascent, which was formalized after the marathon.)

Over the years the event has drawn the likes of Killian Jornet, the Spaniard regarded as one of the all-time great trail runners. “It’s a race that has such a history,” he told The Denver Post after his 2019 win, “and it’s so emblematic.”

Emblematic of the early days of long-distance running; it’s known as one of the nation’s oldest marathons. And emblematic of the earliest, frontier days of trail running.

Upon that first gathering at the foot of the mountain in Manitou Springs, the Boston Marathon was well-established, as was a marathon in New York, Yonkers. Pikes Peak “was looked on as something a little bit different than your pavement, city races,” Ilgen said.

To say the least.

Barr Trail, the creation of pioneering, burro train-managing Fred Barr, was there to meet runners that August day of 1956. Today’s trail running necessities were not there.

Recalled one at the starting line that year, Gary Zeigler: “All we had were clunky, leather hiking boots and US Keds sneakers. I opted for the latter with homemade, foam rubber inserts.”

The memory was one of many recounted in a book celebrating the event’s 50th anniversary, authored by Harald Fricker. Along with memories, the book chronicles just as many legends born from the race, most notably that of Arlene Pieper Stine. In 1959, she became the first woman to officially finish a marathon event.

It was all after the headline that appeared in The Gazette Telegraph: “Florida Doctor Challenges Smokers to Race Up Peak.”

The doctor was Arne Suominen, who saw Pikes Peak as the ideal place to prove his point about debilitating cigarettes. The peak’s fame had swept the nation: This was “America’s Mountain,” so named for the summit view inspiring “America the Beautiful,” attracting tourists by way of cog railway, road and that old burro trail.

Running the trail seemed audacious — just the kind of task for Mr. America competitor Monte Wolford of California. The bodybuilding winner of 1956 was a nonsmoker, to Suominen’s delight. (Though, with a love for cigarettes and running, local Lou Wille would test the doctor’s theory in years to come.)

The race was directed by Rudy Fahl, described in Fricker’s book as a “real-estate salesman and holistic-lifestyle practitioner” who found like-minded people in the historic health retreat that was Manitou Springs.

Reads the forward of the book: “What Arne began as an event to make a health statement, Rudy expanded into a race that introduced mountain running years before its time.”

It would be many decades before the mainstream sport that is trail running today. But there was traction in the ’70s. There was a young man named Ricky Trujillo, who ran around the mountains of his native southwest Colorado between his job at a mine above Ouray.

“I heard rumors of some kind of crazy race in Colorado Springs that only crazy people would ever run,” Trujillo recalled.

After work one day in 1973, he drove his Jeepster Commando through the night, stopping to camp somewhere west of Manitou. The Jeepster was barely running the next morning.

“I was able to coast all the way down and park on the main drag near the finish line,” Trujillo said — just in time to start the marathon and win it.

It was the start of a Pikes Peak legend. Trujillo went on to a string of victories and records, while also establishing races of his own back in his home mountains: the Imogene Pass Run and Hardrock 100, examples of extreme, long-distance races that emerged on the still-fringe scene. The Western States 100 and Leadville Trail 100 were others.

As far as Pikes Peak, “that was the mountain race,” Trujillo said. “I found it to be an irresistible challenge.”

As did a dominant winner before him, Steve Gachupin. He claimed a record six straight marathon titles beginning in 1966.

From the Pueblo of Jemez reservation in New Mexico, he would later reflect on his people embarking far on foot to deliver messages in the days before telegraphs and cars. “My grandparents used to say all good runners came from Jemez,” Gachupin said.

His son, Dominic, was also quoted in Fricker’s book. Regarding Pikes Peak: “The way I see it, it’s more like my dad’s mountain. The Utes used to run on it. We respect it. It’s another level of life up there.”

That’s how Texan Brenton Buxton has described the mountain — “magical.” He’s set to race this month for a 43rd consecutive year, a record.

In 1983, he was a college dropout “looking for a place to call my own,” he said. He found that place on Pikes Peak, while also finding his people.

The runners “kinda replaced the hippies that had been in my life previously as this crazy social group,” Buxton said with a chuckle. “I met some real whackos.”

He was like them, content sleeping in his car and spending as much time as he could on Barr Trail. He lived in town for the next decade before moving back to Texas.

Now the Pikes Peak Marathon weekend is “my pilgrimage,” Buxton said. “I get to go back and see all the rocks and trees I’ve named.”

The race has inspired that kind of intimacy or obsession on the mountain. Perhaps no one embodied this more than Matt Carpenter.

In 1993, he ran up and down the mountain in three hours, 16 minutes and 39 seconds — a still-standing record considered one of the most remarkable in the whole world of trail running. It was but one of many impressive finishes for Carpenter, who helped turn the sport’s international eyes on Manitou, where in later years he would scoop custard from his downtown shop.

Carpenter maintained a formulaic approach to the Ascent and Marathon. He listed points such as the Ws, No Name Creek, Barr Camp, A-Frame and on, beside numbers that represented percents of a total desired time. He maintained detailed tricks to the trail, which he knew required more steps if ran in the middle. “You get a ton of free time if you run the tangents,” he said in Fricker’s book. “I’m surprised I don’t get tree leaf stains on my shirts from getting so close to the trees on the corners.”

Just as much, the Pikes Peak Marathon has inspired people most interested in simply reaching the summit. This is never simply done, of course. But unlike other mountain races — 100-milers, for example — the relative accessibility of the event has also lended to its acclaim.

“There’s no doubt that mountain is a challenge,” said Kathy Hubel, the race organization’s executive director. “But there is a place for everyone on that mountain.”

Old and young, pros and amateurs, first-timers and longtimers — they’ll converge again for the 70th running this month. The typical scene will play out at the summit.

“There’s not many dry eyes,” said Mary Yang, the organization’s office manager.

It’s no wonder Gachupin, the Jemez Puebloan record holder, always sat on a rock and watched toward the end of his life. He died last month. He was 82.

Yang has been learning his story in preparing for the anniversary celebration. She’s learned other stories, including of a man who only ran once back in the ’90s.

“He recently passed away,” Yang said. “In his dying words, his memories were of that one time he ran up Pikes Peak.”