50 Days of stories and photos leading up to Quad City Times 50th Bix 7 (2024)

To the world beyond the bounds of eastern Iowa and western Illinois, the Quad-City Times Bix 7 probably just looks like a world-class road race.

And it very definitely is that.

A total of 113 athletes who have competed in the Olympics also have trod the streets of Davenport on the last Saturday in July. Athletes from 14 countries and five continents have won the race.

You would be hard-pressed to name a top American distance runner of the past four decades who hasn’t competed in theQ-C Times Bix 7, and arguably the four most significant American distance runners ever — Bill Rodgers, Joan Samuelson, Frank Shorter and Meb Keflezighi — all will be part of this year’s race.

But the Q-C Times Bix 7 is so much more than a major sports event to the people who live in the Quad-Cities.

The iconic race, which will celebrate its 50th running on July 27, also is a massive community party. It’s a huge tourism magnet. Bix Saturday has become a de facto local holiday, a time for friends and strangers alike to celebrate and commiserate.

And more than four decades ago, the race helped to lift an entire community out of one of its lowest periods.

Ed Froehlich remembers all too well what the Quad-Cities was like after he took over as race director in 1980.

Only a year later, the farm crisis took a stranglehold in the Midwest, and the Quad-Cities, whose economy was based largely on the manufacture of agricultural implements, was especially impacted. In the course of a year or two, more than 20,000 factory jobs disappeared. For many, money was sparse.

For many more, morale was low.

Dan Hayes, then executive editor of the Quad-City Times, said market research revealed that most local residents did not have a positive image of their community.

Before the farm crisis, he said, the general opinion was “this is a poor place to live, but a good place to earn money painting tractors,’’ and as the crisis progressed, that opinion degenerated to “this is a poor place to live and a poor place to get a good job.’’

The Times made it its mission to help turn that around.

“The big kick was improving the quality of life,’’ Froehlich said. “That was being spread by the Quad-City Times, and they thought we could help.”

Froehlich himself had left a job as a meat-cutter at Oscar Mayer to become a State Farm insurance agent just a few years earlier. When he became race director, he knew the first thing he needed to do was to get the community more involved in a race that had attracted only 500 entries the previous year.

He and an enthusiastic young banker named Jim Schrader began by recruiting Rodgers to come to the 1980 race, a move that added credibility to the Bix 7 and created new interest.

The following year, the race found an important new partner in the Times.

Froehlich was acquainted with the Times retail advertising manager Bill Johnston from working out at the YMCA and they chatted about a title sponsorship idea. Publisher Ron Rickman and editor Forrest Kilmer quickly agreed.

Froehlich began working closely with Hayes, the City of Davenport and the Cornbelt Running Club to develop the Bix 7 into something bigger. He began bringing in more big-name runners — Shorter in 1981, Australian superstar Rob de Castella in 1982, Samuelson in 1983 — and the number of entries in the race ballooned year after year.

Not coincidentally, the psyche of the Quad-Cities community improved with it. Hayes said ongoing Times market research gradually reflected the change. The prevailing feeling eventually became “not only is this a good place to live and make money but it’s also a good place for people to come and visit.’’

John Gardner, who succeeded Rickman as publisher, played a pivotal part, calling together a gathering of community leaders to help map a broadening of the local economy, including tourism.

“Then came all the other things,” Hayes added, “River Action, riverboats, the John Deere Classic, Rejuvenate Davenport, and so on.’’

For its part, the Times received the prestigious American Newspaper Publishers Association Community Service Award.

Froehlich is quick to point out that theQ-C Times Bix 7 growth would not have happened if the Quad-Cities community hadn’t so eagerly embraced the race.

“When I first started ... being an athlete, you want to perform in front of people,’’ he said. “Instead of runners, I was trying to get spectators. What can we do to get spectators to come out and watch it? The runners and walkers all want to perform in front of them.’’

For most of the Q-C Times Bix 7’s existence, the exuberance of those spectators has almost always been the first thing mentioned by visiting runners. Almost no other road race in the country includes fans cheering and screaming every step of the way.

“I’ve never seen the kind of support I saw today,’’ distance superstar Alberto Salazar said after running the Bix 7 in 1986.

The Q-C Times Bix 7was named the most community-minded race in the country by Runner’s World magazine in 1993 and was featured in a two-page spread.

The Bix then validated that label the following summer when it was held in the midst of a major flood. Some of the streets in the normal starting and finishing areas were under water, but the race still attracted nearly 17,000 runners and walkers and more than 50,000 spectators.

International running star Grete Waitz attended that 1993 race as a spectator and dignitary, and got an eyeful of what Runner’s World was talking about.

“This morning I realized what this race is all about,’’ she said after helping to hand out some post-race awards. “I woke up at about 6:30 and it was raining. I looked outside and there were people setting up chairs and sitting with umbrellas waiting for the race to start. I couldn’t believe it.

“This race has personality. The whole area is geared up for it and everybody knows what’s going on and is excited. To me, that is what this race is about — how the community really gets behind it. You don’t see that anywhere else.’’

It hasn’t changed through the years. American runner Jonathan Grey noticed all the same things while finishing fourth in the Bix 24 years after Waitz was wowed by the Q-C crowd.

“It’s a smalltown feel but a big-time race," Grey said. “The whole town is behind it … You can tell this is a big deal … It’s huge. It’s fun. It’s a whole town thing.’’

Bill Rodgers, nicknamed by late columnist Bill Wundram as “Bix 7 Billy,” has called the event a “Midwest miracle.”

Rodgers, who will run the Bix 7 for the 44th time on July 27, said it’s mind-boggling that a road race can persevere and prosper for a half century, especially outside of a metropolitan area.

“Ed Froehlich became the maestro and the Quad-City Times has been steady as a rock,” he said.

Rodgers, four-time winner of both the Boston and New York City marathons, adds even higher praise for the community’s embrace.

As he told a gathering of supporting sponsors last year, “I’m always in awe here — all the people cheering along the course, all the thousands of volunteers, all the runners and walkers. It’s such a great event, truly unlike any other.”

When the Quad-City Times Bix 7 began in 1975, the race started with runners charging up the Perry Street hill.

However, in 1978 the City of Davenport began construction on the RiverCenter, a convention facility that blocked off Perry and made it unusable for the race.

Race officials had a simple solution. The start would move one block west and go up Brady Street, which is much wider anyway.

“They said, ‘You can’t run up Brady. That’s a state highway,’ ’’ long-time race director Ed Froehlich recalled. “We ran up Brady anyway.’’

So, for several hours in the morning on the last Saturday in July each year, U.S. Route 61 is closed down completely so tens of thousands of people can run up it.

It is perhaps the most iconic and undoubtedly the scariest start to any road race. As all those runners and walkers go up that first hill, their bobbing heads look like a mammoth, fast-flowing river of lava rolling backwards up the side of a volcano. It’s a sight to behold.

The Quad-City Times Bix 7 isn’t just about running and physical fitness.

For some, it’s about making a statement. Or simply attracting attention to themselves.

Since the 1980s, local radio stations have held contests to award prizes to the people with the most unique and inventive costumes in the race.

And some of the costumes have become longstanding Bix 7 staples.

Every year, a few dozen students from the Palmer College of Chiropractic walk the race disguised as a human spine. There are five men who walk together all dressed as Elvis Presley. There is a similar group of people that does the race clad in Marilyn Monroe costumes.

People have run the race dressed as pigs, train engines, babies, bowling pins, sandbags, bottles of Ben-Gay, Wizard of Oz characters, Fred Flintstone cars, bunches of fruit, the Blues Brothers, Raggedy Ann and Andy, superheroes, famous political figures and assorted other things.

When you enter the Quad-City Times Bix 7, you have a decent chance of getting wet before the day is over.

There have been occasions when it rained before, during or after the race, sometimes all three. The 1992 race was contested in a constant downpour. There was one year in which a mass of balloons above the starting line collapsed in a storm. The 1993 race was held in the midst of a major flood.

But even if it doesn’t happen through natural causes, many runners feel the need to get wet on their own after running seven miles up and down hills in the heat of July.

A year-by-year look at the Quad-City Times Bix 7:

1975

Number of runners: 84

Men’s winner: Lucian Rosa (Sri Lanka), 34:33

Women’s winner: Kim Merritt (Racine, Wis.), 41:04

Weather: 69 degrees, 76% humidity

University of Wisconsin-Parkside runner Kim Merritt, one of only three female runners in the race, won the women’s championship by 24 minutes, 39 seconds. Her record for largest margin of victory still stands. Lucian Rosa, an Olympian from Sri Lanka who also attended Parkside, prevailed in the men’s race. He defeated Steve Hoag, who had finished second in the Boston Marathon a few months earlier.

1976

Number of runners: 114

Men’s winner: Dan Copper (Mendota, Ill.), 36:47

Women’s winner: Kim Merritt (Racine, Wis.), 41:33

Weather: 72 degrees, 90% humidity

Dan Copper out-dueled his Augustana College teammate, John O’Connor, by four seconds in the men’s race while Kim Merritt easily claimed her second straight Bix 7 women’s championship.

1977

Number of runners: 350

Men’s winner: Kevin McDonald (Iowa City), 36:50

Women’s winner: Lynn Schmidt (Eldridge, Iowa), 42:45

Weather: 73 degrees, 79% humidity

Lynn Schmidt, just two months removed from graduating from North Scott High School, became the youngest female winner in the history of the Bix 7. University of Iowa runner Kevin McDonald was the men’s champion with the slowest winning time in Bix 7 history.

1978

Number of runners: 500

Men’s winner: John Lodwick (Cedar Rapids), 34:56

Women’s winner: Kathy Loper (Worthsmith, Minn.), 45:38

Weather: 74 degrees, 74% humidity, .02 inches precipitation

John Lodwick, who was eighth in the Boston Marathon a few months earlier, was the men’s winner while Davenport’s Gregg Newell, a University of Iowa runner, was the runner-up for the second year in a row. The Quad-City Times ran only* a nine-paragraph story on the race, which included race director Tony Gott’s comment that “the race has outgrown the city.’’

1979

Number of runners: 800

Men’s winner: Gregg Newell (Davenport), 35:40

Women’s winner: Ilene Kimsey (Des Moines), 46:25

Weather: 73 degrees, 93% humidity, .01 inches precipitation

Gregg Newell became the only local men’s winner of the Bix 7. Ilene Kimsey, a Des Moines housewife who took up running only a year earlier, had the slowest women’s winning time ever.

Bill Rodgers has run the Quad-City Times Bix 7 a total of 43 times and he still has a little trouble finding the words to describe how special the race has become to him and to thousands of other people.

“There’s just something unique about it,’’ said Rodgers, who will run in the Bix 7’s 50th anniversary race on July 27. “I don’t even know if you can define it. It’s the Bix.’’

Rodgers, who won 22 marathons in his career and is perhaps the most prolific distance runner in American history, has been coming to the Bix 7 since 1980.

He only came that year because he had a gaping hole in his schedule because of the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics. He enjoyed that first experience so much, he has come back every year except 2020 when the race was held on a virtual basis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s by far the most times he has run any race. The Falmouth Road Race on Cape Cod also is near and dear to Rodgers and is much closer to his home in Boston, but he has run that only about 30 times. He said nothing quite compares to Bix.

“It’s just different,’’ he said. “It’s not your ordinary road race and my relationship with it is pretty intense, too.’’

Rodgers said he thinks the Bix 7 has prospered for so long because of a combination of factors — the leadership of Ed Froehlich and others; the sponsorship of local companies, led by the Quad-City Times; the support of the local citizenry.

“I think it’s also partly the course,’’ Rodgers said. “It’s appealing because it is so challenging. I think that’s just part of it. And it’s spectator-friendly.’’

The Bix 7 is the same distance as Falmouth — 7 miles — but it is very hilly. Participants are almost never running on flat ground. And the unique out-and-back layout means there almost never is a place along the way in which there aren’t fans yelling and screaming support and encouragement.

Rodgers also loves the reunion feel of the Bix 7. Thousands of people schedule school and family reunions around that weekend and Rodgers has been here so many times that he has a large contingent of friends in the Quad-Cities.

“I never went to my high school reunion or my college reunion but I come back to Bix,’’ he said. “That’s my reunion.’’

He plans to come to town a little earlier than usual this time. The inaugural Bix 7 Senior Race, for runners and walkers over the age of 50, will be held on Tuesday, July 23, on the Davenport riverfront, and he plans to take part in that. He will bring his brother Charlie with him, just as he normally does.

“It’s exciting for me,’’ Rodgers added. “It’s the race I’ve done the most. It’s a big part of my life.’’

It takes a lot of people to orchestrate a road race, even a small one. When the race has been among the largest in the Midwest for the past 40 years, it demands a massive amount of volunteer help from the local community and the Quad-Cities never has come up short in its support of the Quad-City Times Bix 7.

In most years the race employs at least 5,000 volunteers. Long-time race director Ed Froehlich has estimated that about 150,000 people have volunteered through the years.

People are needed to organize the starting line and finish line, compile results, man the medical tent, distribute water at six locations along the course, deal with traffic control and crowd control, oversee the postrace party, and host and provide transportation for elite runners and other out-of-town visitors. One of the largest tasks is cleaning up the mess when the whole thing is over.

The addition of such things as the Jr. Bix 7, the Brady Street Sprints and the Senior Bix have only added to the demand for manpower.

You can tell Dr. Lynn Schmidt-Dolan doesn’t really feel as though she belongs on the same list as superstar runners such as Joan Samuelson, Catherine Ndereba and Colleen De Reuck.

But she’s there. She got there by winning the women’s division of the Quad-City Times Bix 7 in only its third year of existence in 1977.

She was just a couple of months removed from North Scott High School at the time and was headed for a cross country career at Luther College. She never had run a road race before.

But somehow, she crossed the finish line first, becoming the youngest person — male or female — to win the Bix and the only local woman to do so.

However, that was a long time ago. She really doesn’t remember much about her biggest moment as an athlete.

“I don’t remember if it was really hot or what,’’ Schmidt-Dolan said. “I think it was a nice day.’’

She had been a four-sport athlete at North Scott and qualified for the state track meet three times in the mile although she never placed. But things just sort of went her way on July 30, 1977.

It probably helped that two-time defending Bix 7 champion Kim Merritt decided not to come to Davenport after committing to do so.

Jane Lange, a Davenport West runner who won the Iowa Class AAA state title in the 440 that year, led the women’s field almost the entire way, but she wasn’t used to the distance. She began to falter late in the race and did not even finish. Schmidt-Dolan breezed past her with about three blocks to go. Her finishing time was listed as 51 minutes, 7 seconds.

She has gone on to do much more important things in the years since. After earning her degree at Luther, she attended University of Iowa medical school and has carved out a nice career in internal medicine, urgent care and occupational medicine. She has spent the past 25 years in Delafield, Wisconsin, splitting her time between a clinic in Milwaukee and a practice in Janesville.

She also is the mother of three children, including a nuclear engineer, a fourth-year medical student and a nurse.

“I’m quite proud of them,’’ she admitted.

Schmidt-Dolan has run the Bix 7 only twice since her 1977 victory, finishing second in her age group in 1978 and competing in the 25th anniversary race in 1999. She also did several other road races and five marathons.

She still does some running, but her aging knees limit her to doing just three or four miles twice a week. She also does some biking and swimming and a lot of cross country skiing, including the annual 50-kilometer Birkebeiner race.

“That’s my primary distance event now,’’ Schmidt-Dolan said. “It takes 3½ to 4 hours and you have to ski up and down a lot of hills.’’

Catching up with other former Bix 7 women’s champions:

• Kim Merritt (1975 and 1976) retired as a competitive runner in 1980 but came back to try and make 1984 Olympic team, finishing 53rd in the trials. She was inducted into the National Distance Running Hall of Fame in 2014.
• Ilene Kimsey (1978) was living in Des Moines and had taken up running less than a year earlier when she won the Bix 7. She is now a therapist in her native Kansas and a Wizard of Oz aficionado who wrote a book called “Golden Wizdom Beyond the Emerald City – A Conscious Journey to Wholeness.’’
• Bev Enslow (1981), who won the Bix as Bev Roland-Miller, worked in medical technology and also did IT work for Caterpillar in the Peoria area. She is still competing as an endurance mountain biker in Germantown Hills, Illinois.
• Ellen Hart (1982) married Denver mayor Federico Pena in 1988. In 2001, she divorced Pena, who served as the U.S. secretary of transportation under Bill Clinton. Hart Pena, a Harvard-educated lawyer, endured a long-time battle with anorexia and bulimia, becoming the subject of a 1996 made-for-TV movie. She still lectures and speaks to groups about eating disorders based on her own experiences.
• Kellie Cathey (1984) took up painting while competing as a runner and has had artwork published in magazines and displayed publicly.
• Francie Larrieu Smith (1987) competed for the U.S. in the Olympics five times. From 1999 to 2019, she was a cross country and track coach at Southwestern University in Texas.
• Uta Pippig (1991 and 1993) founded the Take the Magic Step program to provide health information and charitable support to individuals and to organizations that promote wellness and education. She still does a great deal of writing and public speaking.
• Tegla Loroupe (1994) became the world record holder in the marathon, won the New York City Marathon twice and competed in the 2000 Olympics. She then became a leading advocate for humanitarian causes, established the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation in 2003, was named a United Nations Ambassador for Sport in 2006 and became a member of the Peace and Sport’s Champions for Peace. In 2016, she was named the UN Person of the Year for Kenya.
• Anne Hare (1995) ran for New Zealand in the 1996 Olympics and still holds her country’s record for 2,000 meters. She formerly served on the board of the New Zealand Olympic Committee.
• Colleen de Reuck (1997, 1998, 2000 and 2002) took up coaching with the Boulder Striders and worked as a personal trainer following her running career. She was inducted into the Boulder (Colo.) Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.
• Catherine Ndereba (1999, 2001 and 2003) retired as a runner in 2014 and is now commissioner of prisons in Kenya and heads the program for all sports at Kenya prisons. She also is a board director of the Kenya Academy of Sports.
• Nuta Olaru (2005) no longer runs competitively, but still does so for fitness purposes. She works in Boulder, Colo., for ROLL Recovery, a company that designs products to help athletes recover and perform at their highest level.
• Edith Masai (2008) retired from competitive running in 2010 and now coaches the Kenya Prisons cross country team. Her son, Paul Sakit, ran competitively at Louisiana Tech.
• Lisa Koll (2010), a former Iowa State running star who won the Bix in her first major road race, competed in the 2012 Olympics and married fellow ISU Hall of Famer Kiel Uhl in 2011. She is now a resident in veterinary pathology at ISU.

John Hudetz had no idea what he was starting back in the middle 1970s.

He was a 30-year-old insurance agent living in the Quad-Cities, eager to retain the fitness of his youth. He had been a good runner at St. Francis High School in Wheaton, Illinois, and DePaul University, and he had joined the growing legion of people who ran to stay physically fit.

He had gone off to compete in the Boston Marathon in 1975 and returned home indelibly enthralled by the atmosphere of the event. He and his friend, Brian Owen, wanted to create something similar in their home community so over lunch one day at Bishop’s Cafeteria in downtown Davenport, they decided to start an organization that would be known as the Cornbelt Running Club. Hudetz, who lived in DeWitt, won a coin toss to earn the honor of being president of the club. He and Owen, a Quad-City Times reporter, began organizing several local runs for themselves and a few dozen other local fitness enthusiasts.

