Marathon #147: Rehoboth Seashore Marathon, DE

3:55 finish, 282/861 place overall. Scenic race along the coast of southern Delaware. Flat course with good running weather, but a little tougher in the second half than last few marathons.

Race map and details

Marathon #146 (second round state #31): Veterans Marathon, Columbia City, IN

3:45 finish, 37/124 place overall. Very small Veterans Day-themed race running mostly through farmland of northeastern Indiana, about a half hour west of Fort Wayne. Mostly flat with ideal weather; decent finish time very similar to last couple of marathons.

Race map and details

Marathon #145 (Can. prov. #7): Prince Edward Island Marathon, Charlottetown, PE, Canada

3:45 finish, 55/160 place overall). Small race in and around Charlottetown, the largest town and capital of the tiny Prince Edward Island province. Average course with a mix of bike paths and residential/commercial areas. A little hilly, but nearly perfect weather; another fairly strong finish. 

Race map and details

Marathon #144 (second round state #30): Quad Cities Marathon, Moline, IL

3:47 finish, 101/541 place overall. Nice small race along both sides of the Mississippi River in western Illinois and eastern Iowa - starting and ending in downtown Moline, IL. Most of course is along riverfront paths with some sections through residential areas and an army base. Mostly flat and not too hot until the later miles. Decent sub-four finish.

Race map and details

Marathon #143 (country #26): Stavanger Marathon, Norway

3:53 finish. Nice race in and around Stavanger, a small port city on the southwest coast of Norway about four and a half hours south of Bergen. No major crowds or anything, but friendly volunteers and small groups of enthusiastic spectators. Starts and finishes downtown with some urban and residential sections, but most of the course is on bike paths through wooded areas alongside lakes and a nearby fjord. Lots of short steep hills that seemed to never stop, but weather was ideal and my time was decent. 

Race map and details

Photos

Marathon #142 (country #25): Taupo Marathon, New Zealand

4:02 finish, 106/274 place overall. Scenic race along Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake in the center of the North Island, about three hours from Auckland. Ideal running weather - cold at the start but warmed up nicely into the 50s. It’s a little hilly, and an added challenge is the way they lay out the course on narrow sidewalks and paths with huge numbers of shorter distance walkers participating at the same time as the full marathon runners, making it congested even in the later miles. Still, lakefront sections are very scenic and it’s well supported. Considering my lack of training coming off of a minor injury, my time was slower than usual but not as bad as expected.

Race map and details

Photos

Marathon #141 (second round state #29): Bayshore Marathon, Traverse City, MI

3:40 finish, 470/1397 place overall. Nice scenic race along the lakefront near Traverse City in northwestern Michigan. Mostly flat with ideal cool weather; one of my better finish times.

Race map and details

Marathon #140 (sub-four state #42, second round state #28): Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon, Louisville, KY

3:47 finish, 236/1048 place overall. Nice race starting in downtown Louisville, running through Churchill Downs, then over the bridge and along the Ohio River on the Indiana side before doubling back to finish near downtown. Not too hilly with ideal running weather; another sub-four state done.

Race map and details

Marathon #139 (country #24): Sao Paulo Marathon, Brazil

3:51 finish, 996/4673 place overall. Typical big city race going through many parts of São Paulo, starting and finishing at the popular Ibrapuera Park. Not as much entertainment and crowd support as you’d normally see at such a large race, but well organized with friendly volunteers. Weather was humid but luckily it stayed mostly cloudy and not too hot, allowing for an okay sub-four finish.

Race map and details

Photos - Brazil

Photos - Iguazu Falls, Argentina

Marathon #138 (country #23): Tel Aviv Marathon, Israel

About 3:50 unofficial time for marathon distance; 5:02 official finish for 31.1 miles (explained below).

Scenic urban course though different parts of Tel Aviv with nice stretches along the coast and through downtown areas. The course is mostly flat with just a few rolling hills, and with good running weather my marathon distance time was solidly under four hours. 

However, this is an unusual and confusing course near the end with the full marathon splitting off from the shorter distances at around 23 miles and two separate finish lines about a mile apart. The vast majority run the shorter distances (half, 10K), which start later so they are running together with the full near the end, and there is a very poorly marked turn off for the full marathon around 23 miles. Not paying close enough attention, I missed that turn, following the much larger stream of shorter-distance runners that the full had been running alongside for the past few miles. Their finish line was just about a mile short of the marathon distance in the same start/finish area (very unusual; usually it’s the same finish line). Because it was only a mile short, I thought at first it was just a measuring error with the course (which has happened before) or something off with my watch. I soon realized that I crossed the wrong finish line and had to backtrack to the split (about two miles, against the giant flow of shorter distance runners, probably looking like a complete idiot) and then run, very slowly, the final three miles of the correct course. This put me at 31.1 miles total, coincidentally about a 50K ultra distance, with a 5:02 finish. My own fault of course, but I have never seen such a poorly signed split - just a volunteer sitting there with a small red sign and an arrow that didn’t even say “marathon” or “42K” on it. Anyway it accidentally became my second ever 50K run (unofficial of course), my only official one being Caumsett in 2018 with a similar time around five hours.

Race map and details (first 28 miles)

Race map and details (last 3 miles)

Photos

Marathon #137 (second round state #27): Jekyll Island Marathon, GA

4:04 finish, 87/283 place overall. Nice fairly scenic race around Jekyll Island, a small resort island off the coast of southern Georgia. Took this one slow considering I wasn’t feeling great and didn’t need the state under four hours anyway, but with unusually cool weather and a mostly flat course, not a horrible time.

Race map and details