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Stewart Ellington isn't sure why he's so driven to win the fourth annual Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon.

He's run the half-marathon the past three years, but this year has decided to make a hard push at winning the full marathon.

Perhaps his competitive fire has simply been rekindled.

"It's kind of been building over the last three years," said Ellington, 33, former four-time All-American distance runner at the University of Tennessee. "Over the last three years I've gotten more serious."

Ellington, originally from San Jose, Calif., has been training rigorously in preparation for the Knoxville Marathon. He knew well that type of training while at UT.

In 1995, Ellington was fourth in the NCAA Indoors 5K and posted the fastest time for a domestic collegiate runner in the 10K at a meet in Los Angeles.

Years later, Ellington is trying to find the balance between married life and fatherhood and competitive running.

A nurse anesthetist, Ellington and his wife, Tammy, have two sons: Reid, 2, and Greg, 4.

"You can't really hit it as hard (training) when you have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old at home," Ellington said.

Regardless, Ellington is hitting it pretty hard.

He has been running about 90 miles per week in preparation for the Knoxville Marathon on March 30. He will taper his mileage down to about 80 and then 70 miles per week - but no less.

"My training has been going fantastic," Ellington said. "I run a lot with the Runners Market guys and UT guys. That's the biggest benefit, having teammates around. I haven't trained solo in a long time. I always have teammates with me."

After finishing at UT in 1996, Ellington ran for adidas for three years, mostly in the United States, and then attended graduate school at UNC Charlotte and earned his master's degree in late 2001.

He moved back to Knoxville that year.

"I've been running off and on since college," Ellington said. "I kind of hung it up in 2003 and took a long break. … I just ran off and on and wasn't real competitive. I didn't really get the itch till they had the half-marathon in the (inaugural) Knoxville Marathon."

Ellington finished ninth in the half-marathon in 1 hour, 24.17 minutes in 2005, the inaugural Knoxville Marathon. He was eighth (1:11.40) in 2006 and was fourth (1:10.75) last year.

The Knoxville Marathon will be Ellington's seventh marathon. In his most recent marathon, he finished 15th (2:31.14) in the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis-St. Paul on Oct. 7 last fall.

"The last three or four marathons have gone pretty well," Ellington said. "I'm finally learning. I've usually done better than in my previous marathon."

Last year, Ellington missed qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Trials in the marathon by less than 2 seconds, and it served as motivation this year.

"That's OK," he said. "I'm finally getting into shape. Over the last couple of years, it took a while for me to figure out what it took to get into that kind of shape."

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.