A half-century later, their little club is one of the most successful organizations of its kind in the country. And one of its races is known to runners around the globe.

That race began and ended in downtown Davenport and was a grueling 7-mile trek up and down the challenging hills of some of the city’s older neighborhoods. Hudetz convinced Davenport’s Downtown Merchants Association to lend financial support to the race, which would be held the last Saturday in July in conjunction with the Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival.

The first race, held on July 26, 1975, drew a larger-than-expected throng of 84 runners, including a couple of Midwest men — Lucian Rosa and Steve Hoag — who had done very well in the Boston Marathon. There even were three female runners in the race, something that wasn’t that common at the outset of the running boom.

Hudetz doesn’t recall the race being any more special than most of the other slightly shorter, much less arduous races that Cornbelt organized.

But it was. The Bix 7, eventually to become known as the Quad-City Times Bix 7, has become very special.

It has drawn more than 20,000 entries in some years, been run by about 660,000 people through the years, and is expected to attract another enormous gathering when it is held for the 50th time this summer, on July 27.

It attracts Olympic heroes from around the globe, pays out $50,000 in prize money, has appeared annually on lists of the best races in the country for most of the past four decades, often involves more than 5,000 volunteers and 50,000 spectators, and is supported annually by more than 30 sponsors.

It is televised around the world and holds training runs in the weeks leading up to the race that attract hundreds more than that inaugural 1975 event.

It is now much more than one race. It involves almost an entire week of activities, including a junior race, a 2-mile race, a quarter-mile uphill sprint event and this year, for the first time, a race exclusively for senior citizens.

It has become a massive annual community celebration as well as a world-class sports event and frequently is referred to by impartial observers as “the Boston Marathon of the Midwest.’’

American distance running superstar Bill Rodgers, who has run the Bix 7 43 times, calls it “the quintessential American road race.’’

It has radically exceeded the modest expectations that Hudetz had for the event.

“We had no idea,’’ said Hudetz, now 79 and living just up the Mississippi River in Galena, Ill. “We were just thrilled if people signed up for our race back then. ‘Oh, we might have 50 runners! That’s awesome!’’’

The course for the race hasn’t really changed that much. The starting and finishing areas have been tweaked considerably through the years, but the bulk of the course still travels down Kirkwood Boulevard and funnels into McClellan Boulevard, where runners turn and traverse the same path back to the finish.

“I created this out-and-back course so that the average runner, regardless of his or her ability, would have an opportunity during the race to see the greatest runners in that race go past on the way back,’’ Hudetz said. “Very few running races in this country are out-and-back races because usually you have problems with separating the runners. Kirkwood Boulevard was this natural dividing line on the course. That was a big thing in creating this course.’’

The other defining element of the Bix 7 was the distance. It seemed as though every race in the country was either a 10k or a marathon. A group of people on Cape Cod in Falmouth, Mass., had developed a 7-mile race two years earlier and Hudetz got to know them at the Boston Marathon. He decided it would be great to have a similarly “weird distance’’ to differentiate the Bix from other events.

Hudetz and Owen both moved away within two years after the inaugural Bix. Hudetz has lived in 13 different states through the years, but has observed from afar the awe-inspiring evolution of the event.

He still shakes his head over what has happened to what he and Owen and other local running enthusiasts created.

“When we had the first Bix, we actually thought it was a mob scene and couldn’t believe so many people turned out,’’ Hudetz said in an interview a few years after he moved away.

He plans to come back this summer to run and jog the race with Kerry Gannon, an Orion, Ill., resident who has missed only one or two Bix races through the years and who designed the event’s first t-shirt. He said it is possible that Owen, now retired after a career as an attorney in Chicago, may return to watch the whole thing as a spectator.

However, he said the race’s growth is a tribute to Ed Froehlich, who took over as the race director for 40 years, and the Quad-Cities community in general.

“Looking at my role in this whole thing, I see myself as the biological father who skipped town,’’ Hudetz said. “My DNA is all over that race. But I’m so grateful that a tremendous stepfather (Froehlich) stepped in and raised this child along with the entire community. I go back to the saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ and it is so true about the Bix race that it took the entire community to really support it over the years and raise it to this ripe old age of 50. I’ll accept my role as the biological dad but I’m so grateful that the abandoned child got well cared for.’’

By the mid-1980s, excitement for the Quad-City Times Bix 7 had built to the point where local runners couldn’t wait to get out on the course and practice on the challenging inclines of Brady, Kirkwood and McClellan.

In 1986, largely due to the influence of assistant race director Nancy Kapheim, Bix at Six was born.

People in the local running community began going out on Thursdays at 6 p.m. in the weeks leading up to the race to train on the actual course. The tradition continues Thursday with the inaugural Bix at Six of the summer.

By 1990, the weekly training runs were so big that it was necessary to enlist the help of local law enforcement to block off traffic on the city streets. Bix at Six frequently has attracted as many as 1,000 runners and there were a few times when the throng approached 5,000.

Bix icon Bill Rodgers came in from Boston to participate a few times and was awestruck by what he saw.

“More road races should do this,’’ he said. “People get psyched up this way. It’s just a great way to build enthusiasm and also learn how to run the course.’’

A year-by-year look at the Quad-City Times Bix 7:

1980

Number of runners: 1,500

Men’s winner: Bill Rodgers (Boston), 33:58

Women’s winner: Peggy Schott (Evanston), 43:59

Weather: 70 degrees, 90% humidity, .88 inches precipitation

Bill Rodgers, the most prolific marathon runner in history, set the course record after deciding to come to the race when the United States opted to boycott the Moscow Olympics. He has run every Bix 7 since then.

1981

Number of runners: 2,500

Men’s winner: Bill Rodgers (Boston), 33:26

Women’s winner: Beverly Roland-Miller (Macomb), 41:26

Weather: 69 degrees, 90% humidity, .94 inches precipitation

Bill Rodgers broke his own course record in repeating as champion, this time defeating 1972 Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter by 24 seconds despite persistent rains. The race was sponsored by the Quad-City Times for the first time.

1982

Number of runners: 4,100

Men’s winner: Rob de Castella (Australia), 32:21

Women’s winner: Ellen Hart (Boulder, Colorado), 38:42

Weather: 68 degrees, 87% humidity

The pace car leading the pack made a U-turn before reaching the McClellan Boulevard turnaround and frontrunner Rob de Castella (and almost everyone behind him) followed, shortening the course by 50 yards. The Australian star still would have easily broken the course record as he shaved more than a minute off Bill Rodgers’ top time. Ellen Hart, a 24-year-old Harvard graduate who was destined to become a world champion triathlete, became the first woman to run the Bix 7 in fewer than 40 minutes, knocking more than two minutes off Kim Merritt’s course record.

1983

Number of runners: 5,620

Men’s winner: Joseph Nzau (Kenya), 33:10

Women’s winner: Joan Benoit (Freeport, Maine), 37:26

Weather: 75 degrees, 91% humidity

Up-and-coming American runner Joan Benoit shattered the women’s course record in her first Bix appearance, claiming the first of four Bix titles. Joseph Nzau became the first runner from Kenya to compete in the race. He sprinted past everyone halfway through the race and won easily with Bill Rodgers finishing second.

1984

Number of runners: 6,750

Men’s winner: Ashley Johnson (South Africa), 33:02

Women’s winner: Kellie Cathey (Fort Collins, Colorado), 38:04

Weather: 62 degrees, 84% humidity

Ashley Johnson, a South Africa native who competed at Western Kentucky, was relatively unknown entering the race, but he displayed his track and field background down the stretch. He made the final turn onto 4th Street almost side by side with Joseph Nzau and Mark Curp, but won a final sprint to win one of the closest Bix finishes ever. Kellie Cathey, destined to be a five-time entry in the U.S. Olympic trials, was the women’s champion.

1985

Number of runners: 7,174

Men’s winner: Mark Curp (Lee’s Summit, Missouri), 32:54

Women’s winner: Joan Benoit Samuelson (Freeport, Maine), 37:38

Weather: 66 degrees, 87% humidity

After finishing in the top five the previous two years, Mark Curp claimed his first Bix title by out-sprinting Bill Rodgers in the final stretch. Newly married Joan Benoit, now known as Joan Samuelson, returned to win her second Bix crown a year after winning the first women’s Olympic marathon.

1986

Number of runners: 9,325

Men’s winner: Geoff Smith (Great Britain), 33:16

Women’s winner: Joan Benoit Samuelson (Freeport, Maine), 37:56

Weather: 73 degrees, 87% humidity

Geoff Smith, a member of Great Britain’s Olympic team and a two-time Boston Marathon winner, and defending Bix champion Mark Curp ran alone far out in front of the rest of the field almost the entire way before Smith gained a little separation and won by three seconds. Joan Samuelson won the women’s race, becoming the first three-time Bix champion.

1987

Number of runners: 12,375

Men’s winner: Joseph Nzau (Kenya), 33:24

Women’s winner: Francie Larrieu-Smith (Dallas, Texas), 38:10

Weather: 75 degrees, 94% humidity

The race topped 10,000 runners for the first time and was one of the 10 largest races in the United States for the first time. Joseph Nzau won his second Bix title in a field that included every male winner of the race in the 1980s. Joan Samuelson ran the race despite being seven months pregnant and still finished 19th. Francie Larrieu-Smith, who ran in the Olympics as a 19-year-old in 1972 and was destined to make five U.S. Olympic teams, was the women’s champion.

1988

Number of runners: 12,425

Men’s winner: Mark Curp (Lee’s Summit, Missouri), 33:22

Women’s winner: Joan Benoit Samuelson (Freeport, Maine), 37:59

Weather: 77 degrees, 85% humidity

Joan Samuelson became the first four-time Bix champion by dominating a star-studded women’s field and winning by 46 seconds. Mark Curp won for the second time and placed in the top four for the sixth consecutive year.

1989

Number of runners: 15,639

Men’s winner: Mark Nenow (Sacramento, California), 32:17

Women’s winner: Erin Baker (New Zealand), 36:35

Weather: 66 degrees, 87% humidity

The Bix 7 offered prize money for the first time and perhaps aided by a new downhill finish to the riverfront, both the men’s and women’s champions broke the course record. Mark Nenow knocked four seconds off Rob de Castella’s previous record and Erin Baker led the way as the top four women’s runners all broke the record. It was the first road racing victory ever for Baker, a veteran triathlete.

Most of the elite distance runners in the world say the same thing. At most road races they see the spectators at the starting line and again at the finish, but through much of the course they’re running in silence.

The Bix 7 has earned a reputation as a place where the runners see and hear the fans almost every step of the way. The race frequently attracts 50,000 people who line the course to watch and shout encouragement to whoever happens to be running past.

It’s part of the reason the Bix 7 was named the most community spirited race in the country by Runners World magazine in 1993.

Sam Chelanga certainly noticed it while winning the Bix 7 in 2017.

“I just kept seeing (the fans) and they don’t really know who we are, but there’s a relationship,’’ he said. “They appreciate us coming to their town. I like that.’’

You might think that now that her competitive running days are behind her, life might be slowing down for Joan Benoit Samuelson.

Think again.

Samuelson is still busy operating the Beach to Beacon 10K she founded back home in Maine. The race, which she said was at least partially inspired by the Quad-City Times Bix 7, celebrated its 25th anniversary last August.

She also is still involved with several different boards and committees. She still does some work for Nike. And she helps out watching two young grandchildren, including a 5-month-old named Cooper.

“I just fill my days,’’ said Samuelson, who turned 67 in May. “I never find a day boring. I never sit down very often either so things haven’t changed much that way.’’

She is, however, planning to make time to participate in the 50th annual Bix 7, scheduled for July 27 in Davenport.

It will be her 34th time running the Bix 7, the first since 2019. She won the women's championship four times in the 1980s, has been the masters champion 15 times and only once has failed to be among the top 30 female finishers.

She said the chance to come back and renew all the old friendships she has made in the Quad-Cities and be part of the half-century celebration was too much to pass up.

Samuelson is still running very well, as evidenced by some recent performances. In March, she completed the Tokyo Marathon in 3 hours, 28 minutes, 37 seconds. At the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon in late April, she ran the 5k in 22 minutes, then did the half-marathon the following day in 1:34:47.

“She’s still running phenomenal,’’ said fellow Bix legend Bill Rodgers, who was with her in Oklahoma City. “There’s no one quite like Joan. There just is not.’’

But Samuelson said she’s not running nearly as much as she did back in the 1980s, when she won the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon.

“I’m selecting my races carefully,’’ she said. “I’m mixing my running up with cycling and this winter I did a lot of Nordic skiing. I had a partial knee replacement in the middle of COVID, and I’m trying to keep my longevity going without the intensity and the number of miles.’’

She has been in great demand this year as many races seek to commemorate the 40th anniversary of her Olympic gold medal. But she is not sure if she is going to attend the Paris Olympics as part of that celebration.

The opening ceremonies of the games are on the eve of the Bix 7 although the women’s marathon isn’t until two weeks later, on Aug. 11.

“I’d prefer not to go,’’ Samuelson admitted. “I’d prefer to watch it all on television because the logistics are going to be complicated. We’ll see. I was asked by Nike if I wanted to go, and I said if I could go and do something meaningful or purposeful, I’ll be happy to go. If you’re going just to give me a treat, I’d prefer to stay home.’’

Not many sports events have had the same title sponsor for more than 40 years. Very few road races have maintained a close relationship with the local newspaper for that long.

But the Quad-City Times has been sponsoring the Bix 7 since 1981 and the relationship is still going strong.

It began when Times General Manager Bill Johnston and editor Dan Hayes hatched a deal with Ed Froehlich, creating a marriage made in road racing heaven, one that helped launch the Bix 7 into national prominence.

Hayes became a valued adviser and close friend to Froehlich in a relationship that continues to this day. The Times has lent invaluable help with accounting and data processing services and provided a ready-made promotional voice for the race. And for the past 44 years, it has published the finishing time of every runner in the newspaper the following day, something that is not done for any other major race in the country.

“What would we do without the Quad-City Times?’’ Froehlich once asked. “How would we have grown? How would we have gotten people involved?’’

Mark Nenow spent most of the 1980s wearing out running shoes, frequently logging 140 miles a week.

He then spent more than 30 years designing and marketing shoes for some of the largest companies in the country.

Near the end of his running career, Nenow etched his name in Quad-City Times Bix 7 history by winning the race in the first year that it offered prize money.

He breezed to victory in the 1989 Bix 7, winning easily in what was then a course record time of 32 minutes, 17 seconds. His time still stands as the American record for the Bix.

It was a landmark year for the Bix in several ways. The race exceeded 15,000 runners for the first time. It offered prize money to the top 10 male and female finishers, also for the first time. And it had a new downhill finish that ended on the riverfront, in the parking lot of the new President Riverboat Casino.

Nenow already was a prominent name on the U.S. running scene by then. The North Dakota native had been a star at the University of Kentucky and set the U.S. record in the 10,000 meters in 1986. His mark stood for nearly 15 years before it was topped by another Bix icon, Meb Keflezighi.

But Nenow narrowly missed making the U.S. Olympic team in 1988, finishing fourth in the 10,000 meters and fifth in the 5,000 at the trials, and his victory at the Bix was one of last high-profile moments in his career.

By 1991, he had retired from running and was employed in the footwear industry for ASICS. He subsequently spent 11 years working for Nike and a couple of years with Brooks before becoming vice president of global footwear merchandising for Columbia.

In 2015, he was named president of Sorel, a division of Columbia, and led that brand to $347 million in net sales in 2022. He resigned from that post for health reasons in June of last year.

Catching up with other former Bix 7 men’s champions:

• Lucian Rosa (1975) was denied the chance to represent his native Sri Lanka in the 1976 Olympics because of a boycott to protest apartheid in South Africa. He coached cross country at Wisconsin-Parkside from 1997 through 2007, and he and 1975 and 1976 Bix women’s champion Kim Merritt were both among the charter members of the school’s athletic hall of fame. In later years, Rosa served as president of the Sri Lanka National Veterans Athletics Association.
• Dan Copper (1976) graduated from Augustana College in 1978 and served as the school’s women’s track and field coach in 1982 before moving to Beloit, Wisconsin, and going to work as a sales representative for Rucker’s Wholesale Candy. He was inducted into Augie’s Tribe of Vikings Hall of Fame in 2004.
• John Lodwick (1978) won the Dallas Marathon in 1982 before retiring as a competitive runner a few years later. He then became an ordained minister in Bend, Oregon.
• Rob de Castella (1982) returned to his native Australia, where he founded the Indigenous Marathon Foundation in 2013. He represented Australia in the Olympics four times and twice won the Commonwealth Games Marathon. He also has been a Director of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame, chairman of the Leisure Australia Foundation, director of the Australian Institute of Sport, a non-executive director of the Australian Sports Commission, and Chairman of the ACT Health Promotion Board.
• Joseph Nzau (1983, 1987) was the first Kenyan to run the Bix 7. He has lived for most of the past 40 years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he helps train younger runners.
• Ashley Johnson (1984) was inducted into Western Kentucky University’s athletic hall of fame in 2006.
• Mark Curp (1985 and 1988) finished in the top 10 at the Bix six years in a row (1983-88) and held the U.S. record in the half-marathon for 22 years. He still lives in his hometown of Lees Summit, Missouri. After spending about 20 years working in the corporate world, Curp retired, did a little coaching at the high school level and worked part-time at Home Depot, indulging his lifelong love of carpentry and construction.
• Geoff Smith (1986) became a firefighter in his native England but has lived in Massachusetts and Rhode Island for most of the past 30 years, working for a company that sells medals to races. He also coaches young runners and was present at the Boston Marathon in 2013 when the explosion took place near the finish line.
• Ken Martin (1991) became one of only a couple dozen men ever to run a sub-4-minute mile and a sub-2:10 marathon. He battled cancer in 2013, then developed a program to determine if there is a link between cancer and exercise.
• Alejandro Cruz (1992) retired as a marathoner in 2009 and used his degree from the University of Mexico to get a job as a civil engineer.
• Philimon Hanneck (1995) left Zimbabwe in 1990 and settled in Jacksonville, Florida, where he coached teenage girls and worked in the risk and fraud division at a local bank.
• Khalid Khannouchi (1997) broke the world marathon record at the 2002 London Marathon but was plagued by injuries for much of the remainder of his career. He finally retired in 2012 at the age of 40.

He is only 5 feet, 5 inches tall, but Ed Froehlich became a giant in the world of road race directors.

Froehlich was a 33-year-old State Farm insurance agent who had only run the Quad-City Times Bix 7 twice when he was asked to serve as the director of the race in 1980. In his very first year on the job, the number of entries nearly doubled. Within a few years, it was the largest non-marathon road race in the Midwest. By the 1990s, it often involved 20,000 runners, employed 5,000 volunteers and attracted 50,000 spectators.

Froehlich stayed in the role of race director for 40 years, using an outgoing personality, an acute business sense, an inextinguishable work ethic, magnetic leadership and a knack for delegating to develop what some considered the best race in the country.

He became a national figure as a result. He served as president of the Professional Road Runners Organization and vice president of Running USA, was named national race director of the year multiple times, won the Fred Lebow and Allen Steinfeld lifetime achievement awards and was inducted into Running USA’s Hall of Champions and the Quad-City Sports Hall of Fame. A section of a street near the Bix 7 finish line was renamed Ed Froehlich Way and a statue of him was erected in Bix Plaza in 2009.

