ST. CHARLES – A barefoot clown was fastest to the finish at the 2011 Advocate Dreyer Fox Valley Marathon.
Tim Cunningham's toes quickly lost feeling on a cool, rainy Sunday morning, but he was not numb to his triumph or the bizarre fashion in which it came about.
"Maybe it's a new style of clowning," Cunningham said. "It evokes laughter. Kids ... love it."
Given the quirky circumstances, Sunday's second annual running of the Fox Valley Marathon had race officials scrambling to verify Cunningham's winning time of 2:56.24. Preliminary race results excluded Cunningham who, lacking shoes, donned an ankle bracelet with a timing device rather than the shoe clip that most runners wore.
Video footage eventually confirmed Cunningham's victorious finish, nudging Rick Hornstrom, of St. Charles, to second place with a time of 2:58.25.
Cunningham had a heartfelt reason for putting his feet through 26.2 miles of unprotected toil. The 33-year-old from Charlottesville, Va., is president of Clowns Without Borders, a non-profit group that sends clowns to refugee camps and other "zones of crisis" around the world, providing a temporary release for children whose lives are shrouded in tension.
"The majority of kids we work with don't have shoes, never will have shoes," Cunningham said. "So it's a way to honor them and also raise money for the organization. After this marathon, we've raised enough to send a group of clowns to Haiti for 10 days."
The Fox Valley Marathon, which begins and ends in downtown St. Charles while extending south to Aurora, marked the first marathon victory for Cunningham in his fifth bare-footed fundraiser of the year.
Craig Bixler, co-organizer of the marathon along with fellow St. Charles resident Dave Sheble, said Cunningham underscored his belief that all marathon runners have powerful stories.
"It certainly gives us a little notoriety," said Bixler, whose daughter, Shannon, was the top female finisher. "It's an unusual story, and it's kind of a fun story."
Cunningham said he chose the Fox Valley Marathon because of his relationship with Mark Agulnik, a doctor from Chicago who also was in Sunday's field. The two met when working at a relief camp for displaced Haitians after the 2010 earthquake.
What kind of feet are required to withstand a marathon, barefoot? "Stupid feet," said Cunningham, saying his toes were too numb afterward to assess if they were cold or "or broken."
A couple areas with gravel paths and a "big, chunky rock" he stepped on provided low points of the run.
"I would follow a lot of guys at the beginning of the race and kind of watch how they were running," said Cunningham, who semi-regularly has runners or spectators practically beg him to borrow their shoes. "They were kind of looking out for me and would warn me when rocks and stuff were coming up."
Cunningham said he is "addicted" to running, even apart from the fundraiser's charitable intentions. He characterized his brand of clowning as in the "Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton" genre of physical comedy.
Hornstrom, the second-place finisher, saw Cunningham early in the race, saying he thought to himself 'Wow, this guy's crazy.' But Hornstrom saw him in another light when Cunningham seized the lead near the 23rd mile, just south of Geneva's Island Park.
"He put two minutes on me in three miles. That's pretty impressive," said Hornstrom, who nonetheless comfortably qualified for his first Boston Marathon and beat his sub-3 hour goal.
Craig Bixler laughed off the unavoidable punch line that the fix was in on the women's side, with his daughter, Shannon, prevailing in 3:06.10.
"She's been running so solid all summer," Bixler said. "We looked at the people that registered and knew she had a shot at it. It made an exciting day a whole lot more exciting."
Shannon Bixler, a St. Charles East product, returned to St. Charles this summer after recent stints living in Texas and Costa Rica.
"It's great to run on a familiar path and a course you know and see people you know, so it was really fun," she said.
The field almost doubled for the second running of the Fox Valley Marathon, with about 2,300 runners registered for the three main events – the full marathon, 20-mile run and half marathon.
Steve Breese, of Schaumburg, won the men's Fall Final 20 in 2:06.11, while Oak Park's Helen Nuttall paced the women's 20-mile run in 2:27.35.
The half-marathon winners both carried Tri-Cities connections.
Men's winner Daniel Montgomery is a 2001 Batavia graduate. He won a half marathon for the first time in 1:17.49, and considered the return to his roots invigorating.
"Even now, I live out in Wheaton, but my wife and I will come out here," Montgomery said. "She rides her bike with me when I do long runs and we'll just park along [the Fox River]. Sometimes we'll start in Batavia or head up north from St. Charles or just wherever, but we make a point to still come back here because it's super-nice."
The women's half-marathon winner was Geneva resident Angie Dudman, a 49-year-old former track athlete at what is now Missouri State. She finished in 1:34.46.
"That's great," Dudman said of her victory. "At my age ... I'm just glad to be out here."
As they did a year ago, Bixler and Sheble pledged to keep growing and refining a race that quickly has become one of the highest profile events on the local sports calendar. Whether it was a barefoot clown's inspired finish, his daughter's triumph or observing first-time marathoners' fulfilled exhaustion, Bixler said Sunday validated the year-round preparations.
"Over the course of the year as all the work goes into it and it piles up, you forget how emotional marathon day is," Bixler said. "This was great to bring it back and say 'Alright, this is why we're here. This is why we're doing it.'"
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