With today’s announcement regarding the Stillwater Marathon, has the Minnesota racing scene passed the saturation point? Combined with the new Get in Gear half marathon and the inaugural Minneapolis Marathon, there are a lot of options for runners to consider in this down economy.
Let’s look at the Get in Gear changes. The 10K has usually been my first race of the year and has often been the first real outdoor run of the year too. While the addition of a half might make me train earlier, I don’t want to give up the 30+ years of tradition with the 10K race. Too bad the organizers couldn’t keep the Saturday schedule the same and add the half marathon as a Sunday event on the same weekend, allowing people to run both.
Looking at May and June, we now have the following major regional races:
- Med City Marathon (Rochester), May 24, 2009
- Stillwater Marathon, May 24, 2009
- Madison Marathon (Wisconsin), May 24, 2009
- Minneapolis Marathon, May 31, 2009
- Heart of the City Half Marathon (Burnsville), Early June
- Grandma’s Marathon, June 20, 2009
There are just too many events all bunched up together. I know it gets hot here in the summer, but how about moving some of these longer runs so we have one marathon per month? It’s not really smart to run a marathon a month, but it’s impossible to run three on the same day. If they were spaced out, at least you could pick and choose which ones you wanted to do each year.
It will be interesting to see how these all shake out. None of the new events have released their course maps yet, but I do see that the Minneapolis event is promoting itself as iPod-friendly. Each will have to find something to differentiate themselves and persuade the limited number of runners to pick them in this crowded field of inaugural and established events.
Which events will you pick?