In its first 49 years, the Quad-City Times Bix 7 has had its share of moments that have been, well, sort of strange, not the sort of thing you ordinarily see in a road race.

A few of the more bizarre Bix moments:

Shotgun start: In order to entice the city of Davenport to grant the Bix 7 a parade permit on short notice for the inaugural race in 1975, race organizers told chief of police Ernest Lester that they would let him fire a shotgun to start the race.

No one realized, however, what the sound of a shotgun blast would do when fired in the midst of tall buildings.

When Lester pulled the trigger on 2nd Street, the sound reverberated off buildings, rattled windows and momentarily stunned the 84 runners at the starting line. All of them paused briefly before starting to run.

“It was such a loud explosion that everyone was in shock,’’ race director John Hudetz said.

The kids did it: These days, no one would dare to have very young children attempt to run seven miles in the midst of a mob of tens of thousands of runners.

In 1999, the Jr. Bix 7 was developed as a way for elementary school age children and pre-school kids to participate in Bix weekend by running relatively short distances the night before the big race.

But in 1978, there was no Jr. Bix 7 and the Bix only included 500 entries anyway. That allowed Robert and Todd McKamey of Rock Island to become almost certainly the youngest runners ever to complete the full 7-mile course.

Six-year-old Robert ran the course in an hour, 8 minutes, 36 seconds, with 7-year-old Todd finishing six minutes behind his little brother.

That year’s race had a distinctly youthful flavor as 125 of the 500 finishers were under the age of 20 with a few others besides the McKameys as young as 10.

The shortcut: One of the biggest snafus in Bix history occurred in 1982 when the pace car in front of the lead pack of runners made a premature turn at the McClellan Boulevard turnaround and the top runners followed, shortening the course by about 50 yards. Photographers seated in the back of the pace car waved for the runners not to follow them but they did anyway.

Australia’s Rob de Castella, who led the pack through the shortcut, won the race in a time of 32 minutes, 21 seconds, knocking 65 seconds off the previous course record. Race officials determined that taking the shortcut shaved only about 14 seconds off his time so he would have easily had the record anyway.

Making it tougher: As if traversing 7 miles in the heat of July wasn’t difficult enough, some runners have gone out of their way to make the task even more daunting.

In 1984, two men strapped their legs together and did the full distance as a three-legged race.

Douglas Carr of Moline has walked the Bix many times on stilts that were designed for the installation of drywall.

Dueling helicopters: As the Bix 7 grew in size and popularity, local television stations battled to top one another in their coverage of the race.

In 1984, WOC (now KWQC) employed 11 cameras to cover the race and rival WQAD topped them by using 16. Both stations attempted to get a Goodyear blimp to provide aerial coverage of the race, but were turned down since all of Goodyear’s iconic dirigibles were being used for the Los Angeles Olympics.

Instead, both stations used helicopters, which vied for air space at the starting line of the race. They succeeded in knocking down the starting line banner at one point as they jockeyed to get the best vantage point.

WOC was granted exclusive broadcast rights the following year, eliminating the danger of competing helicopters.

‘Big mistake’: One of the most bizarre finishes in Bix 7 history took place in 2008 when Maregu Zewdie came down the final stretch in position to become the first man from Ethiopia ever to win the race. However, Zewdie pulled up prematurely a few hundred yards from the finish line. As he crossed under the skywalk in front of the Davenport RiverCenter, he made a slash sign across his throat and stopped running, thinking he had won.

He realized he had not won when Kenya’s Edward Muge blazed past him and continued on two more blocks to the finish line.

Zewdie spoke very little English but he did seem to know two words. As he sat in the elite runner’s tent following the race, he stared at the ground and muttered “Big mistake, big mistake.’’ He looked up only briefly when someone patted him on the back and offered a few words of consolation. Then he went back to fixing his gaze on the grass beneath his feet. “Big mistake, big mistake.’’

The Silas swipe: Silas Kipruto, a three-time winner of the Bix 7, provided another bit of controversy on his way to victory in the 2016 race.

As he was leading the pack of runners down Kirkwood Boulevard in the sixth mile of the race, Kipruto felt Ethiopia’s Teshome Mekonen was following him too closely and clipping him from behind. He finally whirled and took a swipe at Mekonen with his right hand and although he did not appear to make contact, Mekonen pointed angrily at the Kenyan runner.

Mekonen, who finished eighth, filed a protest, and after that protest was denied, he filed an appeal. The race’s competition jury reviewed video of the incident and upheld the original decision denying the protest, stating that “No violation occurred that would have modified or changed the final outcome of the race.’’

Going the distance: While runners younger than 12 almost never run the full 7 miles any more, one young runner accidentally went the distance in 2019.

Ten-year-old Leo Perme of Darien, Illinois, planned to do the 2-mile Quick Bix but he mistakenly missed the turn at the top of the Brady Street hill. He realized he was in trouble when he saw a sign that said he had run 3 miles.

“They told us we couldn’t turn back so I just kept going,’’ Leo said.

He didn’t panic and didn’t give up. Leo went ahead and finished the 7 miles, becoming probably the youngest person since the McKamey brothers to complete the full race.

The weather's hot and Quad-Citians are eager to get out and enjoy some local entertainment.

Throughout the summer, our area has a wide range of outdoor festivals and free concert series, on top of the typical gigs at local venues.

While it'd sure be nice, with summer vacation plans and shifting schedules, it's simply impossible to catch them all.

We're hoping to make your music planning in the Quad-Cities a little easier, so we've compiled a list of concerts this summer that you shouldn't miss. On it, there are 10 shows at 10 different locations for the rest of the summer.

June 25: The Night People at Lincoln Park in Rock Island

When you get a chance to see a band that once opened for Jimi Hendrix for free, you take it. That's the offer on the table at Lincoln Park in Rock Island on June 25, when The Night People will perform as part of the city's Starlight Revue Concert Series. The local band has roughly 50 years of history to its name and consistently attracts a big crowd. The show starts at 6:30 p.m. and will be warmed up with a 5 p.m. grill event.

June 28: Girl Talk, Chromeo & Waka Flocka Flame at The Rust Belt in East Moline

It'll be tough to find a more stacked dance bill in the Quad-Cities this summer than the one at The Rust Belt on June 28 and June 29, for the TreeOnine Festival.

There's Girl Talk, the pioneering mash-up DJ who found a way to squeeze Andre 3000, "Walk It Out," "We're Not Gonna Take It," Sinead O'Connor, Lil Wayne and Huey Lewis into just the first few minutes of an album — seriously, listen to "Feed The Animals" as soon as you can. Then there's a DJ set from funk duo Chromeo and a set by rapper Waka Flocka Flame, who you almost certainly know from diamond single "No Hands."

Two-day passes are $100, plus fees, and one-day tickets are $50.

July 6: Counting Crows at the John Deere Classic in Silvis

Sure, Counting Crows is the band many listeners know for hits like "Mr. Jones" and the cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi." But they're also probably one of the most underrated acts from the nineties pop-alternative explosion. Almost every Crows song is densely colored with songwriter Adam Duritz's psychedelic, potent lyricism and the band's twangy wallop. Duritz packs a punch on ballads like "Colorblind" and "A Long December," and pens earworms on "Round Here" and "Rain King."

It's a treat that the group will be coming to town to play the "Concert On The Course" at the John Deere Classic golf tournament in Silvis. They're joined on the lineup by Lainey Wilson, a rising country star who will take the stage on Sunday, July 7. Counting Crows will play on Saturday, July 6, at 5:45 p.m. Admission to the show comes with a ticket to the JDC, which starts at $50, plus fees.

July 19: Gin Blossoms at Rhythm City Casino in Davenport

Speaking of '90s rock, if you can't get enough of it, head to Rhythm City Casino a few weeks after the Crows come to town and see the Gin Blossoms. The Arizona band wrote some of the most contagious grunge-pop crushers of the decade with "Follow You Down" and "Hey Jealousy," and they've toured over the years with acts like Neil Young and the Goo Goo Dolls.

Tickets for the show on Friday, July 19, are starting at $35. It starts at 8 p.m.

July 26: Harrison Gordon at Raccoon Motel in Davenport

While many of the bands on this list are already A or B-listers, if you want to get in on a rising star, this is your chance. That's almost always the case at the Raccoon Motel, the always active venue in downtown Davenport. On Friday, July 26, they'll be hosting Harrison Gordon, an emo act from Bloomington-Normal that released one of last year's best DIY punk records with "The Yuppies Are Winning."

Gordon's lyricism pulls on imagery everywhere from anime to Super Smash Bros., and then uses it to craft emotionally eviscerating emo anthems. If you're into anything adjacent to pop-punk or hardcore music, you won't want to miss this show. It takes place the night before the Quad-City Times Bix 7, and if you need any last second jolt of guitar-rock energy before the big run, Harrison Gordon will deliver it.

Tickets are on sale now for $15.88.

August 1: T-Pain at the Mississippi Valley Fair in Davenport

It may not be a mansion in "Wiscansin" but Mississippi Valley Fair will certainly be a great venue for rap legend T-Pain. The crunk-hop crooner helped shape the genre's pivot to autotune in the 2000s with signature hits like "I'm 'n Luv (Wit a Stripper)," "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')," "Bartender" and "Can't Believe It." His resume as a featured artist is just as stacked, with appearances on hits by Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Akon and Pitbull.

Under all that electro-tinge, T-Pain is a massively talented vocalist, too. In 2019, he won reality show "The Masked Singer," and in 2023, he released "On Top of The Covers," a well-received covers record that features his take on rock and country songs like "Don't Stop Believin'," "Tennessee Whiskey" and "War Pigs."

T-Pain's fair performance will be on Thursday, August 1. Admission to the show can be bought with a Mississippi Valley Fair Fun Card for $105 or Pepsi One Card for $150. Both passes get you into each day of the fair, from July 30 to August 4, and every Grand Stand performance, too. Outside of T-Pain, the Grand Stand performers will be Thomas Rhett, Koe Wetzel, Priscilla Block, Bret Michaels, Alice Cooper and Scotty McCreery.

August 13: Ben Folds at Capitol Theatre in Davenport

You may not think you know a Ben Folds song, but you know a Ben Folds song. Whether it's the brutal late-nineties alt-ballad "Brick" or satirical nu-metal banger "Rockin' The Suburbs," one of Folds' many, many songs has certainly entered your life at some time or another. We're partial to "Fred Jones, Part 2," an everyman piano ballad about a tenured newspaper employee's last day before retirement. It's enough to get anyone inside or outside of a newsroom a little choked up.

Folds will be playing at the freshly renovated Capitol Theatre, a beautiful space that will provide ample acoustics for his crisp vocals. The best part about this tour? Folds is using a clever "Paper Airplane Requests" gimmick, where fans can write their favorite song on a sheet of paper, fold it up into an airplane and send it on stage for a chance to hear it live. The show starts at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 13, and tickets start at $46.

August 14: Joy Oladokun at Codfish Hollow in Maquoketa

If you can do one thing this summer as a music fan, it should be going to a show at Maquoketa barn venue Codfish Hollow. This place is one-of-a-kind, miles removed from other businesses and smack in the middle of a farm. You have to take a makeshift shuttle bus just to get from the parking lot to the stage. The venue itself has terrific sound and, on a clear night, the best view of the stars you'll ever get at an outdoor show.

Joy Oladokun is a perfect fit for the space, with her withering acoustics and pop hooks. The born-and-raised rural Arizonan has penned some of the catchiest folk songs of the last few years, with many of them pointed at social topics like systemic racism and the acceptance of queer identity. Her most recent album, 2023's "Proof Of Life," features Chris Stapleton, Manchester Orchestra, Mt. Joy and Noah Kahan. Oladokun is due for a Kahan-ish explosion from folk-pop underdog to festival headliner soon.

Tickets for the show are on sale for $31, and it starts at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, August 14.

August 15-18: Clover County at Alternating Currents

This killer week of local live music wraps up with the crown jewel, Alternating Currents, an annual arts and entertainment fest that takes over the entire Quad-Cities. There are over 40 acts already announced on the lineup, so it can be hard to parse through which ones to see. It's especially difficult when so many of them are coming from out of town. But if there's one touring act you should make sure to catch on AC weekend, it's Clover County.

The Georgia singer is at the ground level of a career that's sure to ascend quickly. She's got just two songs on streaming services, and a few more on Bandcamp, but they're all worth checking out. Start with last year's "Glass & Gold," an exultant Americana break-up ballad that will hit hard no matter which of the several stages it's played on at Alternating Currents. If you're a fan of acts like Adrianne Lenker, Ethel Cain or Leith Ross, don't miss this.

August 31: Einstein's Sister, QC Rock Academy & The Beaker Brothers Band at Credit Island in Davenport

It's been almost 50 years since the original Mississippi River Jamin 1978. But this summer, Credit Island will prove it can still rock and roll. As part of the Big 9 Summer Concert Series— a run of gigs co-hosted by music nonprofit Common Chord and the City of Davenport— Credit Island will get a rock show on Saturday, August 31.

The "Throwback Fest" will take place at 6 p.m., immediately after a community carnival and the River Ducky Derby, a rubber duck race with $1,500 and free concert tickets given away as prizes. You can buy a duck starting at $10, but the show itself will be free.

The signature band on the lineup is Einstein's Sister, a locally known power-pop group who has opened for Joan Jett and had an EP mixed at Abbey Road Studios. There will also be an Allman Brothers tribute performance by the Beaker Brothers Band and performances by Common Chord's QC Rock Academy youth bands.

A year-by-year look at the Quad-City Times Bix 7:

1990

Number of runners: 16,521

Men’s winner: Steve Kogo (Kenya), 32:47

Women’s winner: Maria Trujillo (Scottsdale, Arizona), 37:58

Weather: 77 degrees, 82% humidity, .30 inches precipitation

The race included new start and finish lines and the two winners each received a new Pontiac Grand Am LE plus $5,000. Steve Kogo, a relative unknown, accepted the car despite not having a driver’s license. New Zealand’s 41-year-old John Campbell ran the fastest masters time in Bix history — he broke the record by a minute, 12 seconds — and placed fifth overall.

1991

Number of runners: 18,124

Men’s winner: Ken Martin (Santa Fe, New Mexico), 32:21

Women’s winner: Uta Pippig (Germany), 37:04

Weather: 63 degrees, 69% humidity

Ken Martin reached the bottom of the Brady Street Hill almost side-by-side with defending champion Steve Kogo and Alejandro Cruz, but out-sprinted them to the finish. He beat Kogo by two seconds and Cruz by five. Germany’s Uta Pippig had a much easier time in winning the women’s title. The race, which finished in the parking lot of the new Quad-City Times building for the first time, featured some of the coolest, mildest conditions in Bix history.

1992

Number of runners: 18,246

Men’s winner: Alejandro Cruz (Mexico), 32:21

Women’s winner: Olga Markova (Russia), 36:48

Weather: 68 degrees, 100% humidity, 1.8 inches precipitation

Alejandro Cruz and his friend and countryman, Martin Pitayo, ran at the front of the pack the entire way through a steady rain with Cruz winning by just one second. Kenyan runners made their largest impact yet on the race as they finished third, fourth, fifth and sixth. Scott Fry was the top American finisher, in seventh place. Two-time Boston Marathon winner Olga Markova of Russia registered the second best women’s winning time to date.

1993

Number of runners: 16,859

Men’s winner: Thomas Osano (Kenya), 32:10

Women’s winner: Uta Pippig (Germany), 36:27

Weather: 71 degrees, 90% humidity, .50 inches precipitation

The number of runners dipped slightly from the previous year for the first time in Bix history, largely because of a major flood. The course was changed slightly because the normal finishing area was underwater. Both Thomas Osano and Uta Pippig established new course records. For the first time, there were no American runners among the top 10 men’s finishers, which featured runners from Kenya, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, South Africa and Belgium.

1994

Number of runners: 20,097

Men’s winner: Benson Masya (Kenya), 31:56

Women’s winner: Tegla Loroupe (Kenya), 36:02

Weather: 61 degrees, 96% humidity

The Bix topped 20,000 entries for the first time and Benson Masya became the first runner to cover the course in less than 32 minutes. Fellow Kenyan Tegla Loroupe, a diminutive 21-year-old postal worker, put her own stamp on the race by lopping 25 seconds off the previous course record. She was the first Kenya woman to win the Bix. For the second straight year, there were no American men in the top 10 as Clinton’s Jeff Jacobs finished 12th.

1995

Number of runners: 18,354

Men’s winner: Philimon Hanneck (Zimbabwe), 32:08

Women’s winner: Anne Hare (New Zealand), 37:33

Weather: 74 degrees, 78% humidity

Philimon Hanneck breezed past Simon Morolong in the final stretch to register what remains the sixth fastest time in the history of the race. New Zealand’s Anne Hare won the women’s championship. Favorite Olga Appell was on a record pace before she succumbed to the heat and ended up in the hospital. For the first time, prize money was given for the top American finisher with Dan Held claiming the top spot.

1996

Number of runners: 18,108

Men’s winner: Peter Githuka (Kenya), 32:05

Women’s winner: Hellen Kimaiyo (Kenya), 36:18

Weather: 70 degrees, 90% humidity

Peter Githuka took control in extremely humid conditions and cruised to what was then the second best time ever recorded in the Bix. Jeff Jacobs again was the top U.S. finisher, taking 11th place. Hellen Kimaiyo ran what was then the third fastest women’s time to defeat fellow Kenyan Catherine Ndereba by 10 seconds.

1997

Number of runners: 18,388

Men’s winner: Khalid Khannouchi (Morocco), 32:54

Women’s winner: Colleen De Reuck (South Africa), 37:34

Weather: 83 degrees, 80% humidity

In some of the hottest conditions yet, Khalid Khannouchi recorded the slowest winning time in nine years. It was one of 11 road racing wins for Khannouchi that year. He and Colleen De Reuck each pocketed an all-time high first prize of $25,000 as the Bix served as the world championship race for the Professional Road Running Organization.

1998

Number of runners: 22,143 (5,000 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: John Korir (Kenya), 31:51.99

Women’s winner: Colleen De Reuck (South Africa), 36:58

Weather: 62 degrees, 70% humidity

Two relatively unknown Kenyan runners who were late additions to the field, John Korir and Mark Yatich, staged the most scintillating duel in Bix history, resulting in a photo finish. Korir was credited with a time a hundredth of a second faster than Yatich, establishing a record that still stands. Mike Myktok became the first American man in five years to place in the top 10. Colleen De Reuck won the second of her four Bix 7 titles in the women’s race. The Bix also hosted its first junior race with 5,000 kids running the night before the big race.

1999

Number of runners: 23,182 (3,065 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: John Korir (Kenya), 32:59

Women’s winner: Catherine Ndereba (Kenya), 37:30

Weather: 78 degrees, 86% humidity

Noteworthy: The Bix drew its largest field ever with 20,117 people running the regular race with an additional 3, 065 in the junior race. John Korir ran the course 68 seconds slower than he did the previous year, but still emerged with his second straight Bix championship. Catherine Ndereba won her first of three Bix women’s titles. For the first time, runners were given the option of running only two miles instead of seven with the debut of the Quick Bix.

The Quad-City Times Bix 7 has commemorated its rich history with an array of statues in an area known as Bix Plaza, at the point of the Quad-City Times property at the intersection of 4th Street and River Drive.

