Two well-known Quad-Cities runners named 2026 Beat the Elite athletes

In 2026, the roles will be reversed, and it’s the elite field that will be hot on their heels.

Named the 2026 Russell Beat the Elite runners, Allbaugh and Young will get a head start somewhere on the 7-mile Bix course based on their past times. If they can beat the winning runner to the finish line, they each win a $2,500 prize.

Both locals have sterling running credentials.

Allbaugh, 35, has won the Eloise Caldwell Trophy as the fastest local female finisher four of the past five years running the Bix. In 2025, she finished in 46:10, putting her 49th among female runners.

Allbaugh coordinates the Running Wild Elite women's team, has run marathons and has taken home titles in dozens of races, including the East Moline Firecracker Run 5K. She's training for the Moonlight Chase, the Twin Cities 10K, and a few other races this year.

Originally from Rosemont, Minnesota, Allbaugh mostly played soccer in high school. At the time, she initially hated going on training runs with her sister, she said with a laugh.

"We'd get fights on these runs because I didn't want to go out running," Allbaugh said. "... Now, it's kind of her funny inside joke of, 'You didn't even want to run when I used to bring you to train, and now that's all you do.'" 

She tried running her senior year of high school and walked on at Minnesota State University-Mankato's cross country and track team. But it was after college that she really began dropping time on her personal records.

She and her husband moved to the Quad-Cities in 2015 and she took breaks from running competitively until after she had the last of their three kids in February 2021.  

By July 2021, to her surprise, she won her first Caldwell award as the first local female finisher of the Bix.

"I was kind of working from ground zero again," Allbaugh said. "For months I was just walking, and then run-walking. It was just such a slow progression to get back into actual running and training, and so that July, I had no idea that that would be something that I was even capable of doing at that point in time."  

Running as a Beat the Elite runner will be a new way to experience the Bix, Allbaugh said. 

"I am still trying to run competitively and push myself, and I think this will be kind of a fun thing to do for the Bix," Allbaugh said.

Allbaugh plans to take her family on a trip to Disney World if she “beats the elite,” which would be the family's first big trip and the first time their kids will ride in an airplane, she said.

Young, 40, who owns Davenport’s Fleet Feet store, ran last year’s Bix race in 37:49, good for 75th overall and 69th among male runners. The winner of the race in 2025, Alex Maier, crossed the finish line less than six minutes faster, at 32:02.

Young, a Davenport Assumption grad, grew up cheering for loved ones or running the Bix himself, and has run the 7-mile race and the Brady Street sprints, and has hosted from a booth at the expo center. 

Young remembers running his first Bix at age 11 with his mom. Now, his three kids have been training for runs with their grandma. His youngest, at age 9, hopes to run her first full Bix this year with grandma in a full-circle moment. 

But the Bix is a quick race compared to others Young competes in. 

The longer the distance, the better Young runs.

He recently placed second in the U.S. championships 100 kilometer race and will compete in the world championship in Spain in December.

But he likes even longer distances.  

"My forte is 100 miles," Young said. 

The first 100-mile race he ran in 2021, he came behind and won the race in the final mile to beat the world-record holder.

"That's one that will always be on top because it was so dramatic," Young said. "I had hoped for a result like that but it was still unbelievable."

Many ultramarathons are in mountainous areas, but Young prefers a flat and fast course. The past five years, he's run a 100-mile race on a former railroad trail, called Tunnel Hill, in southern Illinois. He's won or gotten second in that race each of the five years he's participated. In 2025, he finished first with a time of 12:03:27.

Unlike training for a 5K or the Bix, when runners typically exceed the race distance on their longer training runs, ultramarathoners can't do that, Young said. 

Instead, he increases his weekly mileage and practices eating and drinking while running. He also does long runs on back-to-back days — 30 miles on Saturday and 20 on Sunday, for example. His longest training run has been 36 miles. 

In races, especially ultramarathons, Young said he does best when he's out in front and keeping a lead as opposed to being neck-and-neck with other runners, which may be an advantage for him in the Beat the Elite race.

"Having a lead and really having no choice of trying to hang on to it. That's something not most people ever do, but for me it's actually sort of the way I run best," Young said. "I'm excited to have to push really hard and to not know what's happening behind me." 

If Young “beats the elite,” he will donate the $2,500 pot to the TBK Bank Quad City Marathon's Shoes for Kids, which donates running shoes to young Quad-Cities residents. Hoka, one of Fleet Feet's partner brands, plans to match the donation, which could bring $5,000 total to the charity.

"I gotta win. I just, I gotta win. Because that would be $5,000 worth of shoes for kids," Young said.

Through the years, 26 runners have been selected to try to beat the race’s champion to the finish line with the help of a head start. Twenty of them have succeeded in doing so.