Forums >Racing>Two Rivers Marathon
Mostly harmless
A couple of friends and I are looking for a spring marathon to shoot for a BQ. I found this race doing a search. It looks promising but I thought I would see if anyone here has run it. Any info provided would be much appreciated.
"It doesn’t matter how often you do it or how much you accomplish, in general, not running is a lot easier than running." - Meb Keflezighi
It's Tuesday every day
Hi - it's listed in findmymarathon.com - you can read a few comments there. Looks pretty small: 82 - 114 finishers 2014-2016. OTOH, my first 'thon featured 128 finishers, and I liked that. --Christine
I much prefer small races without all the jostling around.
I did the half marathon there 2 or 3 years ago. In most ways it was good enough as a low key, no frills race. Runners can wait inside near the start, shuttle from finish area to the start. Adequate toilets, food, parking, swag.
But there was a problem with the course markings. Someone had messed with or taken some of the cones overnight and the replacement marking for the turn-around on an out-and-back section was too short. By a lot. It was not important to me that day but for marathoners aiming to BQ it must have been huge. (Marathoners did the half course then continued on for the remainder of their race.)
The race director offered as much as possible to make up for that, but I doubt Boston recognized those times. I suspect there was a lesson learned that day and the race director wouldn't let it happen again.
I was looking for a good BQ opportunity for this past spring and chose the B & A Marathon near Annapolis. I was happy with the race and my results. It is put on by the Annapolis Striders Running Club.
https://www.annapolisstriders.org/ba-marathon-and-half-marathon/
I ran the half marathon there a few years ago and it was 12.5 miles and the marathon run the same day was 24 miles. Oopsie.
I was only doing it as a training run but I would have been greatly annoyed if I was using it as my BQ race and the distance was wrong. I have heard that they have done a better job in recent years with measuring / marking the course and the RD certainly seemed like a nice guy. It was a decent course that would be an excellent half marathon training run for those training for Boston in that it has a similar elevation profile for the first four miles and is about the right place on the calendar for such an effort.
Rebuilding my aerobic base....racing next year.....nothing to see here....move along now.
Thanks for the replies! I'll email the RD today and ask him about the course marking issues in the past. I'll also check out the race in Annapolis because that one is much closer to me.