It began in 1999 with a statue made by sculptor Ted McElhiney depicting iconic runners Bill Rodgers and Joan Samuelson running side by side.

When it was first announced, Samuelson said she was “undone’’ by the honor and Rodgers said he was “psyched as heck.’’ Both said it was the first time they had been honored with a statue.

“You don’t see too many statues of runners,’’ Rodgers added. “I’m just pleased to be up there with Joan. That’s great company to be in.’’

More statues have been added to Bix Plaza in the ensuing years. A likeness of Leon “Bix’’ Beiderbecke, the legendary jazz cornetist for whom the jazz festival and the race were named, was placed atop a wall behind Bill and Joan in 1999. The late Bill Wundram, a columnist for the Times for 74 years and a major supporter of both the race and the jazz festival, was placed nearby in 2007. A statue of Ed Froehlich was erected in 2009 and a bronze likeness of Dan Hayes was added in 2011.

This summer, a statue of former race director and longtime volunteer Karl Ungurean will be added to the collection. It is scheduled to be unveiled and dedicated in ceremonies on July 22.

Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers are buddies now.

The two 76-year-olds are only two months apart in age. They only live about 100 miles from each other in Massachusetts. Their wives are good friends. And although they once were the pre-eminent marathoners in the world, they now show up at road races and do something that only vaguely resembles running.

They both will do that on July 27 in Davenport to help celebrate the 50th annual running of the Quad-City Times Bix 7.

Nearly a half century ago Shorter and Rodgers weren’t quite so close. They were rivals. Not harsh, nasty, bitter rivals, but determined competitors in the battle for supremacy on the U.S. distance running scene.

Both agree that the rivalry pretty much can be traced to the 1975 Virginia 10-miler in Lynchburg, Virginia.

It was Shorter who dominated American distance running in the early part of the 1970s. The Yale graduate, who also earned a law degree from the University of Florida, was nearly unbeatable for about a five-year period.

He won the gold medal in the Olympic marathon in 1972, won both the marathon and the 10,000 meters at the Pan American Games in 1971 and was the No. 1-ranked marathoner in the world three years in a row. He also was the top-ranked 10,000 runner in the United States six times and won the prestigious f*ckuoka Marathon in Japan four times.

Meanwhile, Rodgers quit running for a year after graduating from Wesleyan University in 1970 before gradually getting back into the sport. He eventually won the Boston Marathon in 1975, then sent a strong message five months later in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Shorter led through most of that Virginia 10-miler, but Rodgers caught up with him and they ran side-by-side for several miles. The final mile was straight up a daunting hill.

“I think we looked at each other at the same time and said ‘Let’s go in together,’ ’’ Shorter said.

As they crossed the finish line in unison, Rodgers reached down with his right hand and grabbed Shorter’s left wrist.

“Frank and I tied and they gave the win to me,’’ Rodgers said. “I don’t think he was too happy. He said ‘That’s OK as long as we get the same time.’’’

In a video of their joint post-race interview, Shorter appears uneasy. He knew he had a new rival.

“I found I could race him on the roads and in the marathon,’’ Rodgers said of Shorter. “I didn’t really know him at first but then I got to know him more as we raced more often and traveled together. We’re friends now, but at one point there was a rivalry.’’

The two men faced a similar scenario in May 1976 at the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in Eugene, Oregon. They again left the rest of the field far behind and with 800 meters remaining, again decided they were going to finish together. It didn’t really matter who won. They both were going to make the Olympic team.

“We said we can work together,’’ Shorter said. “The easier we can make this here, the more we’re going to save for there (in the Olympics).’’

But within seconds, Rodgers pulled something and began hobbling. Shorter asked if he wanted him to slow down, but Rodgers said to go ahead. Shorter ended up crossing the finish line 8 seconds ahead of him.

“I didn’t sprint to the finish,’’ Shorter said. “In fact, I was still looking around to make sure he was going to make it … That’s what hurt him for Montreal, for the games. He just wasn’t ready. He didn’t recover.’’

Shorter won the silver medal in Montreal, losing only to an East German runner who later was implicated in a doping scandal. Rodgers finished 40th.

But two months later, Rodgers blew Shorter and everyone else away in the New York City Marathon, claiming his first of four straight championships in that race.

“He’d recovered by then,’’ Shorter said.

So, the rivalry continued.

“We were rivals, but our careers kind of overlapped,’’ Shorter said. “I was the first part of the ‘70s and he was the last part. There was enough overlap that we were competitive. The Virginia 10-miler was one of those transition points.’’

The rivalry was further fueled by the fact that Shorter opened a clothing line for runners in 1977 only to have Rodgers do the same thing a year later.

“So, then we had competing runner’s clothing lines on top of it all,’’ Rodgers said.

They brought their rivalry to Davenport in 1981. Rodgers had won the Bix 7 in his first attempt in 1980 and he beat Shorter to the finish line for his second straight championship in ’81. In 1982, they were joined in the field by Australian superman Rob de Castella, who was in the prime of his career.

Shorter recalled that both he and Rodgers charged up the Brady Street Hill in a little less than 5 minutes, but de Castella got there about 15 seconds faster than they did.

“We’re running together and looking at each other like ‘Who the hell is this guy?’’’ Shorter said.

De Castella won in record time. Rodgers finished second with Shorter third.

Shorter never ran the Bix again although he came back a few times as the analyst for television broadcasts of the race. He said he much preferred the view of that hill from the overpass at the Palmer College of Chiropractic.

He still has very fond memories of the Quad-Cities. By his own admission, he didn’t love the Bix 7 course, but he loved the crowds and the atmosphere of the event. He never stayed in hotels when he came here, residing instead in the home of Raj Sekharan and his wife, Mari, reveling in the seclusion of their attic.

“That was my special place,’’ Shorter said. “I could leave anything I wanted out because no one was going up there exploring.’’

Any lingering vestiges of his rivalry with Rodgers disappeared in the decades that followed.

“That is done,’’ Shorter said.

Shorter was diagnosed in 1995 with a form of cancer that required him to have the upper right part of his face removed and reconstructed with surgery. In 2008, Rodgers also was faced with cancer.

“When Bill got his cancer, I got a hold of him and I think we both have gone on from there,’’ Shorter said.

Obviously, both men are no longer capable of competing hard in the races they attend. They show up, wave to the crowd, mingle with adoring fans and bask in the glory of things they achieved a half-century ago.

“I jog walk,’’ Shorter said. “If you’re willing to let me do it, it will take a long time to get through the course. I think Bill jog walks too.’’

He said Rodgers probably is a little faster if only because Shorter has endured so many orthopedic surgeries through the years, including four on his back.

“I have my own sub-group: Age 76 to 80 with more than 15 different surgeries,’’ he said.

To some, the Quad-City Times Bix 7 is a world-class race.

To many more, it is an immense community event.

Either way, it is a cause for celebration.

Whether runners cross the finish line in the 7-mile race through the streets of Davenport in 33 minutes or whether it takes a couple of hours, they seem to react to the achievement in the same way, with unrestrained joy.

What Devin and Kelsey Allbaugh have done in the Quad-City Times Bix 7 the past few years is fairly amazing.

Devin, 34, has won the Gregg Newell Trophy as the Bix 7’s top local male finisher each of the past two years. And his wife, 33, has won the Eloise Caldwell Trophy as the top local female three years in a row.

It becomes even more amazing when you consider the full and hectic details of their day-to-day lives.

These aren’t just two runners whose sole focus is on being the fastest distance runners in the Quad-Cities.

Both have fairly demanding full-time jobs. Devin is the managing partner of the Running Wild Store in Davenport while Kelsey is a reading specialist in the Pleasant Valley School District. Kelsey also is involved in the running store, and both of them coordinate the Running Wild Elite running teams. Between them, they run at least 120 miles a week. They also have three active kids, ages 8, 5 and 3.

Juggling everything and finding enough time to train requires organization, discipline, time management and energy.

The Allbaughs have been up to the task.

But both will tell you that it hasn’t exactly been easy.

“It’s definitely like a juggle,’’ Devin said. “I run really early in the morning. I’m usually running by 5:30 or 6 every morning so the kids are all asleep and she’s usually asleep.

“And Kelsey is more of an afternoon runner. So I’m the one picking up the kids and getting them all situated at home and she goes for her run from school while I’m doing all that other stuff. So, it’s a balance thing for sure. We’re really, really structured … as much as you can be with three kids.’’

The irony is that while the couple met at Minnesota State University-Mankato because both were on the track and cross country teams, they now almost never get a chance to run together.

“My parents will sometimes take the kids and we’ll get to go for a run together,’’ Devin said. “Every Wednesday we have a group run from the Raccoon Motel in downtown Davenport and my parents will usually take the kids for a couple of hours and we’ll get to go on a run from down there.

“But most of the time it’s either her or me, which is sort of an interesting dynamic since we met running.’’

Kelsey said the couple gets plenty of help in handling their schedule from the community of runners they have built with Running Wild.

“They really love our kids and our kids love being at events with us so they do come to things quite often that we host through the store,’’ she said. “But it’s hectic. I’m not going to lie. The kids are getting to the point, too, where they’re playing sports and doing things like that.’’

Kelsey, who runs 40 to 50 miles per week, but plans to ramp up that number after the Bix to prepare for a December marathon, said her daily training runs provide a sort of therapeutic escape.

“I love running after school because it gives me that break, a time between,’’ she said. “I always joke that I’m a mom to kids all day at school and I’m a mom to my own kids at home so just having that hour to hour-and-a-half where I’m able to run … I have time to kind of decompress. That’s a good shift. I think it almost makes me be a better parent to have that time.’’

Devin grew up in the Quad-Cities and was a star at Pleasant Valley High School. He won the state high school cross country championship in 2007 and originally attended Iowa State. He later transferred to Mankato, where he became an NCAA Division All-American and met his life partner.

Kelsey, originally from Rosemont, Minnesota, mostly played soccer in high school, but began running in her junior year and decided she’d like to try to do that in college.

She has gotten steadily better in her postgraduate years, as evidenced by the fact that she has won the Caldwell Trophy every time she has run the Bix 7.

The Allbaughs’ five Bix 7 cornet trophies all are on display behind the counter at Running Wild, along with the Newell Trophy won by Running Wild employee Steve Froeschle in 2021.

Devin admitted that winning the award is especially meaningful to someone who grew up locally and whose ties to the Bix go all the way back to the inaugural Jr. Bix 7 in 1998.

“Ever since they started doing that (Newell) award, it’s been a pretty big deal here, especially if you grew up here,’’ he said. “It definitely means something if you move here and become a resident, but if you grew up here it really has a little additional meaning, I think.’’

As for the chances of the Allbaughs pulling off another Newell-Caldwell sweep, Kelsey said she would love to see someone else step up to beat them.

“I would welcome the competition to see the running community in the Quad-Cities continue to grow,’’ she said. “I really hope that there are other people out there who want to bid for it. I want to see that continue to grow. I think that’s one really good thing about our race team is that it’s giving more women and men post-collegiately a chance to do those things.’’

Dr. Jeff Bassman was not a large man. He only weighed about 120 pounds for much of his life so obviously he had fairly small feet.

But he left some gargantuan shoes to fill.

For more than four decades, Bassman oversaw the recruiting and organizing of volunteers for the Quad-City Times Bix 7 and through the years that evolved into a huge undertaking.

The inaugural Bix 7 in 1975 had only 84 runners and required perhaps a dozen volunteers or so. A few police officers and a handful of Boy Scouts handled the whole thing. It was no big deal.

For the past few decades, the race has deployed more than 5,000 volunteers, working with up to 150 committee chairmen in such things as crowd control, cleanup, the starting line, the finish line, water stops, the postrace party, collection of results, hosting of elite runners and dignitaries and assorted other things.

Bassman, a popular local dentist, found people to fill all the gaps and frequently made it look easy. So, when he died in January of this year, it left a very big void.

Bree Obertance feels she is up to filling it.

Obertance, a registered nurse and mother of three daughters, was thrust into the job in June of last year while Bassman was battling the ailment that ultimately took his life. She admitted she initially wasn’t sure what she was getting into.

Her husband, Victor, already had been involved with the Bix for a few years as the chairman of security for the post-race party.

“It’s typical or traditional for both husbands and wives to be part of the organization so they contacted me in June and asked if I would be interested in being the volunteer coordinator,’’ Bree said. “I wasn’t really sure what that would entail, but I thought ‘Why not?’’’

She said Bix 7 race director Michelle Juehring and operations director Laura Torgerud gave her as much guidance as they could.

“But I pretty much just had to figure it out on my own,’’ she said.

Obertance has found that it isn’t quite as daunting a job as it might seem, largely because of the foundation laid by Bassman and others.

Many of those committee chairmen have recruited their own people to work under them and there are many volunteers who have stayed with the race for several decades. There hasn’t really been a lot of turnover.

And even when there was, Bassman had an uncanny knack for plugging the holes.

“He took a lot of pride in that,’’ long-time race director Ed Froehlich said. “We had about 5,000 volunteers, and he orchestrated all of that. At the very last minute, if somebody needed 30 people, he’d go out and find them. He was great at his job.’’

Obertance said the biggest difficulty isn’t finding volunteers, but keeping track of all the ones who have been there for years.

“This year our main goal is to get all of our volunteers registered through our website so we have an accurate headcount’’ she said. “That’s harder, I think, than actually finding volunteers.’’

She is tackling the job with a decidedly different style than Bassman, who was old school in his methods.

As the Bix began to grow precipitously in size during the 1980s, Bassman initiated a Bix hotline that prospective volunteers could call to leave a message offering their services. It then required a lot of work on his part to contact those people and slot them into areas in which they could help.

“This is a testament to Jeff’s hard work,’’ Juehring said. “People would give him a phone number and he would call them. People would call his answering machine and say ‘I want to volunteer.’ Everything is electronic now.’’

Juehring said Obertance does almost everything with email, Google forms, spreadsheets and various other high-tech implements.

“By doing that, you can choose a time, you can choose an area, a day, and then Bree can put you in these groups,’’ Juehring added. “It’s amazing.’’

Nevertheless, almost everyone said the race always will miss Bassman, who was beloved not only for his efficiency and work ethic but for the buoyant personality he brought to the job.

Froehlich, who first recruited Bassman to be part of Bix hierarchy when they were part of the same 6 a.m. running group in 1980, said his old friend was “a wonderful man.

“He meant everything to the Bix,’’ Froehlich added.

Sprint races are supposed to have tight, almost-too-close-to-call finishes.

It’s not as common in seven-mile road races but there have been a few times in Bix 7 history when two elite runners were so close when they arrived at the end of the race that it was almost impossible to tell who won.

The best example was in 1998 when a pair of relatively unknown Kenyan runners, John Korir and Mark Yatich, ran together most of the way and crossed almost simultaneously, resulting in a rare photo finish.

Korir was credited with a time of 31 minutes, 51.99 seconds — an all-time record — while Yatich placed second at 31:52.

A year-by-year look at the Quad-City Times Bix 7:

2000

Number of runners: 18,523 (3,512 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Mark Yatich (Kenya), 32:31

Women’s winner: Colleen De Reuck (South Africa), 36:42

Weather: 63 degrees, 65% humidity

Mark Yatich, who lost in the closest finish ever two years earlier, prevailed in another close duel with Lazarus Nyakeraka and Reuben Cheruiyot. Yatich ran the course 39 seconds slower than in 1998, when he lost by a hundredth of a second. Colleen DeReuck won for the third time, becoming the first runner not named Joan Samuelson to notch more than two Bix victories.

2001

Number of runners: 18,958 (3,500 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: John Korir (Kenya), 32:24

Women’s winner: Catherine Ndereba (Kenya), 37:05

Weather: 71 degrees, 90% humidity, 1.27 inches precipitation

John Korir became the first man to win the Bix 7 three times while Catherine Ndereba won the women’s race for the second time in three years. Sylvia Mosqueda took seventh, becoming the only American to win prize money. The week of festivities also included the inaugural Brady Street Sprint, a quarter-mile uphill dash.

2002

Number of runners: 19,658 (3,500 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Meb Keflezighi (Mammoth Lakes, Calif.), 32:36

Women’s winner: Colleen De Reuck (Boulder, Colo.), 37:44

Weather: 74 degrees, 85% humidity

The Bix 7 was sanctioned by U.S. Track and Field as the American championship race for the first time with both winners being African-born runners who became U.S. citizens. Meb Keflezighi, born in Eritrea before moving to the U.S. as a child, won by 52 seconds, the third largest men’s margin of victory ever, in his Bix debut. South African-born Colleen De Reuck tied Joan Samuelson for the most Bix victories, with four.

2003

Number of runners: 19,852 (3,500 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: John Korir (Kenya), 32:34

Women’s winner: Catherine Ndereba (Kenya), 37:12

Weather: 73 degrees, 71% humidity

Kenya’s John Korir and Catherine Ndereba both came from behind to continue their trend of winning the race in odd-numbered years, duplicating their victories in 1999 and 2001. Korir won by only two seconds and Ndereba by only four.

2004

Number of runners: 20,127 (3,500 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: John Korir (Kenya), 32:36

Women’s winner: Susan Chepkemei (Kenya), 35:24

Weather: 61 degrees, 72% humidity

In unseasonably cool conditions, Susan Chepkemei and runner-up Constantina Tomescu-Dita both broke the 10-year-old course record for women and John Korir set a record with his fifth Bix championship. The Rhythm City Casino Race for the Jackpot (now known as Beat the Elite) made its debut with designated runner Tim Delf being passed by Korir in the final 200 yards despite getting a 2.4-mile head start.

2005

Number of runners: 20,211 (3,500 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Gilbert Okari (Kenya), 32:24

Women’s winner: Nuta Olaru (Romania), 36:53

Weather: 69 degrees, 84% humidity

Both Gilbert Okari and Nuta Olaru won easily as the Bix 7 drew the third largest turnout in its history. Okari won by 25 seconds, Olaru by 31. Janelle Swanberg won the second jackpot race and donated her $3,100 prize to H.E.L.P along with another $14,000 in pledges from local attorneys and the Riverboat Development Authority.

2006

Number of runners: 19,397 (3,380 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Lawrence Kiprotich (Kenya), 32:13

Women’s winner: Susan Chepkemei (Kenya), 37:35

Weather: 79 degrees, 84% humidity

In some of the most stifling weather conditions ever, 19-year-old Lawrence Kiprotich became the youngest men’s winner in the history of the Bix 7. He was one of nine Kenyans to place in the top 10 with the only exception being American Meb Keflezighi. Susan Chepkemei held off fellow Kenyan Jemima Jelegat to win the women’s race for the second time.

2007

Number of runners: 18,499 (3,497 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Duncan Kibet (Kenya), 32:15

Women’s winner: Wude Ayalew (Ethiopia), 36:57

Weather: 72 degrees, 78% humidity

Kenya’s Duncan Kibet and Ethiopia’s Wude Ayalew both raced to victory in their first visits to the Quad-Cities, marking the 12th time in 15 years that both the men’s and women’s champions were natives of Africa. The 20-year-old Ayalew became the first winner from Ethiopia.

