You never know what you'll find out when you start an interview. I saw a Running Times magazine ad about the Great Wall of China Marathon and thought there might be something there to fill my small (especially during football season) weekly running column in the Detroit News. So I emailed Kathy Loper (http://www.kathyloperevents.com) and we set a time for a phone interview.

Little did I know I was calling one of the pioneers of women's running, and that our long conversation would take us as far as Russia and close as Oscoda, go back three decades and end on a sad note. Or, rather, two sad notes, after Loper asked how Chuck Davey and Alexa Craft were doing.

Davey, a 1950s pro boxer who once fought for a world title, became a successful businessman and top age-group runner. His son, Pat, was an all-American runner at Tennessee.

Craft, like Loper, was a pioneer of women's running. They competed and socialized with each other back when you could Michigan's female runners on the fingers of two hands.

It was bad news on both counts: Chuck had suffered a freak accident while swimming in the ocean, and, last I heard a few years ago, was a paraplegic. Alexa had died of breast cancer, and the first Race for the Cure in Detroit was held in her honor.

"Don't ask me about anyone else, okay? I think I'm bad luck," I said lamely. Our discussion had ended on a downer, but provided far more material than the News could use or want.

Loper started training for her first marathon when her husband was stationed at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda nearly 20 years ago. She just hoped to qualify for Boston, little knowing her efforts would also take her to the Great Wall of China, Bali, Thailand, Cambodia and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Loper was one of our state's first women to qualify for and finish the Boston Marathon in 1974. She ran 2:58 there the next year to finish as sixth woman overall.

She also started putting on road races, which were few and far between then. In 1975, she founded Oscoda's Paul Bunyan Run, still held yearly although Loper has long since moved to San Diego, where she continues to put on races.

"The Oscoda race was part of a Paul Bunyan Festival," she remembered. "We started outside town and were planning to finish just before the parade. A few minutes before the race start, festival organizers told me they had canceled the parade because it was raining, and we'd have to cancel the run, too.

"I told them, 'Uh, it doesn't work that way.' We had 500 runners lined up. 'We're starting the run in a couple of minutes,' I said. 'Keep that highway open because we're coming.' They weren't happy at the time, but were happy later because the runners were the only ones at the festival and spent so much money."

Her company, Kathy Loper Events, also takes runners to tourist-destination marathons, the most spectacular and toughest of which is the Great Wall of China Marathon in May. The course includes two 4K stretches on the Wall, and a scenic loop through farmland and countryside.

"The stretches on the Wall include 3,800 steps, so 8K on it is more than enough," said Loper. The race takes place three hours north of Beijing, at a Wall site less frequented by tourist hordes than near town.

Ron and Elizabeth Van Sickle of Lake Orion went on the Great Wall tour last May. "At first, we were apprehensive about going there," said Ron, an engineer, Hash House Harrier and marathon veteran who opted for the half-marathon in China. "But the Chinese people were great. We had so much fun.

"You certainly get a workout on the wall: each step is a different height, but the views are incredible," Ron added. He and his wife took a side tour to see the legendary terra-cotta warriors in Xian, while other runners chose a tour down the Yangtze River. Another highlight was a fun run arranged with local runners through an old palace grounds. Ralph Thompson of Akron, Ohio, has run 132 marathons, usually in the 3:45 range. He did last May's Great Wall Marathon in 5:52. "Like the Grand Canyon, the scale and length of the Wall are difficult to comprehend and appreciate unless you see it in person," Thompson said.

"My wife, a non-runner, was apprehensive about the trip, but we never felt uneasy once we got there. The Chinese people were friendly and the prices were great," he said.

Marathoners seem to be split into two groups: those who always do the hometown marathon, and those who look for tourist-destination events. If you want to break out of the hometown rut, other Loper events are in Thailand in March, a marathon, half-marathon and 10K that go past 14 Buddhist temples; the Bali Marathon in April; a 10K, half-marathon and marathon to celebrate St. Petersburg, Russia's, tricentennial; a marathon up Mt. Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps in September; and a marathon in the jungles of Cambodia past the 900-year-old temples of Angkor Wat in December.

