Circle the date and run with it -- Oct. 23.

That's the fall Sunday morning for the 28th Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Bank Marathon.

And organizers, who announced the race date Friday, expect a perfect storm of running factors to produce another record day.

Last year's races -- a 26.2-mile marathon, 13.1-mile half-marathon, five- person relay, 5K run and 5K kids run -- attracted 10,318 runners, walkers, wheelers and handcyclists to downtown Detroit. That figure was a 59-percent increase over the record set the previous year.

Race director Patricia Dlugokinski said the field might reach 15,000 this year.

Why? The perfect storm:

*Announcing the race date in the winter, several months ahead of previous years, will help runners plan their schedules. October is a crowded month for marathons (Chicago's is Oct. 9), and finding a Detroitdate always has been tricky. Organizers must avoid conflicts with the Tigers, Lions and other major downtown events.

Dlugokinski said the decks were cleared early this year because of the coordinated efforts of Michigan's First Gentleman, Dan Mulhern, who ran his first marathon in last year's event; Lions chief operating officer Tom Lewand, an avid runner; and Detroit mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who ran nine miles in the 2003 event.

* The half-marathon made its debut last year and, for the logistical reasons of starting a new event, registration was halted a month before the race when the field hit 2,800. Dlugokinski said the cap this year would be 6,000. The relay teams were capped at 450; this year's figure will be 600.

* The course, even though it won't become official for months, will remain basically the same as in recent years and has proven popular with runners and spectators.

The race will start near Comerica Park and end on the turf of Ford Field. It will cross into Canada over theAmbassador Bridge and return to the States through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

"Our goal is 15,000 this year," Dlugokinski said. "The other goal is that we want to break the 20-year record for the total number of participants in the marathon. We've never had 5,000, so we want to do that this year."

Runners should be able to start registering soon at www.freep.com/ marathon.

"We're getting a lot of e-mail requests and phone calls, more than we've ever had in the past," Dlugokinski said. "This year we're going to focus on getting more entertainment, more spectators for the anticipated growth."

Contact GEORGE SIPPLE at 313-223-4796 or sipple@freepress.com.