2008

Number of runners: 16,795 (3,084 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Edward Muge (Kenya), 32:16

Women’s winner: Edith Masai (Kenya), 37:20

Weather: 72 degrees, 81% humidity

Edward Muge won the race only because leader Maregu Zewdie of Ethiopia pulled up prematurely a few hundred yards from the finish line and made a throat slash sign, thinking he had won. Muge sprinted past him and won by 9 seconds. Edith Masai, 41, won the women’s race by 1 second to become the oldest winner of the Bix. Jackpot runner Ben Houtekier did not win but the Rhythm City Casino still gave the prize money to benefit Davenport fireman Bob Juarez.

2009

Number of runners: 18,335 (3,098 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Meb Keflezighi (Mammoth Lakes, Calif.), 32:25

Women’s winner: Molly Huddle (Providence, R.I.), 37:39

Weather: 66 degrees, 81% humidity

The Bix served as the American championship race for the second time and Meb Keflezighi won again, this time by 31 seconds. Molly Huddle, in the midst of a pack of runners with a mile to go, pulled away to become the first U.S.-born women’s winner since Joan Samuelson in 1988. Nathaniel Hird was the inaugural winner of the Greg Newell Trophy as the top local male finisher, becoming the first of three Hird brothers to win it.

When it’s all over, after you’ve run or walked or crawled seven miles or two miles, it’s time to party.

The Quad-City Times Bix 7 broke new ground in the world of road racing by providing food, drink and music to the race’s participants in a massive party following the race. It all takes place in the Quad-City Times parking lot. That part of the festivities is really about camaraderie and celebration, and participants revel in having completed the race.

Don Fish’s knee really hurts. Both of Gary Fischer’s knees give him problems. Steve Clark has an aching back. Ed Lillis’ hips creak with every step.

But nothing is going to stop any of them from their appointed duties on July 27.

None of the four men has missed a single Quad-City Times Bix 7 and they’re not about to do so now that the race is about to celebrate its 50th running less than a month from now.

“I guess I’ve done it for so long that it’s just something I do every summer,’’ said Clark, a long-time Rock Island resident who now lives in Algonquin, in the Chicago suburbs. “As long as I can walk it, I’m going to keep going.’’

Fish, Fischer, Clark and Lillis have been the last four standing since 2009, when Kerry Gannon of Orion had to drop out after suffering a heart attack on the eve of the race.

All of them now do much more walking than running on the grueling up-and-down course, but they’re all still entered in the 50th annual Bix 7.

It has become something of a quest to keep from being the guy who drops out, but all of them just love the race and feel it serves a purpose in their lives.

“It’s been a motivator to me, a motivator just to get into better shape and stay active, keep moving around,’’ said Lillis, 79. “The race itself is just a great motivator to try to maintain some level of fitness.’’

Clark, 77, feels the same way.

“I think if it wasn’t for this, I might still do some running but I bet I would do a lot more walking and weightlifting,’’ he said.

All of them also concede that it seems to get a little tougher each year.

Lillis, the long-time track coach at Rock Island High School, has had both hips replaced, then broke one of those replacements a few years ago. He has done the race on crutches a few times and this year plans to use hiking sticks, similar to the poles used in cross country skiing. He said they give him some added stability on the hills, especially that brief-but-steep incline up McClellan Boulevard about three miles into the race.

Clark has battled back problems for years and said he never knows day to day how he’s going to feel.

Fischer, the oldest of the four at 82, has arthritis in one knee and virtually no cartilage in the other. The Iowa City resident can’t run any more, but he plans to walk the course with his oldest daughter and his nephew. He made a recent trip to Branson, Missouri, and walked the hills of Silver Dollar City.

“That was a great workout for me,’’ he said. “That was part of my plan to get ready for Bix.’’

Fish, at 74, is the youngest of the group and has almost always been the fastest, but he has slowed down considerably. He underwent hip replacement surgery last year, then had a knee replaced in January.

“It’s been a rough year, but I’ll be out there,’’ he said. “I’m entered. I’m in the race.’’

He said he still has a minor amount of pain in the surgically repaired knee.

“I can walk OK. I can jog a little bit,’’ he added. “It’s getting better but very slowly.’’

There has been some suggestion that once the four men have hit the half-century mark that at least some of them may call it quits and end their streaks.

“I’m really going to be interested to see how many continue past this year,’’ Clark said.

Fish, for one, already has his eye on the Quick Bix, the race’s two-mile alternative.

“My big temptation is to simply do the Quick Bix this year, but to get 50 in on the full seven is kind of a big deal,’’ he said. “That’s my real goal … But then I’m going to hang it up, man. I’ll probably do the Quick Bix still because it’s so much fun to be out there, but it’s 50 and out for me.’’

Clark, however, said he doesn’t have any plans to stop at 50. Neither does Lillis.

“I think we all kind of take things a day at a time,’’ he said. “If a person did want to separate from the tradition of it, 50 might be a good time to make that separation, but for myself I wouldn’t be too sure about it at all.’’

Fischer pretty much said he’ll do the Bix until he dies.

“At one point I did tell my daughters that if I couldn’t make the Bix for some reason that they should get me cremated and carry my ashes in the race,’’ he said. “They didn’t really think that was a great idea. That would be my final Bix.

“I’ll do it as long as I can,’’ he added.

Once the runners and walkers in the Quad-City Times Bix 7 reach the top of the daunting Brady Street Hill, their work has just begun.

They then begin a gradual downhill trek of nearly two miles along Kirkwood Boulevard, then follow more undulations on Middle Road and McClellan Boulevard, then turn and follow the same route back to the finish line.

Throughout the seven miles, runners almost never are traveling on flat, even ground. They’re either going uphill or downhill.

“You have to shift gears a lot,’’ said marathon legend Bill Rodgers, who has run the race 43 times. “You’re turning corners, changing surfaces, going uphill or downhill. It’s like cross country.’’

And although that opening hill looks scary, Bix 7 veterans will tell you it’s probably not the most grueling aspect of the race. On that return trip up Kirkwood, they are going slightly uphill for approximately 1.7 miles and they are doing it after having run about four miles. The excitement and adrenaline of the start is long gone by then.

“The hill at the beginning looks intimidating, but once the race starts you don’t really see the hill and you don’t really feel it because you’re fresh,’’ said Phil Coppess, who had five top-10 Bix finishes in the 1980s.

The route is nearly perfect in that it begins and ends in approximately the same place. Kirkwood is separated by a strip of grass down the middle so the slower runners can see and cheer on the elite entries as they make their back toward the finish.

That part of the course has remained almost entirely unchanged since the race’s inception a half-century ago.

Kellyn Taylor and Biya Simbassa each ran the Quad-City Times Bix 7 for the first time last year.

They clearly loved the course, the atmosphere and just about everything about the annual race through the streets of Davenport.

Both Taylor and Simbassa held off late challenges from other runners, both ran the sixth best Bix 7 times ever by a U.S. athlete of their gender and both plan to return to defend their championships when the race is held for the 50th time on July 27.

It marks the first time in 12 years that both the men’s and women’s champions are returning to defend their Bix titles.

Simbassa admitted he wasn’t really sure how he felt about the Bix 7 course last year when he first saw the endless array of ups and downs in the course. But after holding off Olympian Clayton Young to win, he liked it.

“I mean, now I do,’’ he said after his victory. “It’s a course that’s all about strength and I train for this."

Taylor went through a similar transformation.

“When I saw the course, I was like, ‘Oh, no. What did I get myself into?’ ” she said. “That’s a super substantial hill right at the beginning and then it rolls all the way through. It’s certainly not easy by any means. I think that works to my favor since I’m more of a strength runner.”

Taylor appreciated more than just the hills.

“The crowds were amazing,” she said. “It’s not what I expected at all — the streets were completely lined, and a race that isn’t a huge marathon, I don’t feel like you see that that often. The crowds were incredible.”

Taylor and Simbassa will be bidding to repeat as Bix 7 champions, something that has been done only seven times in the race’s history, four times by men, three times by women.

Both runners failed to land berths on the U.S. Olympic team, which would have precluded a return to Bix, but they’ve still used their 2023 victories as a springboard to additional success.

Taylor briefly led the New York City Marathon last November before placing eighth, making her the top American finisher in the race. It was the third time she has been in the top eight at New York.

The Wisconsin native, who will turn 38 a few days before the Bix 7, then focused her attention on making the U.S. Olympic team and made a respectable showing in the trials in the marathon, finishing 15th, and the 10,000 meters, placing sixth.

Simbassa, a 31-year-old native of Ethiopia who now lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, attempted to earn an Olympic spot in the marathon but placed 11th in the trials.

However, he has followed that with an ambitious schedule on the U.S. road racing circuit, recording top-five finishes in the Bolder Boulder 10k (5th), Cherry Blossom 10-miler (5th), Gate River 15k (4th), Amway River Bank 25k (3rd) and Houston Half-marathon (4th).

Also included in the field are four former Olympians and nine other runners who have placed in the top 10 at the Bix 7 in the past. Elite athlete coordinator John Tope said even more top runners could be added between now and race day.

Among the top men’s entries are two former Iowa State University standouts.

Wesley Kiptoo of Kenya was the 2021 NCAA indoor 5,000-meter champion and a seven-time All-American for the Cyclones. He was seventh in the Bix 7 two years ago and won the Cherry Blossom 10-miler earlier this year.

Hillary Bor, a Kenya native who is now an American citizen, also attended Iowa State before representing the U.S. in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Olympics in both 2016 and 2021. He also is the U.S. record-holder in the 10-mile run.

Other former Olympians in the field are Morocco’s Mohamed El Aaraby and Americans Jake Riley and Shadrack Kipchirchir. Riley and Araby both competed in the marathon in Tokyo in 2021 and Kipchirchir ran the 10,000 meters in 2016.

Riley also is a Bix 7 veteran along with Kenya’s Reuben Mosip and Americans Frank Lara, Andrew Colley and Isai Rodriguez. Lara was second in the Bix 7 in 2021 and eighth a year ago.

Rounding out the men’s field are Raymond Magut of Kenya; Tsegay Tuemay and Tesfu Tewelde of Eritrea; and Americans Nathan Martin, Ryan Ford, JP Trojan, Merga Gemeda and Titus Winders.

The most recognizable name in the women’s field is 41-year-old Sara Hall, the wife of two-time Olympian, U.S. half-marathon record-holder and 2010 Bix champion Ryan Hall. Sara Hall was fifth in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials earlier this year and has two strong Bix 7 efforts on her resume, placing second in 2014 and third in 2017.

She and Taylor will be challenged by three up-and-coming runners from Kenya — Emmaculate Anyango Achol, Grace Loibach Nawowuna and Sarah Naibei. Achol has run the second fastest women’s 10k ever (28:57) and Naibei won the Lilac Bloomsday 12k in May.

Also in the field are Bix 7 veterans Kassie Parker, Jessa Hanson, Carrie Verdon and Tristin Van Ord along with Americans Annmarie Tuxbury and Stephanie Sherman, Ethiopia’s Mahlet Mulugeta and Kenya's Veronicah Wanjiru.

The elite field also includes four legendary runners who have helped build the Bix 7 into the international event that it is. Two-time champion Bill Rodgers, who has run the Bix 7 43 times, will be joined by four-time women’s champion and 1984 Olympic gold medalist Joan Samuelson, two-time Olympic medalist Frank Shorter and Meb Keflezighi, who has two Bix titles and an Olympic silver medal on his resume.

One of its earliest participants remembers it as being “the coolest running circus of kids and people just everywhere … It was very cool.’’ That’s how most kids have viewed the Jr. Bix 7 since its inception in 1998. It’s cool.

The event, sponsored by Arconic and held on the streets around the Quad-City Times on the eve of the main Bix 7 race, allows kids ages 12 and under to participate in Bix weekend without having to run seven miles. Some run as little as 70 yards before going off to feast on hot dogs and popsicles. Some don’t run at all.

Everyone gets a medal. And hopefully, everyone has fun.

In the late 1990s, Quad-City Times Bix 7 officials realized that not everyone was enthralled with the idea of running seven miles up and down hills in the heat of July. They decided to give them an alternative.

The 25th anniversary race in 1999 was the debut of the Quick Bix, a two-mile option for runners who aren’t as physically fit or who just want to be part of one of the largest, most exuberant community celebrations in the Midwest.

While those going the full seven miles go all the way to the top of the Brady Street Hill before turning right onto Kirkwood Boulevard, Quick Bixers turn right a block earlier at 15th Street, go a block east, then go right back down the hill on Perry Street and finish in the same area as the seven-milers.

The Bix was one of the first major races to offer a shorter distance and the idea has been copied by other races across the country.

It began with popsicle sticks.

That was the primary device used in the timing and record-keeping for the Quad-City Times Bix 7 in its formative years of the 1970s.

There was a stack of popsicle sticks with numbers on them and as runners crossed the finish line, they were handed a stick denoting where they finished. A handful of people stood at the finish line with stopwatches and recorded their time.

It graduated from there to coat hanger spindles holding tags that were torn from runners’ bibs as they crossed the finish line along with hordes of people wielding stopwatches and clipboards, and a guy running around in a Superman outfit carrying a bullhorn.

These days, technology has made it much easier and more efficient. At one time, the operation required about 200 volunteers at the finish line. Now you can count the number of timing personnel on one hand.

The results now are recorded instantly and are available online almost immediately after the race.

“We even have an app where you can track where somebody is running in live time …’’ race director Michelle Juehring said. “As soon as you cross the finish line, your results are almost instant.

“It’s all pretty amazing.’’

But when the Bix 7 began in 1975, the popsicle stick thing worked just fine.

Within a few years, though, the Bix 7 grew precipitously in size.

In 1980, the number of runners ballooned to 1,500 and heavy rains and mass confusion led to an epic failure to record accurate times for most of the runners.

That prompted race director Ed Froehlich to bring in a fledgling company called Super Race Systems to handle the timing.

Super Race Systems was founded by a pair of New Yorkers named Steve Marek and Bill Sherry in 1978. They were runners themselves and saw the opportunity to capitalize on the running boom by forming a company that helped with the timing of races.

Sherry was a teacher and Marek was a tall, eccentric insurance adjuster who delighted in dressing up as Superman for races. He almost never was seen without his skin-tight red and blue outfit, complete with cape. He often wore it on the plane flying into the Quad-Cities.

While Marek was the more visible half of the partnership, Sherry was a low-key, precise problem-solver. Together they were an effective duo.

“Steve was the one who liked to be out front and kind of the face of Super Race Systems, but Bill knew how to get the job done,’’ said Gail Sherry, Bill’s widow, who now serves as the chief operating officer of Super Race Systems.

“There were very few timers at that time,’’ she added. “People just didn’t know how to time races so they were going all over the country.’’

In 1981, the company began a relationship with the Bix 7 that continues to this day.

Marek got out of the business in 2000 and both he and Sherry have passed away, but the legacy is carried on by Gail, who met Bill in 1984 when she was volunteering for the Old Kent River Bank Run in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The couple was married in 1988.

After Bill died in 2016, Gail found she needed help with some of the larger races her company handled. About five years ago, Super Race Systems merged with Big River Timing, a St. Louis-based company founded in 2006.

“We’re kind of one company,’’ said Matt Helbig, Big River’s CEO. “We operate under different names just because we both started independently and our names are kind of established in our individual markets, but we’re one company basically.’’

Gail Sherry still oversees the timing for the Bix along with Helbig, who brings all the necessary equipment up from St. Louis.

In the 21st century, technology has greatly streamlined the way the race is timed and results are recorded.

There was some resistance to making changes initially. Super Race Systems did such a good job with the old methods.

For decades, Marek and Sherry supervised hundreds of local volunteers who funneled the runners into chutes as they finished. The runners’ bib numbers were written down along with their finishing times and all of it was inputted into the computer system by Quad-City Times employees.

“It was like a choreographed dance,’’ Gail Sherry said.

Froehlich wanted to make sure the new technology worked properly before he made any change to methods that worked so well for so long.

“We would revisit it year after year because it was all new and what happens if it doesn’t work?’’ said Juehring, who was one of Froehlich’s assistants when the technological advances began.

“We had all these volunteers and Times employees who were within seconds of accuracy manually taking down times and now we’re going to switch to electronics? It was a big change and I applaud Ed for having the courage to do it.’’

The change began with bar-coded tags that were attached to each runner’s bib. As they crossed the finish line, a volunteer tore off the tag and their time was recorded. The bar code eliminated the need to write down bib numbers and input names.

In 2009, the Bix 7 changed to a D-tag, an orange plastic strip that contained a computer chip, which activated when the runner began the race and recorded their time when they finished. Before the race, runners needed to remove the tag from their bib and attach it to their shoe, then turn it in after the race.

That progressed to a different ChronoTrack D-tag, which also attached to the shoe but did not need to be collected.

Runners now have a ChronoTrack B-tag that is embedded in the back of their bib. They don’t need to attach anything to their shoe or return anything after the race.

There are no more chutes to go through at the finish line. Runners now just go straight to the post-race party after completing the race. There also is no need for hundreds of people at the finish line.

“The only volunteers at the finish line now are those who do back-up hand-timing,’’ Gail Sherry said.

It all works very smoothly and efficiently.

“The technology is pretty amazing with what it’s done,’’ Helbig said.

Meb Keflezighi remembers the first time he came to the Quad-City Times Bix 7, back in 2002.

He hadn’t spent a lot of time in the Midwest and he had an image of the region as being extremely flat. As he was flying in, he looked over the landscape and all he saw was cornfields.

“But then I was looking at the graphic of the race course and I said ‘This does not look flat,’ ’’ he said.

It wasn’t. The Bix 7 begins with a mile-long charge up a 9-degree incline and participants almost never are running on level ground at any point in the 7-mile race.

But something about the event resonated with him. He loved the crowd, loved the community, loved the fact that as he pranced down the final hill far ahead of all the other runners, there were several spectators extending their hands, beckoning for him to slap a celebratory high-five.

Keflezighi slapped quite a few high-fives on his way down that hill and he has returned to Bix 7 more than a few times through the years. He will be back to do the race for the 10th time on July 27 as part of the Bix 7’s 50th anniversary race.

“I’m pretty psyched up, pretty excited for it,’’ he said.

Keflezighi already was a major distance running star even before that 2002 visit to the Quad-Cities. He won four NCAA championships (indoor 5k, outdoor 5k and 10k and cross country) in the 1997 calendar year at UCLA. He was 12th in the 10,000 meters at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. In 2001, he set the American record for that distance, establishing a mark that would stand for nine years.

But he views that 2002 Bix as a launching pad to a higher level of success. He won a silver medal in the Olympic marathon two years later, becoming the first American man since Frank Shorter in 1976 to medal in the event.

He continued to do big things from there. He won the Bix again in 2009. Later that year, he became the first American in 27 years to win the New York City Marathon. In 2014, he became the first U.S. runner in 31 years to win the Boston Marathon. He also represented the U.S. in the Olympics again in 2012 and 2016.

Now 49, he has retired as a competitive runner although he still runs at least 20 miles a week.

Keflezighi now spends much of his time overseeing a highly successful charitable foundation, whose stated mission is to “be a collaborator and leader in the areas of youth health, education and fitness.’’

He also spends a great deal of time watching the athletic exploits of his three daughters — Sara, age 18, Fiyori, 16, and Yohana, 14. All three are outstanding soccer players and Fiyori also has embraced distance running, competing in both track and cross country at Plant High School in Tampa.

Every now and then the old man still gets out and runs a race himself.

Despite a nagging calf injury, he completed the Boston Marathon in 3 hours, 8 minutes, 57 seconds a few months ago.

