In his first marathon, two years ago, former Weber State and Bingham High cross country star Corbin Talley had so much pain the last eight miles, brought on by inexperience, he said he'd never run another 26-mile race.

"It was so brutal," he recalls.

Two days later, Talley had a hankering for that exhilaration of finishing a difficult task and changed his mind. "I was like, 'OK, I'm ready to do another,' " he said. He had, after all, finished third overall in that 2003 Deseret Morning News Marathon, the top Utahn and top non-professional in the race, without even knowing how to run such a distance.

"There's just a feeling you get when you finish a marathon. A great sense of accomplishment," Talley says now, as he prepares to run his third Deseret Morning News Marathon. "For me, it almost brought tears to my eyes. It just gave me chills the last stretch because it was so painful."

The Layton resident again returns as the top local and top non-pro finisher after having been fourth last year while shaving 10 1/2 minutes off his 2003 time (2:33.49 to 2:23.19) with the faster course.

Days after giving up marathoning, Talley told himself, "I want that feeling again, I want that sense of accomplishment, so it kind of leads you to the next one. You get hooked."

A couple months later, he was finishing third in the St. George Marathon in 2:21.33. That time qualified him to run the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathon, where he finished 49th (2:26.12) in Birmingham, Ala., in February 2004. His major running goal now is to requalify for the next Olympic Trials by running 2:22 or better.

Just into his late 20s, Talley, an English teacher and girls track and cross country coach at Davis High School the past two years, is entering a man's best marathon-running age, and the July 25 race will be his seventh.

He was second in May in the Ogden Marathon (2:33.55) to his friend and training partner Joe Wilson, whom he expects to run the 2005 Deseret Morning News race. And Talley placed seventh (2:31.08) in the 2004 Quad Cities (Ill.) run.

He's been running locally — he won the June 25 Demetrio Cabanillas Magna Classic and was second to Wilson in the June 4 Salt Lake Classic — hoping to get into shape for the longer races as well as finish in the money for a Utah road race-circuit prizes.

And while he'd like to be in a little better shape, Talley can see himself finishing in the top three or so again in the DMN Marathon, depending upon how many full-time runners come in from out of state.

He expects Jonathan Ndambuki, who won the last two Deseret News runs and broke Cabanillas's 22-year-old course record in 2:16.08 in 2004, to be back. Talley figures, "I'd have to run pretty fast to beat him. He's quite the runner.