Event will be a Cabanillas family affair

He ran the 10K last year with his son and daughter, both of them newly graduated from Utah State University.

But with this year being the 35th incarnation of the Deseret Morning News Marathon, the race that Demetrio Cabanillas helped make famous and which made him famous in turn, the 49-year-old school teacher will give the 26.2-miler another try.

On July 24, Demetrio Jr. and sister Carol will run the 10K again, as they have since they were little. Junior is working on his master's degree in environmental engineering at Utah State, and Carol, who ran as a graduate on the USU team last season, will start a teaching and coaching assignment at Alta High School soon.

But come 5:30 a.m. that day, the old man, Demetrio Sr., will once again be up in the mountains of East Canyon at the starting line to run the new marathon course that's more downhill and considered easier than the ones on which he was champion nine times in the 1970s and '80s.

When he was younger, Cabanillas won seven Deseret News Marathons in a row, a world record involving the same marathon.

He still holds the DN Marathon record of 2:16:57, set in 1982.

"For our 35th year, it will be fun to have him in the marathon," race director Bob Wood said.

And while that old feeling of knowing he would win because he had put in some 170 training miles a week won't be with Cabanillas on this Pioneer Day, the competition is herewith warned:

"I think I can be competitive in my age group," said Cabanillas, a little bolder than he has been in recent years about his running because the hip soreness and allergies that made him drop out in the ninth mile of the 25th Deseret News Marathon have been alleviated.

He ran a marathon in Logan last year in 3:04 hours, but, "Now I'm training a little more and am in better shape," he said. "Now I run almost as much as I want, 10 or 15 miles a day. I am by far better off than I used to be.

"I still have allergies, but now I know what to avoid completely," he said. He named numerous plants and especially some bushes. He keeps the windows closed at home now and went through years of treatment to get better. He can run on grass, but he knows enough not to lie down on it. He can run now without fainting or having his face swell by the third mile.

"I have trained enough that I can run the whole distance and run at a decent pace," he said. "(Finishing) is my goal, but I want to push to the point where I am still enjoying it."