Both Thompson and the Van Sickles praised Loper's marathon tour as being more affordable than others, and said she had a reputation for getting all the glitches that pop up on such trips -- such as getting assigned to a hotel's smoking section -- fixed at once.

It also helps that Loper is still a runner, visits sites and runs courses herself to make sure they are places she would want to take paying clients.

For information, or just to look at the Great Wall Marathon's spectacular scenery, go to www.kathyloperevents.com. ~~~

I'm a fan of late-winter, early-spring marathons, and it's nice to see more of them popping up. Boston was the first, of course, but over the years fall became the place for most major marathons to position themselves.

Pittsburgh was one of the races to buck the trend in the mid-1980s, and a trip there at the end of April each year was an incentive for a handful of us People Who Run Downtown to stay in shape over the dark, long winter. Big Sur was another spring marathon that caught on, and so has the L.A. Marathon. They've been joined the last couple years by the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati.

For other runners, early-season marathons offer more than an excuse to get out the door when it's dark and blustery -- they offer a chance for quick redemption after a disappointing fall marathon. Tere Stouffer Drenth of Charlevoix ran her first marathon at Detroit last fall, and had one of those experiences common to racers at that distance: she ran a slow last half and immediately started thinking about another attempt to:

1) Get the bad taste out of her mouth, and, 2) Take advantage of the training that had gotten her into marathon-running shape.

The Washington D.C. Marathon debuted last March and seems likely to grow huge in the next few years. It is flat and fast for the Drenths of the world, and D.C. has enough destination-incentive to keep others putting in the miles all winter long.

When the D.C. Marathon was first announced nearly two years ago, some thought, "They've already got a marathon in Washington." Yes and no.

The Marine Corps Marathon finishes in Washington each fall, but is mostly run in and around Arlington, Va., crossing the Potomac to finish at the Iwo Jima Monument. Besides, Marine Corps is tough to get into, so tough that when sponsors first offered on-line registration a few years ago, Pentagon internet servers blew sky-high within minutes.

The first D.C. Marathon last March 23 was star-crossed. Things began smoothly, with organizer H2O Entertainment getting approvals from the myriad government agencies that control city streets, parks and bridges.

But then came Sept. 11's attack on the Pentagon, and H2O was rightly concerned officials would pull the plug on their big event just a few months later.

Within days, city powers that be let race sponsors know they were behind the run more than ever, and, says organizer Vicki Bendure, "There was more interest from runners nationwide in coming here for this run."

Another problem was that when permits were applied for a year before the race -- the earliest you can ask for a permit from the National Park Service, which controls much of D.C. -- no one realized the race would be on Palm Sunday, which later caused controversy with local churches.

Finally, the computer-chip scoring system endured a snafu, with starting-line mats not registering runners as they crossed. Officials had to score everyone by hand, delaying results and awards by hours.

Still, 6,800 runners entered, a fine turnout for a first marathon at a time when many people were leery of flying, especially to D.C. They got a race to remember -- a start on Memorial Bridge over the Potomac, an early loop past the famous monuments, trip down Embassy Row, and tour of the D.C. waterfront and many upscale neighborhoods.

"We're expecting 10,000 to 12,000 entries this year, though I think numbers will go higher," Bendure said. They've added relays of two, three and four persons, and a 5K; and will offer $25,050 in prize money, including $5,000 to the first male and female.

One Michigander, Jacob Brundage, then a grad assistant coach at Central Michigan and now an assistant coach at Northwood University, finished third in last year's D.C. Marathon in 2:32:56. There were 26 Michigan runners there overall.

"It was exciting to see monument sat the end of streets you were running on," said Brundage. "It felt as if you were part of history, running the very first D.C. Marathon." He plans to go back for the second March 24.

Brundage hopes to improve his time by 11 minutes. If he can run 2:22 or better, he'll qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials in 2004. He was on that pace at the recent Philadelphia Marathon, but faded over the last 10 miles. Brundage figured his workload as a CMU human-anatomy-lab grad assistant, plus coaching at Northwood, took a toll.

If youre looking for motivation to stay in shape, or for a shot at redemption, you can learn more by phoning (703) 528-8176 or visiting www.washingtondcmarathon.com.

Editor's note: Two weeks after this column was written, Chuck Davey, 77, died on Dec. 4 at his home in Birmingham. MR