David Norris wins a seventh Mount Marathon in Seward's brutal July 4 race

While much of the country marked the Fourth of July with parades and fireworks, the town of Seward, Alaska, held to a tradition of its own: sending runners straight up a mountain and back down. The Mount Marathon race is one of the oldest foot races in the United States, and this year it again produced a familiar winner.

Seven for seven

David Norris won the men's race for the seventh time, finishing in 43 minutes and 8 seconds, the Anchorage Daily News reported. Norris has now won every time he has entered, a perfect seven-for-seven record dating back to 2016. Only one man, Bill Spencer, has won the race more often, with eight victories decades ago, Alaska Sports Report noted.

Canada's Jessie McAuley finished second, about 46 seconds back in 43:54, with a cluster of runners close behind, according to Alaska Sports Report. Norris set the course record in a previous win, and his dominance in an event this unpredictable has become one of Alaska sport's steadiest story lines.

A race up a mountain

Mount Marathon is short on paper and merciless in person. The course runs roughly 3.1 miles, but it climbs about 3,000 feet up the mountain that looms over Seward and Resurrection Bay before sending runners back down. The ascent is a scramble over loose rock and brush; the descent is a controlled fall down scree and gullies, and racers regularly finish scraped, bruised or bloodied.

The field is capped and the spots are coveted, drawing elite mountain runners alongside Alaskans for whom the race is a yearly rite. Thousands of spectators line the streets of Seward and the lower slopes to watch runners appear and vanish along the mountainside.

An Alaska tradition

The race dates to 1915 and, by local lore, grew out of a wager over whether a person could run up and down the mountain in under an hour. More than a century later, it has outlasted most foot races of its era and become part of Alaska's identity, run on the Fourth of July year after year.

For Norris, the day added another chapter to a remarkable streak. For Seward, it was one more Independence Day spent doing what the town has done for generations: turning a mountain into a finish line.