“I tried to break three hours but I did not make it,’’ Keflezighi said. “My training had gone well but that last week-and-a-half … It was a miracle that I started. It was a miracle that I finished.’’

He originally was asked to be part of the television broadcast team for the race, but it was a special occasion: The 10-year anniversary of his win there.

“So I decided to run with the people, and it was fun,’’ he said.

He is planning to do the same thing at the Bix 7, a race in which he not only has excelled but one that he has served well as an unofficial ambassador.

“It’s been very special for me, for many years, ever since 2002,’’ Keflezighi said. “I felt kind of connected to the community, and I always tell people ‘If you’re looking for summer races … Davenport, Iowa. Quad-Cities.’’’

He has made many friends in the community and almost never stays in hotels when he comes to Davenport, often staying with lifelong friends Dan and Mary Breidinger. When the Breidingers adopted a daughter many years ago, they named her Mary Elizabeth so that her initials would be MEB.

Keflezighi has no problem citing his favorite Bix moment. It was that first visit in 2002 and that glorious dash down Brady Street. He even can describe in vivid detail the man who first stuck out his hand for a high-five.

“There are other memories,’’ he said, “but that one kind of pops out.’’

There are people who seemingly won’t allow anything to keep them from participating in the Quad-City Times Bix 7 each year.

Val Svetich was one of them.

Svetich first ran the Bix 7 as a 16-year-old Davenport West student in 1980 and continued to revel in the race every year for the next decade. Then, life threw a roadblock into her path.

About a month after running the Bix 7 in 1988, Svetich was rock climbing at Maquoketa Caves State Park when she reached out for a way to steady herself. Something broke loose and she fell 23 feet onto a hiking path. A large rock that she dislodged also fell and landed on her left leg, shattering her thigh bone and severing a main artery. She also sustained injuries to her kidneys and her spleen in the fall.

Svetich had to be carried a mile on a stretcher before being transported to University Hospitals in Iowa City. She remained conscious most of that time, but she ultimately lost 90 percent of the blood in her system and thought several times along the way that she was going to die. Her left leg had to be amputated at the thigh. The incident was dramatic enough to be featured in an episode of the television series Rescue 911.

Eleven months later, Svetich was right back where she always was on the last Saturday in July, standing at the starting line of her favorite race, ready to do the full 7 miles. She wore a shirt that read “I fell 23 feet but I didn’t let it keep me down,’’ as she walked the Bix course on crutches accompanied by her boyfriend, Kevin Polzin, and his brother. She told a reporter beforehand that if she fell, Polzin was instructed to pick her up and carry her on his back the rest of the way. She was determined to go the distance.

And she did.

Svetich’s story is just one example of the spirit, determination, perseverance and spunk that fuels so many of the people who toe the starting line for the Bix 7.

Tom Schultz, a high school teacher from Fulton, Illinois, who lost a leg to polio at the age of 13, did the Bix 7 several times on one leg, navigating all those hills on crutches.

Several blind people have walked the Bix 7 through the years, some with the guidance of a friend, some with the help of a seeing-eye dog, some with nothing more than a white cane and their own wits.

Steve Oliver of Moline ran the Bix at the age 17 in 1990, five years after being shot in the face in a boyhood prank gone bad. He was rendered a paraplegic for a long time, spent five months in the hospital and was given little chance to ever walk again. But with a bullet still lodged near his spine and a wide smile creasing his face, Oliver ran the full 7 miles.

Davenport native John Sinning injured ligaments in his collar bone while playing with his Black Labrador, Inky, at his parents’ home the night before the 1984 Bix 7, but still did the race about 12 hours later with his shoulder in a sling.

Malcolm Pearson, a John Deere truck driver from Grimsby, Ontario, pushed himself too hard in 1995 in probably the hottest, most suffocating Bix ever. He collapsed at the finish line, went into a coma with a temperature of 108.7 and spent four days in the hospital. Doctors said they’d never seen someone survive after having a body temperature that high. He came back to do the race again the following year and was issued bib No. 108 as a reference to his extreme temperature the previous year.

Perhaps no Bix 7 participant displayed more perseverance than Mark Nagan, a Bettendorf resident who ran the race every year from 1995 through 2000. Over the course of a half-dozen years, Nagan was diagnosed with three brain tumors, three large melanomas (on his right thigh, right abdomen and right hip), basal cell carcinoma above his left eye and his right temple, and Crohn’s disease. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in 1994 told him he had six months to live. He ran the Bix six times before finally succumbing to his array of ailments at the age of 33 in 2003.

Nagan said every time he did the Bix, it seemed to breathe new life into him.

“Every year after I finish the race I let out a little emotion because I know it might be my last time,’’ he admitted in 1999. “It’s kind of a sad feeling. Who knows if I’ll be here for the next one?’’

For Val Svetich, there was a “next one.’’

She had graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic and opened a practice in Fremont, Calif., but in 2000, 12 years after doing the Bix on crutches, she came back to do the 2-mile Quick Bix on a prosthetic leg with the use of a cane. No crutches this time. No boyfriend to pick her up if she fell. She was going it alone.

When it looked as though Svetich was getting shaky and was on the verge of falling over at the top of the Brady Street hill, two complete strangers came to her rescue. Pam Abdo and Pat Trotter walked the rest of the course beside her. At one point, they asked her what her favorite song was and she told them it was Queen’s “We Are The Champions.’’ They sang it to her as the trio descended down the Perry Street hill.

Svetich was the last person across the finish line, but she finished. Times columnist Bill Wundram had been standing there handing out flowers and hugs to people as they crossed the finish lines. He was so impressed with Svetich that he handed her a full bouquet.

“Her finishing the race was such a great accomplishment that we thought there’d be bells and whistles at the finish line,’’ Abdo said. “But she was just a lone walker.’’

Just a lone walker epitomizing the spirit of the Bix 7.

Maybe it’s because the Quad-City Times Bix 7 is held in the same month as Independence Day at a time when people are feeling especially patriotic. Or perhaps it’s just that the Quad-Cities is the sort of downhome, every-man place where the citizenry appreciates what it means to be a U.S. citizen.

Whatever the reason, patriotism always seems to be a central theme at the Bix 7.

Spectators frequently display flags and wave them as the runners go by. There always is a military color guard at the starting line. For many years, current and former military personnel have been allowed to run the race for free.

In 1993, the Bix 7 became one of the first road races to have the Star-Spangled Banner sung beforehand with local radio personality Jack Carey doing the honors for nearly 30 years.

A year-by-year look at the Quad-City Times Bix 7:

2010

Number of runners: 17,598 (2,490 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Ryan Hall (Mammoth Lakes, California), 32:55

Women’s winner: Lisa Koll (Fort Dodge, Iowa), 37:52

Weather: 70 degrees, 90% humidity, 1.21 inches precipitation

Ryan Hall pulled away from the field in the final two miles to win in his first visit to the Bix 7 while 22-year-old Lisa Koll, a former Iowa State national champion, made her road racing debut a memorable one. The race, which was run amid intermittent showers, served as the American championship race for the third time.

2011

Number of runners: 18,057 (3,119 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Silas Kipruto (Kenya), 32:36

Women’s winner: Caroline Rotich (Kenya), 36:42

Weather: 77 degrees, 82% humidity

Kenya’s Caroline Rotich won by a minute, 4 seconds, the largest margin of victory in 33 years in the women’s race. Silas Kipruto won the men’s race for the first time as the top five finishers all were from Kenya. Jen Paul won the inaugural Eloise Caldwell Trophy as the top local women’s finisher.

2012

Number of runners: 18,138 (3,425 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Silas Kipruto (Kenya), 32:31

Women’s winner: Margaret Muriuki (Kenya), 36:17

Weather: 70 degrees, 78% humidity

Silas Kipruto became only the third male runner to win the Bix 7 in back-to-back years, joining Bill Rodgers and John Korir. Caroline Rotich also made a strong bid to repeat in the women’s race but she ended up being edged by Margaret Muriuki.

2013

Number of runners: 18,244 (3,233 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Leonard Korir (Kenya), 32:15

Women’s winner: Sule Utura (Ethiopia), 36:34

Weather: 57 degrees, 80% humidity

Leonard Korir (no relation to John Korir) outran Silas Kipruto to win the coolest Bix 7 ever. Sule Utura sprinted past fellow Ethiopian Buzunesh Deba in the final mile to claim her victory. The High School Challenge was held for the first time with Ethan Adlfinger of Rock Island Alleman and Stephanie Jenks of Linn-Mar racing to victory.

2014

Number of runners: 18,949 (3,277 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Sean Quigley (Boulder, Colorado), 33:48

Women’s winner: Molly Huddle (Providence, Rhode Island), 36:13

Weather: 69 degrees, 84% humidity

Sean Quigley pulled away from Christo Landry in the final few hundred meters to win the U.S. men’s 7-mile championship. Molly Huddle ran the fourth fastest Bix 7 ever and the fastest by an American woman, doing it in less-than-ideal conditions.

2015

Number of runners: 17,293 (3,231 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Leonard Korir (Kenya), 33:06

Women’s winner: Cynthia Limo (Kenya), 36:57

Weather: 73 degrees, 83% humidity

Leonard Korir won the men’s race for the second time in three years, covering the final mile in 4 minutes, 10 seconds. Cynthia Limo won one of the most competitive women’s races ever as the top five female runners all crossed the finish line within 18 seconds of one another.

2016

Number of runners: 17,111 (2,831 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Silas Kipruto (Kenya), 33:03

Women’s winner: Mary Keitany (Kenya), 35:20

Weather: 72 degrees, 81% humidity

Silas Kipruto won his third Bix title, this time in controversial fashion. In the sixth mile, he took a backhanded swipe at Ethiopia’s Teshome Mekonen, who he felt was following him too closely. A formal protest by Mekonen, who finished eighth, was denied. In the women’s race, Mary Keitany set a new course record, bettering Susan Chepkemei’s 2004 time by 6 seconds.

2017

Number of runners: 16,446 (2,667 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Sam Chelanga (Manitou Springs, Colorado), 32:52

Women’s winner: Aliphine Tuliamuk (Santa Fe, New Mexico), 36:30

Weather: 68 degrees, 73% humidity

Sam Chelanga and Aliphine Tuliamuk, both natives of Kenya who became U.S. citizens, won comfortably in the Bix’s fifth American championship race. Joan Samuelson won the women’s masters title for the 15th time and broke the course record for 60-year-old women by nearly six minutes.

2018

Number of runners: 12,766 (1,950 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Belay Tilahun (Ethiopia), 32:39

Women’s winner: Margaret Muriuki (Kenya), 35:57

Weather: 65 degrees, 84% humidity

Belay Tilahun, the Bix 7 runner-up two years earlier, breezed to an easy victory, becoming the first Ethiopian man ever to win the race. Second-place finisher Ben Flanagan recorded the highest finish ever by a Canadian. Margaret Muriuki ran the fifth fastest women’s time in Bix history to win her second championship.

2019

Number of runners: 13,111 (2,067 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Leonard Barsoton (Kenya), 32:34

Women’s winner: Joyciline Jepkosgei (Kenya), 36:04

Weather: 75 degrees, 82% humidity

Leonard Barsoton, running less than a year after seriously injuring both Achilles tendons, breezed to a surprising victory. Joyciline Jepkosgei, the world record-holder at two distances, ran the eighth best women’s time ever with Victory Chepngeno and Gotytom Gebreslase running the ninth and 10th best times. Jen Paul won the Eloise Caldwell Trophy for the seventh time in nine years.

In 2002, the Quad-City Times Bix 7 made a bold and innovative move that was so popular it has chosen to do the same thing a half dozen times through the years.

In an effort to pay more of the winnings to U.S. runners, the Bix 7 made the race an American championship event, restricting the prize money only to U.S. citizens. The hope was that the move would help U.S. runners with training expenses and elevate the country on the international running scene.

The winners in the first year were Meb Keflezighi and Colleen De Reuck, both African natives who had gained U.S. citizenship.

The Bix brought back the American championship concept again in 2009, 2010, 2014, 2017 and 2023 with such runners as Ryan Hall, Molly Huddle, Lisa Koll, Sean Quigley, Sam Chelanga, Aliphine Tuliamuk, Kellyn Taylor and Biya Simbassa winning the title.

Fiona O’Keeffe added her name to the list earlier this year.

With a stunning victory in the U.S. Olympic trials marathon — in her first-ever attempt at that distance — she became the 63rd woman who has run in the Quad-City Times Bix 7 to also qualify for a spot in the Olympics.

Although she had an outstanding college career at Stanford, O’Keeffe was a relative unknown before winning the Bix 7 in 2022. She didn’t just win. She set the American course record in the process and has continued to progress as a distance runner, winning the U.S. 10-mile championship a few months after triumphing at Bix.

She will take a shot at winning a medal in the Olympic women’s marathon on Aug. 11 in Paris.

A total of 15 Olympic medals have been won by women who also competed in the Bix 7 at some point during the race’s 49-year history.

Ethiopia’s Derartu Tulu, who finished third in the Bix in 1999, has accounted for three of those, winning two golds and a bronze in the 10,000 meters.

The other female Bix alums who have won gold, all in the marathon, are Joan Samuelson in 1984, Jemima Jelegat in 2004 and Constantina Tomescu-Dita in 2008.

Ironically, the only one of the gold medalists who ever won the Bix was Samuelson. The only other Bix women’s champion to have medaled is Catherine Ndereba, who won silver medals in the marathon in 2004 and 2008.

A list of all the Bix 7 women’s entries who have been Olympians:

Olga Appell, Mexico/U.S.

Bix: Second in 1994, also ran in 1995.

Olympics: Ran marathon for Mexico in 1992 and 10,000 meters for the U.S. in 1996.

Anne Audain, New Zealand

Bix: Third in 1989, fourth in 1991.

Olympics: Ran 800 and 1,500 in 1976, marathon in 1984, 10,000 in 1988 (finished 11th).

Sally Barsosio, Kenya

Bix: Eighth in 2001, second in 2005.

Olympics: 10th in 10,000 in 1996, 17th in 2004.

Joan Benoit Samuelson, U.S.

Bix: Has run 33 times. Won in 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1988. Women’s masters champion 15 times.

Olympics: Won gold medal in first women’s marathon in 1984.

Irina Bogachova, Kyrgyzstan

Bix: Ninth in 1992.

Olympics: Ran marathon in 2004.

Zola Budd-Pieterse, Great Britain/South Africa

Bix: Fifth in 1996.

Olympics: Seventh in 3,000 meters running for Great Britain in 1984, did not make finals running for South Africa in 1992. In memorable 1984 race, she collided with favorite Mary Decker Slaney, who was unable to finish the race following the mishap.

Kathy Butler, Great Britain

Bix: Fifth in 2006.

Olympics: 12th in 10,000 in 2004.

Joyce Chepchumba, Kenya

Bix: Sixth in 1997 and 1998.

Olympics: Bronze medal in 2000 marathon.

Masako Chiba, Japan

Bix: Third in 2004, ninth in 2006.

Olympics: Fifth in 10,000 in 1996.

Gwyn Coogan, U.S.

Bix: Eighth in 1995.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1992.

Colleen De Reuck, South Africa/U.S.

Bix: Nine appearances. Finished first in 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2002.

Olympics: Four-time Olympian, three for South Africa and one for U.S. Ninth in 1992 marathon, 13th in 1996 10,000, 31st in 2000 marathon, 39th in 2004 marathon.

Elva Dryer, U.S.

Bix: Ran in 2009.

Olympics: Ran 5,000 in 2000, 10,000 in 2004 (19th).

Kamila Gradus, Poland

Bix: Second in 1995.

Olympics: Ran 1996 marathon.

Lidiya Grigoryeva, Russia

Bix: 10th in 2001.

Olympics: Ninth in 10,000 in 2000, eighth in 2004.

Margaret Groos, U.S.

Bix: Fifth in 1989, 10th in 1990.

Olympics: 39th in marathon in 1988.

Dorota Gruca, Poland

Bix: Ran in 2004.

Olympics: 30th in 2008 marathon.

Ellen Hart, U.S.

Bix: Champion in 1982.

Olympics: Made U.S. team in 10,000 in 1980 but did not run because of boycott.

Amy Hastings, U.S.

Bix: Second in 2010, seventh in 2014.

Olympics: 11th in 10,000 in 2012.

Libbie Hickman, U.S.

Bix: Third in 2002, fourth in 1998, seventh in 1996.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 2000.

Molly Huddle, U.S.

Bix: Champion in 2009 and 2014.

Olympics: Sixth in 10,000 in 2016, 11th in 5,000 in 2012.

Jemima Jelegat, Kenya

Bix: Second in 2006.

Olympics: Gold medalist in 2016 marathon.

Regina Joyce-Bonney, Ireland

Bix: Three appearances, 10th in 1994.

Olympics: 23rd in 1984 marathon.

Mary Keitany, Kenya

Bix: Set course record in winning in 2016.

Olympics: Fourth in 2012 marathon.

Hellen Kimaiyo, Kenya

Bix: First in 1996, second in 1997, third in 1998, eighth in 1999.

Olympics: Ninth in 10,000 in 1992.

Edna Kiplagat, Kenya

Bix: Sixth in 2003, fourth in 2005.

Olympics: 20th in 2012 marathon.

Esther Kiplagat, Kenya

Bix: Second in 2001, eighth in 2003.

Olympics: Ran 3,000 meters in 1992.

Lornah Kiplagat, Netherlands

Bix: Fifth in 1997 and 1998.

Olympics: Fifth in 10,000 in 2004, sixth in 2008.

Janis Klecker, U.S.

Bix: Fourth in 1982.

Olympics: 21st in 1992 marathon.

Lisa Koll Uhl, U.S.

Bix: Champion in 2010.

Olympics: 13th in 10,000 in 2012.

Martha Komu, Kenya

Bix: Fifth in 2001.

Olympics: Fifth in 2008 marathon.

Francie Larrieu-Smith, U.S.

Bix: First in 1987, fifth in 1988, sixth in 1989.

Olympics: Five-time Olympian. Debuted as 19-year-old in 1,500 meters in 1972 and finished as 39-year-old in marathon in 1992. Best finish was fifth in the 10,000 in 1988. Also member of 1976 and 1980 U.S. teams.

Anne Marie Letko Lauck, U.S.

Bix: Second in 1993 and 1998, third in 1994, fourth in 1992.

Olympics: 10th in 1996 marathon. Also ran 5,000 in 2000.

Magdalena Lewy-Boulet, U.S.

Bix: Third in 2009

Olympics: Ran 2008 marathon.

Desi Davila Linden, U.S.

Bix: 10th in 2013.

Olympics: Ran marathon in 2012 and 2016 (seventh).

Tegla Loroupe, Kenya

Bix: Champion in 1994.

Olympics: 17th in 10,000 in 1992, sixth in 1996, fifth in 2000. Also was 13th in 2000 marathon. Had food poisoning in 2000 but still ran marathon and 10,000 on consecutive days barefoot.

Edith Masai, Kenya

Bix: Champion in 2008.

Olympics: Ran 5,000 meters in 2004.

Elana Meyer, South Africa

Bix: Seventh in 1997.

Olympics: Silver medalist in 10,000 in 1992.

Lorraine Moller, New Zealand

Bix: Masters champion and 14th overall in 1995.

Olympics: Bronze medal in 1992 marathon; also placed fifth in 1984, 33rd in 1988.

