Green River Marathon

First off, a FREE marathon in a beautiful location is unbeatable! Thanks to the director for putting this together! And this year, what a surprise... we received a medal as we finished!!! That was a huge perk! The first half was on a beautiful and quiet trail, but with little shade. Second half was through some industrial parts of the town, neighborhoods and then along Marginal Way, a busy road heading to the waterfront trail. This is the only spot I got confused with the race course. Everything was very well marked, but around mile 20 is when i somehow missed an arrow and ended up running into tall grass and railroad tracks. knew I was close but ended up finding the course at mile 21. The last 5 miles heading toward Alki were more populated, partly because it was a beautiful 88 degree day, but made for good distraction to the finish. This was by far my worst finishing time for a marathon, but that was due to an injury.. but it allowed me to take in all the sights and smile at the finish line on a beautiful California-ish beach setting! There were many 50 staters running this race, and its a great choice for Washington... only 1 hill that I can recall!!! Great for such a hilly area.

Wow, a free marathon. Lots of credit must go to the organizers and volunteers who put on this Boston-qualifier race. Money they make from t-shirt sales and donations goes to charity. The running community should get together and create more of these type of races. The course starts out running along a river in a beautiful forest. There is a middle section along busy roads and in an industrial area but the finish is along the water with a spectacular view of downtown Seattle. Not a lot of crowd support, but the volunteers outdo themselves cheering and the people who are coincidentally along the course (running, biking, etc.) could not be nicer!

This was a great low key no frills marathon. i don't have anything negative to say about it. Good organization, plenty of fluid stations, friendly volunteers, sufficient number of portapotties in the parks along the course and a well marked course made this a wonderful run. I prefer the smaller marathons and this was perfect. I found several runners along the way running close to my pace and talked to some very friendly people. I am from Cincinnati and will definitely do this one again. I did not run the full 26.2 but ran 19 as I was using this as a training run for a marathon in July.