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 (half and 10K) at around 23 miles and two separate finish lines about a mile apart. The vast majority run the shorter races, which start later so they are running together with the full near the end. 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 run back to the split. This backtrack was about two miles, against the huge flow of shorter distance runners, probably making me look like a complete idiot. From the split I then ran, 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. All of this was my fault of course for not paying attention, 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.