Everlyn Kemboi and Mohammed El Youssfi win the Bix 7 in Davenport
Kemboi ran 35:30 up and down Brady Street for the women's title; El Youssfi became the second Moroccan to win the men's race.
Photograph: The start of the 2008 Bix 7 on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa, by Dustin C Oliver, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThe Quad-City Times Bix 7, seven miles up Brady Street and back through Davenport, Iowa, was run for the 52nd time on Saturday, 25 July, under cloud, with the forecast at about 69 degrees and the air humid.
Everlyn Kemboi of Kenya, 30, won the women's race in 35:30 in her second Bix, with Kenyans filling the next three places. Kassie Parker of Waverly, Iowa, was fifth in 36:47, a personal best by 75 seconds. Kemboi called the conditions "almost perfect" and said she had run to her plan.
Mohammed El Youssfi of Morocco won the men's race and became the second Moroccan to win in Davenport. Each winner took 12,500 dollars, and the Bix doubled as the championship of the PRRO circuit, which paid its bonuses on top. Thousands finished behind them in a race that is as much a street party as a road race, with the hill as the price of admission.
The Bix has been a late-July fixture on the US road circuit since 1975, and a Brady Street start is one of the few in American road racing that goes straight uphill from the gun.
Seven miles, a hill from the gun and a Mississippi River town that turns out for it. Road racing does not need to be a marathon to matter.
Sources: Quad-City Times; Quad-City Times; World-Track.