Catherine Ndereba, Kenya

Bix: Champion in 1999, 2001 and 2003; five other top-10 finishes.

Olympics: Silver medal in marathon in 2004 and 2008.

Diane Nukuri, Burundi

Bix: Third in 2011, fourth in 2015, seventh in 2013, 10th in 2008.

Olympics: Ran 5,000 in 2000 (at age 15), marathon in 2012 (31st) and 10,000 in 2016 (13th). Burundi’s flag-bearer in opening ceremonies in 2000 and 2012.

Cathy O’Brien, U.S.

Bix: Fourth in 1989, fifth in 1995, eighth in 1996.

Olympics: Ran marathon in 1988 (40th) and 1992 (10th).

Margaret Okayo, Kenya

Bix: Seventh in 1998, fifth in 1999.

Olympics: Ran 2004 marathon.

Fiona O’Keeffe, U.S.

Bix: Champion in 2022, third in 2021.

Olympics: Will run marathon in 2024.

Nuta Olaru, Romania

Bix: First in 2005, sixth in 2007, eighth in 2006 and 2008.

Olympics: 13th in 2004 marathon.

Lisa Ondieki, Australia

Bix: Third in 1995.

Olympics: Silver medal in 1988 marathon, also ran 1992.

Madai Perez, Mexico

Bix: Fifth in 2003, fourth in 2011.

Olympics: 32nd in 2016 marathon.

Annette Peters, U.S.

Bix: Third in 1996.

Olympics: Ran 3,000 meters in 1992.

Tatyana Petrova, Russia

Bix: Fifth in 2004.

Olympics: Bronze medal in 3,000-meter steeplechase in 2008 and marathon in 2012.

Uta Pippig, Germany

Bix: Champion in 1991 and 1993.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1992 (seventh) and marathon in 1996.

Maria Portilla-Cruz, Peru

Bix: Sixth in 2000.

Olympics: 32nd in 2000 marathon, 39th in 2008 marathon.

Aisha Praught, Jamaica

Bix: Ran in 2006 and 2007 while a student at Moline High School.

Olympics: 14th in steeplechase in 2016, 40th in 1,500 in 2021.

Dorthe Rasmussen, Denmark

Bix: Second in 1991, 34th in 1994.

Olympics: 13th in marathon in 1984, ran 10,000 in 1992.

Blake Russell, U.S.

Bix: Fourth in 2010.

Olympics: 27th in 2008 marathon.

Betsy Saina, Kenya

Bix: Sixth in 2013.

Olympics: Fifth in 10,000 in 2016.

Judith St. Hillaire, U.S.

Bix: Second in 1989.

Olympics: Eighth in 10,000 in 1992.

Lidia Simon, Romania

Bix: Fourth in 2004, third in 2006.

Olympics: Ran marathon in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. Silver medal in 2000, sixth in 1996, eighth in 2008.

Luminita Talpos, Romania

Bix: Second in 2003 and 2007, fourth in 2006, fifth in 2005, eighth in 2004.

Olympics: 18th in 2008 marathon.

Constantina Tomescu-Dita, Romania

Bix: Second in 2004.

Olympics: Gold medal in 2008 marathon, 20th in 2004 marathon.

Maria Trujillo, Mexico

Bix: First in 1990, eighth in 1991, 10th in 1989.

Olympics: 25th in 1984 marathon.

Aliphine Tuliamuk, U.S.

Bix: First in 2015, second in 2023, fifth in 2017.

Olympics: Ran 2020 marathon.

Derartu Tulu, Ethiopia

Bix: Third in 1999.

Olympics: Gold medals in 10,000 in 1992 and 2000, bronze medal in 2004, fourth in 1996.

Ria Van Landeghem, Belgium

Bix: Third in 1990.

Olympics: 21st in 1984.

Priscilla Welch, Great Britain

Bix: Fourth in 1988.

Olympics: Sixth in 1984 marathon.

Ren Xiujuan, China

Bix: Sixth in 1999.

Olympics: Ninth in 1996 marathon, 10th in 2000.

Ed Froehlich didn’t build the Quad-City Times Bix 7 into a monstrous and magical event all by himself. He had help. Lots of it.

The race, which will be run for the 50th time on July 27, annually involves more than 100 committees, led by chairmen who oversee various aspects of the race and there have been some key figures who went above and beyond to make the Bix 7 what it became.

There was Karl Ungurean, who preceded Froehlich as race director, and remained involved with the race in various capacities for 48 years.

There was Nancy Kapheim, a diminutive dynamo who seemed to be an integral cog in every aspect of the race.

There was Ellen Hermiston, Froehlich’s long-time secretary and eventually the Bix’s operations director.

People such as Jeff Bassman, Dan Breidinger, Eloise Caldwell and Raj Sekharan lived and breathed Bix for several decades.

And Michelle Juehring eventually succeeded Froehlich as race director after about 20 years as one of his top lieutenants.

Frank Bay has heard it a few times. Not too often, but every now and then someone will question why he continues to run road races at his advanced age.

“Once in a while somebody will holler at me and say ‘You hadn’t ought to do that. You’re too old,’ " Bay said.

The 84-year-old Milan, Illinois, resident just smiles and keeps on running.

Bay has won his age group in the Quad-City Times Bix 7 five consecutive years — the 2020 race was held on a virtual basis, but he still had the top men’s 80-over time — and said he has won his age group in every race he has entered since turning 80.

He will be out to make it six straight Bix 7 age-group championships when the race celebrates its 50th anniversary on July 27.

Bay is one of a large number of octogenarians who still get out and pound the pavement and navigate the steep hills of Bix each year. In the past 10 times the race has been held, there has been an average of 27.7 entrants over the age of 80, split almost equally between the traditional 7-mile race and its 2-mile alternative, the Quick Bix.

Not all of them actually run, as Bay does. Most simply walk.

But there were 28 80-somethings in the race last year and there could be even more involved this year since race week now includes the Bechtel Trusts Senior Bix. The new addition to the festivities is a considerably shorter, much flatter race to be held on Tuesday, July 23, exclusively for runners over the age of 50.

The Senior Bix is getting new people involved and bringing back some of the old ones.

Fran Riley of Davenport was a Bix regular for more than four decades. He took up running at the age of 47 in 1981 and developed into one of the top senior runners in the Quad-Cities. Even after undergoing hip replacement surgery in 2000, he kept going.

“He’s been a running icon in the local running community for a long time,’’ said Bobbi Dakota, a friend and fellow runner.

Riley, now 90, hasn’t done the full Bix 7 since 2017 and last did the Quick Bix in 2021. However, he is entered in the Senior Bix. He will use a cane and walk with Dakota and Linda Thompson just to be part of the festivities once again.

Bettendorf resident Gene Christy also used to run the Bix 7 on a fairly regular basis. He also did some triathlons and a few marathons, but he hasn’t done the Bix in about 20 years.

Now 81, he is entered in the Senior Bix and is contemplating also doing the regular race on Saturday.

“I still have my legs. I just don’t have the stamina now,’’ Christy said. “I could probably run, walk, run, walk and do the seven without any problems. I just haven’t made up my mind that that’s what I want to do.’’

Even without the Senior Bix, the number of runners in their 80s and 90s has been trending upward in races over the past decade or so.

Running USA reported that the percentage of people ages 65 and over in road races jumped from 2.6 percent in 2015 to 9 percent in 2022.

“They’re showing the longevity of this sport,” Running USA interim executive director Jeff Matlow said in an AARP article last year. “People are realizing the value, the ease, the benefits of running as they’re getting older. And they’re sticking with it.”

When the U.S. running boom got started in the 1970s, that wasn’t the case.

The oldest runner in the inaugural Bix 7 in 1975 was 56-year-old Hugo Hansen of Davenport. In fact, Hansen was the oldest participant in the race in each of its first four years of existence. The Bix 7 did not include a female runner over the age of 60 until its ninth year, in 1983.

The race did not give out age-group awards for runners 70 and over until the late 1980s and it didn’t initiate an 80-over division until 2007.

But after the race developed the Quick Bix in 1999 and began encouraging walkers to get involved along with runners, the number of older entries climbed.

It peaked in 2018, when 41 people 80 and over (25 men and 16 women) completed the race. It took a slight dip during the COVID-19 pandemic, but has gradually bounced back.

Many believe that number will rise even more as 80-somethings continue to walk and run as a way to stay physically fit.

“You have to stay active and work out or you’ll lose it,’’ Christy said.

Bay, who didn’t take up running until the age of 43, rejects the notion that people’s legs wear out as they age. He ran the New York Marathon when he was 71 and won his age group in the Indianapolis Half-marathon when he was 79.

“I don’t think the running hurts you,’’ he said. “I don’t think it wears out legs. I think it makes them a little stronger.’’

Bay cautioned that older runners need to be careful, though. He found that out the hard way in 2021 when he was running the Quad-Cities Half-marathon. At about the 11-mile mark, on Arsenal Island, he suddenly fainted.

“I crashed into the pavement head-first,’’ he said. “No broken bones, but boy, was there a lot of blood.’’

It was determined that he had just pushed his heart rate a little too high.

“I watch my heart rate very carefully now and if I get up close to my maximum heart rate, I slow down,’’ he said.

There is anecdotal evidence of some very old runners doing some amazing things. An 80-year-old woman in Massachusetts recently set a record by running a 24:08 5k. Last year, a 92-year-old woman completed the Honolulu Marathon. In 2022, a 100-year-old woman ran a 5k in Connecticut.

The oldest person ever to finish the Bix 7 is believed to be 96-year-old Carolyn Begun of Gilberts, Illinois, who ran the Quick Bix in 2017.

Davenport’s Doris Wiebler is the oldest person to complete the 7-mile course. She did it at the age of 91 in 2019, then came back to do the Quick Bix for two years after that. Wiebler did the Bix 42 times.

Gary Fischer has done it 49 times. The 82-year-old Iowa City resident is the oldest of four men who have run every Bix 7. He even did the actual Bix course in 2020 when the race was held on a virtual basis.

He’s geared up to walk in the 50th annual race despite a pair of arthritic knees that scream at him to stop.

He said he does not, however, plan to do the Senior Bix.

“That wouldn’t be the same as doing the Bix.’’ he said. “That’s for wusses. Us guys who are real men have to do the real thing.’’

A year-by-year look at the Quad-City Times Bix 7:

2020

Number of runners: Virtual race due to pandemic

With the world consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no running on the streets of Davenport on race day, but runners were invited to run their own 7-mile race and send in their times. The top registered times were run by Moses Kibet and two-time Bix 7 champion Margaret Muriuki.

2021

Number of runners: 9,750 (1,194 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Leonard Korir (Kenya), 32:48

Women’s winner: Edna Kiplagat (Kenya), 37:17

Weather: 78 degrees, 79% humidity

Runners returned to the streets for the first post-pandemic Bix amid some of the hottest conditions yet. Leonard Korir won his third Bix championship while 2017 Boston Marathon champion Edna Kiplagat matched Edith Masai as the oldest female winner of the race, at the age of 41.

2022

Number of runners: 9,880 (1,527 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Patrick Tiernan (Australia), 32:32

Women’s winner: Fiona O’Keeffe (Chapel Hill, N.C.), 35:59

Weather: 79 degrees, 77% humidity

Patrick Tiernan became the first Australian man to win the race since Rob de Castella did it in 1982. Fiona O’Keeffe, a former Stanford University star, broke the American course record and ran the sixth best women’s time ever en route to victory.

2023

Number of runners: 10,951 (1,400 in Jr. Bix 7)

Men’s winner: Biya Simbassa (Flagstaff, Arizona), 32:34

Women’s winner: Kellyn Taylor (Flagstaff, Arizona), 36:33

Weather: 71 degrees, 93% humidity

The Bix 7 served as the U.S. championship race for 7 miles for the sixth time and also was part of a 12-race road racing circuit sanctioned by USA Track & Field. Biya Simbassa and Kellyn Taylor, both of whom train in Flagstaff, Arizona, both passed rival runners on the final downhill to take control of the race.

Kenya has been the dominant distance running country in the world for more than 50 years. So, it was inevitable that after the Quad-City Times Bix 7 began offering prize money to the top 10 male and female finishers in 1989, the Kenyan’s influence would be felt.

It was. From 1992 through 2009, the Bix 7 men’s race was won by a foreign-born runner every year and in 13 of those 18 years, the winner was from Kenya. Through the years, the women’s champion has been from Kenya 15 times.

Kenya’s John Korir won the Bix 7 five times and has held the course record for 26 years. Three other Kenya-born runners — Catherine Ndereba, Silas Kipruto and Leonard Korir (now an American citizen) — have three Bix championships to their credit.

“This is their one big sport,’’ Bill Rodgers said of the Kenya contingent. “You can’t deny them. You have to salute them.’’

Clayton Young had the second fastest qualifying time entering the U.S. Olympic marathon trials earlier this year, but he still was considered a bit of a longshot to make the team for the Paris games.

But the longshot came through.

Young, who burst on the running scene with a second-place finish in last year’s Quad-City Times Bix 7, ran with close friend and training partner Conner Mantz through most of the last part of the marathon trials and the two men crossed the finish line almost side-by-side. Mantz actually was credited with first place and Young second, but both of them will be in Paris for the Olympic finals on Aug. 10.

Three-time Bix 7 champion Leonard Korir was third in the U.S. trials and also will run in Paris, making his second Olympic appearance.

Young is the 113th former Bix 7 competitor — the 50th man — to make an Olympic team. With a strong effort in Paris, he could become only the sixth Bix 7 male competitor to earn an Olympic medal.

Frank Shorter, who ran the Bix twice in the early 1980s, won a gold medal in the Olympic marathon in 1972 and a silver in 1976. The only other men who have run the Bix 7 and also medaled in the Olympics are MebKeflezighi (silver in 2004 marathon), John Treacy (silver in 1984 marathon) and Jim Ryun (silver in 1968 1,500 meters).

A male or female Bix alum has won an Olympic medal in 11 of the last 14 games.

A list of all the Bix 7 men’s entries who have been Olympians:

Abdi Abdirahman, U.S.

Bix: Second in 2002, sixth in 2011.

Olympics: Five-time Olympian. Ran 10,000 meters in 2000 (10th place), 2004 and 2008, and marathon in 2012 and 2021 (40th).

Abraham Assefa, Ethiopia

Bix: Seventh in 1999.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1996.

Arturo Barrios, Mexico

Bix: Fourth in 1994, 21st in 1995.

Olympics: Fifth in 10,000 in 1988, ran 5,000 in 1988.

Dejene Berhanu, Ethiopia

Bix: Seventh in 2008.

Olympics: Fifth in 5,000 in 2004.

Keith Brantly, U.S.

Bix: Ran in 1990, 1992 and 1993.

Olympics: 28th in 1996 marathon.

Dan Browne, U.S.

Bix: Eighth in 2009.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 (12th) and marathon (65th) in 2004.

John Campbell, New Zealand

Bix: Fifth overall and masters champion in 1990.

Olympics: 12th in 1988 marathon.

Dionicio Ceron, Mexico

Bix: Fourth in 1990, sixth in 1993.

Olympics: Ran marathon in 1992 and 1996 (15th).

Kenneth Cheriuyot, Kenya

Bix: Fifth in 1999, ninth in 2000.

Olympics: Ran 2000 marathon.

Paul Cummings, U.S.

Bix: Third in 1983.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1984.

Ronaldo Da Costa, Brazil

Bix: Fourth in 1993, fifth in 1994.

Olympics: 16th in 10,000 in 1996.

Rob de Castella, Australia

Bix: First in 1982, eighth in 1987, 10th in 1989.

Olympics: Fifth in marathon in 1984, eighth in 1988, 10th in 1980, 26th in 1992.

Rod DeHaven, U.S.

Bix: Eighth in 1999 and 2002.

Olympics: 69th in 2000 marathon.

Lelisa Desisa, Ethiopia

Bix: Fourth in 2012.

Olympics: Ran 2021 marathon.

Gary Fanelli, U.S.

Bix: Ran six times; ninth in 1984.

Olympics: 51st in 1988 marathon.

Derek Froude, New Zealand

Bix: Ran in 1989 and 1990.

Olympics: 34th in 1984 marathon, 35th in 1992.

Silvio Guerra, Ecuador

Bix: Sixth in 1994, seventh in 1993.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1996, marathon in 2000 (11th) and 2004.

Ryan Hall, U.S.

Bix: First in 2010.

Olympics: 10th in 2008 marathon.

Philimon Hanneck, Zimbabwe

Bix: First in 1995, fourth in 1996, seventh in 2002, eighth in 1997.

Olympics: Ran 1,500 in 1992.

Eddy Hellebuyck, Belgium

Bix: Ran four times; ninth in 1993.

Olympics: 67th in 1996 marathon.

Jesus Herrera, Mexico

Bix: Ninth in 1989.

Olympics: 11th in marathon in 1988, 36th in 1984.

Steve Jones, Great Britain

Bix: Ran three times; seventh in 1990.

Olympics: Eighth in 10,000 in 1984.

Don Kardong, U.S.

Bix: Ran in 1986 and 1993.

Olympics: Fourth in 1976 marathon.

Meb Keflezighi, U.S.

Bix: First in 2002 and 2009, third in 2003 and 2013, fourth in 2007, fifth in 2006, seventh in 2016, eighth in 2015.

Olympics: Silver medal in marathon in 2004, fourth in 2012, 33rd in 2016. Finished 12th in 10,000 in 2000.

Leonard Korir, U.S.

Bix: First in 2013, 2015 and 2021, second in 2022, third in 2018, fourth in 2023.

Olympics: 14th in 10,000 in 2016; will run marathon in 2024.

Pierre Levisse, France

Bix: Ran in 1992.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1976.

Michael Musyoki, Kenya

Bix: Ran in 1990, 1991 and 1992.

Olympics: Bronze medal in 10,000 in 1984.

Joseph Nzau, Kenya

Bix: Ran 11 times. First in 1983 and 1987, second in 1984, third in 1988, fourth in 1989.

Olympics: Seventh in marathon and 14th in 10,000 in 1984.

Lawrence Peu, South Africa

Bix: 10th in 1992.

Olympics: Ran 1996 marathon.

Martin Pitayo, Mexico

Bix: Second in 1992, fifth in 1993, 10th in 1991.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1984.

Steve Plasencia, U.S.

Bix: 12th in 1995.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1988 and 1992.

Armando Quintanilla, Mexico

Bix: Fifth in 1998.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1992, 1996 (11th) and 2000.

Aaron Ramirez, U.S.

Bix: 26th in 1995.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1992.

Jacob Riley, U.S.

Bix: 10th in 2019.

Olympics: 28th in 2021 marathon.

Bill Rodgers, U.S.

Bix: Has run 43 times with seven top-10 finishes. Champion in 1980 and 1981.

Olympics: 40th in 1976 marathon. Made U.S. team in 1980 but did not run because of boycott.

Andy Ronan, Ireland

Bix: Eighth in 1991.

Olympics: Ran 1992 marathon.

Lucian Rosa, Sri Lanka

Bix: Won inaugural race in 1975.

Olympics: Ran marathon and 10,000 in 1972. Also qualified in 1976 but did not run because of boycott.

Nick Rose, Great Britain

Bix: Masters champion in 1992 and 1993.

Olympics: 12th in 10,000 in 1984, ran 5,000 in 1980.

