Winner of last three Purdue Half-Marathons won’t return for 2024 race

The 15th annual Purdue Boilermaker Half-Marathon & 5K will be held Saturday, Oct. 26, starting and finishing outside Ross-Ade Stadium.

When Don Carr, the president of Tuxedo Brothers Event Management, was tasked by Purdue to put on an event to bring the whole Purdue community together, he wasn’t sure if it would be possible.

In 2010, Purdue University, the City of West Lafayette, the city of Lafayette and the Purdue Visitor Center came together to discuss the identity of the Greater Lafayette and West Lafayette area.

Primarily, the council discussed how the high highs brought by Big Ten football weekends and on the flip side, the lows of an away weekend.

An event on an off-weekend was proposed to bring alumni, parents and all Indiana residents to Purdue for something other than a sports game.

The council settled on a road race open to all, and the Purdue Half-Marathon was born, a unique staple of the local calendar.

Fifteen years later, the Purdue Half-Marathon has grown from a field of a few weekend mile and competitive distance runners, to over 4,000 students, faculty, parents and everything in between registered for the upcoming race.

For Carr, it hasn’t been easy growing this event to its current size. There were many twists and turns over the years, from changing the route to bringing tons of resources of police and volunteers to help out on site.

What can be a logistical nightmare on occasion is worth it every time when Carr sees the joy of the thousands of runners each year on the designated, usually cold, cold October morning. However, not every runner is smiling ear to ear during the race, especially when there’s history at stake.

Brandon Dimitri, a Virginia native, came to Purdue in 2018 as a wide-eyed freshman drawn to the school by his dad’s time here, the prestige of the aerospace program, and how perfect the campus was laid out for running.

Dimitri was never the fastest runner in high school, and he didn’t have many collegiate offers for cross country or track, but running meant the world to him, and he refused to give that up.

Dmitri joined the Purdue Run Club, a half competitive, half social running club that meets every weekday to run routes around West Lafayette and Lafayette. Club routes include out-and-backs to Happy Hollow, Purdue Airport, the Celery Bog and more, and the team participates in four or five competitive meets every semester.

As an aeronautical and astronautical engineering student, Dmitri loved challenges of all shapes and forms. He started taking his running to a new level, going to meets, training hard year round and running the Half Marathon each year, minus the COVID year.

Dmitri held his own but did not find the podium his freshman or sophomore year. Come senior year, his third try, he won the 2021 Purdue Half-Marathon.

He decided to remain in West Lafayette to earn a masters degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, continuing to run and eventually winning the 2022 Purdue Half-Marathon.

After graduation from Purdue, Dmitri moved to St. Louis, where he still works as a flight control engineer for Boeing.

Dmitri returns to campus for the race each fall, and won his third Purdue Half-Marathon in 2023.

What most people would see as complete domination and the gold standard for running success, Brandon simply does because he loves it.

So much success at the Purdue Half-Marathon is just the start for Dmitri’s running career. As he aims for higher heights, he doesn’t have the room in his schedule for Purdue’s annual race this year.

“I recently competed in the Chicago Marathon, and have the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on the books next month, which means the Purdue Half in between would be too quick of a turnaround to run it this year,” Dimitri said last week.

All that leaves us wondering, with Brandon not running, who will take his place and run through the banner first this year?