Jim Ryun, U.S.

Bix: 25th in 1986.

Olympics: Ran 1,500 meters as 17-year-old in 1964 (finished 18th). Silver medal in 1,500 in 1968, also ran in 1972.

Alberto Salazar, U.S.

Bix: 10th in 1986.

Olympics: 15th in 1984 marathon.

Brian Sell, U.S.

Bix: Fourth in 2002.

Olympics: 22nd in 2008 marathon.

Frank Shorter, U.S.

Bix: Second in 1981, third in 1982.

Olympics: Gold medal in 1972 marathon, silver medal in 1976. Fifth in 10,000 in 1972.

German Silva, Mexico

Bix: Third in 1994.

Olympics: Sixth in 10,000 in 1992 and marathon in 1996.

Geoff Smith, Great Britain

Bix: First in 1986, fifth in 1987.

Olympics: Ran 10,000 in 1980 and marathon in 1984.

Steve Spence, U.S.

Bix: Ran four times; third in 1989 and 1990.

Olympics: 12th in 1992 marathon.

Patrick Tiernan, Australia

Bix: Champion in 2022.

Olympics: Ran 5,000 in 2016 and 10,000 in 2021 (19th).

John Treacy, Ireland

Bix: 15th in 1993.

Olympics: Silver medal in 1984 marathon, 51st in 1992 and did not finish in 1988. Ran 10,000 in 1980 and 1984 (ninth). Seventh in 5,000 in 1980.

Sean Wade, New Zealand

Bix: Second in 1995.

Olympics: 83rd in 1996 marathon.

Peter Whitehead, Great Britain

Bix: Sixth in 1995.

Olympics: 55th in 1996 marathon.

Clayton Young, U.S.

Bix: Second in 2023.

Olympics: Will run marathon in 2024.

Since 2004, at least one local entrant in the Quad-City Times Bix 7 has been chosen each year to take a shot at getting to the finish line ahead of the top world-class runners in a facet of the race known as Beat the Elite.

In this competition, originally known as the Race for the Jackpot, the runner is given a head start in the race based on their anticipated running abilities. They start somewhere out along the course and see if they can beat the men’s champion to the finish line.

If they do, they win a cash prize. In many cases, they have donated the prize to charity.

Through the years, 14 of the 20 Beat the Elite runners have won, many of them by significant margins. Ashley Kamba of Davenport holds the record with a 2-minute, 30-second victory in 2010.

Along with running in all but one of the Quad-City Times Bix 7 races, Kerry Gannon holds one other distinction in Bix 7 lore.

He designed the race’s first T-shirt. Sort of. In a way.

“That’s stretching the word design a lot,’’ the 74-year-old Orion, resident said. “I did come up with the design, but I didn’t really design it. I stole it.’’

Gannon worked with Bix 7 founder John Hudetz for the Aetna Insurance company in Davenport at the time. Hudetz was busy putting together the final details of the race and a few days before it was to be held, he asked Gannon if he could go pick up the T-shirts and take them to the printer.

“And he said ‘I need you to put something on it,’ " Gannon recalled. “Anybody that knows me knows I’m not the most creative person around.’’

Gannon had no idea what he was going to put on the front of the shirts as he picked them up at a store downtown. But as he was walking out of the store, he noticed a poster for the Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival, which was not affiliated with the race but was held the same weekend.

“I didn’t ask or say anything,’’ Gannon said. “I held the last box with one hand and grabbed the poster on the way out.’’

The poster had the word BIX at the top and below that was 76 with a cornet superimposed over it. Gannon added the words “7 MILE RUN’’ at the bottom, and he had his design for the shirt. The shirts didn’t turn out that great, but he said it wasn’t because of the design. It was the color.

“The shirts were red,’’ Gannon said. “It must have been what was on sale that week or something.’’

Here is the confusing part of the story: Gannon’s pilfered design was for the second Bix 7, in 1976. The fledgling race did not have an official T-shirt in its first year.

Nevertheless, a 1975 Bix T-shirt has popped up through the years and no one seems really sure where it came from.

“No shirts the first year,’’ Gannon said.

Hudetz, who now lives in Galena and will attend the 50th annual Bix 7 on July 27, agrees. So does everyone connected with the inaugural race. In all the photos from the first race, no one is shown wearing a Bix T-shirt.

“If you put a gun to my head, I would swear we didn’t have shirts for the first race,’’ Gannon added.

The mysterious 1975 shirt has a design suspiciously similar to Gannon’s 1976 version. It also has “BIX’’ at the top and “7 MILE RUN’’ at the bottom with that same cornet in the same position. The primary difference is that the shirt is white instead of red.

At the kickoff event for the Bix’s 50th anniversary running, race director Michelle Juehring arranged to have a parade of people wearing the T-shirt for each of the 50 races and she said there was a 1975 shirt included in the boxes of shirts provided to her. She had never heard that there wasn’t one the first year.

“Do you think someone did one rogue and maybe it wasn’t the official race T-shirt?’’ she asked

Long-time race director Ed Froehlich, who didn’t get involved with the Bix 7 until 1980, said it’s possible someone decided years later that there should have been a 1975 shirt and made one, using Gannon's 1976 logo.

Assistant race director Paul Schmidt said he was told the 1975 shirt does not date to 1975, but he doesn't know when it was developed.

Gannon has a quilt made from all the races through the years and he said there is a blank spot where a 1975 shirt would be.

“I just don’t think we had them the first year,’’ he said. “It was such a new thing back then.’’

Gannon, by the way, will be entered in the Bix again this year, for the 49th time.

He narrowly missed being part of the group of runners who have done every race in the history of the event.

In the early morning hours before the 2009 race, at about 3:30 a.m., he suffered a heart attack. As he was being put into an ambulance, he asked if relatives could bring his running gear to the hospital on the chance that he was released in time to run the Bix at 8 a.m. He hoped the pain in his chest might just be trapped gas.

He didn’t make it to the starting line, of course. He had a stent implanted to remedy the heart issue and has continued to enter the Bix every year. That 2009 race is the only one he has missed.

He often walks the course with his son or daughter, but thinks this year he will do it with his grandchildren.

“I’m walking like all the other old guys,’’ he said. “I jog a little but mostly walk.’’

The Quad-City Times began having an official T-shirt in 1976, in its second year of existence. It tweaked its logo considerably through the first 25 years, often employing a cornet, the instrument played by Leon “Bix’’ Beiderbecke, whose name adorns the race along with Davenport’s iconic jazz festival.

In later years, the logo frequently included the likeness of Bill Rodgers, the legendary marathoner who began running the Bix 7 in 1980. The 25th anniversary logo in 1999 featured both Rodgers and fellow Bix legend Joan Benoit Samuelson.

The Quad-City Times Bix 7 continued to produce unique T-shirt logos in its second quarter-century of existence, often using caricatures of runners and special slogans, such as “Do 7 in ‘11’’ and “The Rhythm of the Race. The Legacy of a Legend.’’

In the years in which the Bix 7 served as the U.S. championship race for seven miles, the shirts often included elements of the American flag.

It’s a lot shorter than the regular Quad-City Times Bix 7. It’s not necessarily easier.

The annual Brady Street Sprints, held on the Thursday night prior to the Bix 7, gives runners a chance to compete in a quarter-mile sprint up the 9-degree grade of Brady Street Hill and it has become immensely popular. It draws large crowds and is televised locally in the Quad-Cities.

Long-time Bix 7 race director Ed Froehlich frequently has said it is his favorite part of the Bix week.

“People are lined up all the way down the street,’’ he said. “It’s really exciting.’’

Competition is held in three age groups for both men and women and there also are relay events for local high school sprinters.

For half a century, runners and walkers have been embarking up the Brady Street Hill on the last Saturday in July as part of the annual ritual known as the Quad-City Times Bix 7. They will do so for the 50th time next Saturday.

Although the race follows essentially the same course that it did back in 1975, aspects of the event are tweaked slightly nearly every year.

Some of the most commonly asked questions about the annual trek through some of Davenport’s older neighborhoods:

How can I enter the Bix 7?

You can do it online at Bix7.com or register in person at the Running Wild Sports and Fitness Expo on Thursday and Friday at the Davenport RiverCenter. U.S. military personnel and reserves on active duty receive free entry into the race, courtesy of the Isle Casino Hotel Bettendorf.

What other Bix-related things are going on this week?

The Bix 7 has evolved into almost an entire week of activities. On Monday, a statue of long-time volunteer Karl Ungurean will be dedicated in Bix Plaza. On Tuesday at 6 p.m., the inaugural Bechtel Trusts Senior Bix will be held at the Isle of Capri in Bettendorf. (This is a new event for runners and walkers over the age of 50 and entrants also can participate in the regular race on Saturday.) The Genesis Sports Medicine Brady Street Sprints will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday and the Arconic Jr. Bix 7, for runners 12 and under, is Friday at 6 p.m.

How long are these races?

The main Quad-City Times Bix 7 race is 7 miles, and the Prairie Farms Quick Bix is just under 2 miles. The Senior Bix is about a mile. For the Arconic Jr. Bix 7, the distance varies. Ages 5 and under run 70 yards. Ages 6 and 7 run a half mile. Ages 8 to 12 run seven-tenths of a mile. Parents are allowed to run with their children in the 5-and-under age groups.

What do I get for registering?

Entrants in the Bix 7 and Quick Bix receive the official 2024 race shirt, a commemorative poster, a yearly pin for running the race for the second, fifth, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th, 35th, 40th or 45th time, a B-tag for Chrono Track Timing, admission to the post-race party and a printable online certificate of participation with the official finish time and ranking. Entrants in the Jr. Bix 7 receive a T-shirt, a "victory'' medal and admission to the post-race party. The names of all runners in both races are printed in the Quad-City Times the following day.

How does this race support our military?

U.S. military personnel and reserves on active duty receive free entry into the race, courtesy of the Isle Casino Hotel Bettendorf.

What are age-group breakdowns?

Awards are given for both males and females in the following age groups: 15-and-under, 16-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74, 75-79 and 80-and-over.

Can I be in the race if I am in a wheelchair?

Yes, wheelchairs are allowed in the race. Other wheeled devices, such as strollers and bicycles, are not.

Can I bring my small child with me in the race?

For the safety of the runners, strollers are not allowed. Children who can walk can enter and children who are strapped to an adult or carried are permitted.

Are pets allowed?

No, pets are not allowed.

Where do I pick up my race packet?

At the Running Wild Sports and Fitness Expo in the South Hall of the Davenport RiverCenter, 136 E. 3rd St. This also is where late registration will take place. Both packet pickup and registration are open from 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday. There is a limited packet pickup from 6 to 7:30 a.m. the day of the race.

Where do I park?

There are three downtown parking ramps, each offering parking for $2 starting at 5 p.m. Friday and continuing through the day Saturday and Sunday. The ramps at the RiverCenter (entrance east of Brady on 2nd and 3rd), at 101 Main Street (north of River Drive) and at 202 Harrison (entrance on Harrison and Ripley between 2nd and 3rd). There also is a small amount of on-street parking and additional space at Modern Woodmen Park.

How does the starting area work?

The race begins at exactly 8 a.m. at the intersection of Brady & 4th Street and runners and walkers are encouraged to be in place by 7:45 a.m. Entries are grouped into corrals based on their expected finishing time. Enter the starting area only from River Drive, 2nd Street or 3rd Street.

How is the race timed?

Each runner and walker is issued a disposable timing chip called a B-tag. These chips are located on the race bib and do not need to be collected after the race. The chip activates once you cross the starting line, then records your time when you finish.

How can I find out my finishing time?

It will be online within hours after the race and will be printed in the Quad-City Times the day after the race.

What is the All-City Challenge?

It's a competition between the larger cities in the area, based on the finishing times of the five fastest men and women from each city. These times are divided by 10 to get the average time of all 10 runners from each city. The Scott County Regional Authority presents the traveling Nancy Kapheim Memorial Trophy to the winning city's mayor.

What are the Gregg Newell and Eloise Caldwell Awards?

These are awards presented to the fastest male and female runners in the Q-C Times Bix 7 from the Quad-Cities. The fastest male runner receives the Greg Newell Memorial Award, named after the only Quad-Cities runner to have won the race (in 1979). The fastest female runner receives the Eloise Caldwell Award, named for a former masters runner who was one of three women to run the inaugural race in 1975.

What is the High School Challenge?

It's a competition in which the top male and female high school-age runners from Iowa or Illinois to cross the finish line will earn $1,000 for their school's athletic programs.

What is the First Responders Challenge?

Teams of six runners each from Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island, Moline, East Moline, Scott County (Iowa) and Rock Island County (Illinois) will compete to win prize money for their municipalities in the Bix 7. The employees can be policemen, firemen or EMTs. The top prize is $3,000 with second place earning $1,500 and third place $500.

Is there a costume contest?

KISS (101.3 FM) will host a costume contest in the Quad-City Times parking lot following the race. For more information, go to KUUL.com.

Is the race on television?

Yes, it is shown locally on KWQC (Ch. 6) and in other places around the world as part of a special network.

Is it too late to become a volunteer?

No. It takes more than 5,000 volunteers to oversee the race so more help is always welcome. To offer your services, go to Bix7.com/getinvolved or contact volunteer chairman Bree Obertance at Bix7Volunteer@gmail.com.

Although he served as race director of the Quad-City Times Bix 7 for one year and was either the president or vice president of the Cornbelt Running Club for about four decades, Karl Ungurean always liked to remain in the background.

He may have done as much as anyone to make the Bix 7 a success and he was involved behind the scenes with a majority of the races in the Quad-Cities, but being the focus of attention wasn’t his thing.

Ungurean, who passed away in December 2022, is going to be centerstage from now on. Whether he would have liked it or not.

A life-size statue of him has been installed in Bix Plaza and it will be unveiled in ceremonies Monday at 6:30 p.m. as the Bix 7 prepares for its 50th running later in the week.

The Ungurean statue is right in the center of the plaza, at the intersection of River Drive and Fourth Street. It stands behind the statue of Bill Rodgers and Joan Samuelson with Ed Froehlich and Dan Hayes to the right and Bill Wundram and Bix Beiderbecke to the left.

Those connected with the local running community feel no one could be more deserving of the honor.

“Nobody did more for running in the Quad-Cities than Karl Ungurean,’’ said Froehlich, who served as the Bix 7’s race director for 40 years. “It will go over very well that he’s going up there.’’

Current Bix 7 race director Michelle Juehring once described Ungurean as having “a servant heart.’’

Kay Ungurean, Karl’s widow, said that although his family was very important to him, there was no question that running in general and the Bix 7 in particular were central components in her late husband’s life.

“He thoroughly enjoyed running and the running community,’’ she said.

She said he didn’t just run to stay in shape or to develop a circle of friends.

“He got rid of stress that way,’’ she said.

Ungurean was one of those people who went above and beyond in everything he did. Froehlich recalled that he and Karl were among five local men who went to do a 50-mile race on the Chicago lakefront many years ago. All five completed the daunting race.

“And then, just to show who Karl was, he gets done with his 50 and he continues on and ran 12 more,’’ Froehlich said. “He ran 100k just so he could tell us he did it. He was probably 45 years old at that time, maybe even older than that. He was a horse.’’

Froehlich said he thought Ungurean ran between 30 and 40 marathons in his life and once did three marathons in a five-week period when he was in his 40s, completing all of them in less than three hours.

Kay Ungurean said she really isn’t sure how many marathons Karl ran but she knows he seldom passed up a chance to run somewhere.

“’There’s a marathon over there? Sure, I’m going,’’’ she said with a laugh. “He thoroughly enjoyed running and the running community.’’

Karl was born in Germany in 1934 and grew up in a turbulent time in that country. He and his family originally lived near Munich, but his father got a job in Graz, Austria, which became part of Germany during World War II.

Because they were German citizens but lived in Austria, they were considered to be “displaced persons,’’ which meant they weren’t exactly welcome in their homeland.

Ungurean’s uncle already had emigrated to the United States and in 1953, Ungurean’s parents, Josef and Hedy, brought Karl and his brothers, Killian and Arno, to this country. Many of the German immigrants of that period settled in Chicago or Milwaukee, but the Ungureans chose to become part of a large German population in Davenport.

Karl, who had attended technical institutes in both Graz and Vienna, got a job as an engineer at Uchtorff Manufacturing in Davenport, where he was employed until retiring in 1997.

His life changed in the 1950s when he attended a dance in Dewitt and met a young, aspiring teacher named Kay Dahlberg.

“He bought me a co*ke,’’ Kay recalled. “And then I was his.’’

The couple was married in 1959 and spent 63 years together. They had three children of their own and also took in five foster children through the years. Karl remained active as a member of the local foster care review board for many years afterward.

Karl’s life changed again in 1975 when he became one of eight founding members of the Cornbelt Running Club. One of the organization’s first races was a seven-mile jaunt through some of Davenport’s older neighborhoods on the last Saturday in July.

None of the founders realized the little race would someday become a major sports event and a massive community celebration so big that it prompted the erection of statues.

“As soon as we launched the running club, Karl was there,’’ said John Hudetz, the first president of Cornbelt and the director of the inaugural Bix 7. “He showed up to immediately lend his support. What a great man. I’m so happy they’re giving him a statue.’’

In fact, Ungurean was charged with collecting and organizing the results of that first Bix, which included 84 runners.

Kay remembers standing at the corner of Third and Main in downtown Davenport and having her husband hand her the results of the race as he trotted past. She had several sweaty runners crowding around her trying to figure out where they had placed.

“So, Karl and I had to make sense out of all those numbers,’’ she said. “We went into the Davenport Bank building and went down two dark hallways and sat on the floor and did it.’’

As the years passed, Karl had his fingers in almost every facet of the Bix. He certified the distance for all Cornbelt races as well as most of the other races in the area. He was at every Bix at Six training run. He was involved in the Brady Street Sprints. He oversaw crowd control for the back half of the race and was chairman of the prize money validation committee. He supervised the timing of the Bix and served as the official referee of the race, resolving any disputes that might arise.

One of his jobs, providing visual verification of the results with observers around the course, is now being handled by his daughter, Kristen.

“It just doesn’t seem like you can stop doing something that was such a big part of his life …’’ she said upon taking on the job last year. “It’s kind of a way of keeping part of him alive.’’

Karl even served as the race director of the Bix 7 in 1977. Hudetz was moving away and Ungurean was named the president of Cornbelt in absentia one night. Hudetz was on his doorstep the following day with a cigar box stuffed with papers and unpaid bills.

“Our front doorbell rang and Karl went out to see who it was and was handed this box and was told ‘Here’s Bix,’’’ Kay said.

As the race continued to grow, Ungurean handed the race director duties off to Tony Gott and eventually to Froehlich.

But Ungurean was still there every step of the way, handling every little minuscule duty that landed in his lap.

“He knows everything and he’s willing to do things, but I think he likes to stay in the background a little,’’ current Cornbelt president Paul Schmidt said in 2018.

Now Ungurean is going to be centerstage in perpetuity. A man who did everything quietly and efficiently is going to receive a permanent, public salute to his contributions.

“Karl was a gem of a human let alone his accolades as a runner and as a race organizer,’’ Juehring said. “He was so welcoming and he had a sense of humor. He was what, 6-4 or 6-6? Maybe he wasn’t that tall but he seemed that tall. That’s just a testament to his personality, his aura. He just greeted you with that larger-than-life feeling.’’