Marathon finishes by local runners dip slightly in 2018

Marathoning remains popular among D.C. area runners, but the number of domestic marathon finishes dropped 7.5 percent in 2018, down to 12,981 from 14,044 in 2017.

At the same time, the number of those marathons dropped to 686 in 2018 from 704 in 2017. As you would expect, the Marine Corps Marathon topped the list with 5,053 local finishers. On the other end, 400 races had no local runners, while 67 had just one. There were likely more, but 147 races did not report the residences of their finishers, many of which were smaller races far from the D.C. area.

The most popular races among locals were a mixture of majors – Chicago, Boston and New York – regional races like Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Shamrock, and the place athletes typically go AFTER an accomplishment – Disney World.

[infogram id=”2018-marathons-1hd12y1ok80l2km?live”]

Iowa had no local finishers in 2018, and it only played host to five races total.

Opening this map will show you where locals finished marathons, broken down by range of finishers:

• 67 races had only one local finisher (yellow)
• 168 have 2-25 (blue)
• 30 had 26-99 (red)
• 13 had more than 100 (green)

A total of 28 people won 29 races, with D.C.’s Jeff Redfern winning both the George Washington’s Birthday Marathon in Greenbelt and the Baltimore Marathon.

Entry fees are a little harder to pinpoint, because registration costs increase as the races approach and a significant number of local runners complete fundraising challenges. For simplicity’s sake, we used the approximate registration price charged three months ahead of race day for each race. A conservative estimate, which figured in some complimentary entries but did not include fundraising totals, came to $2.02 million.

These finishers covered more than 13,000 miles during their races, with more distance surely covered because it’s unlikely all 12,981 ran the tangents.

For our purposes, local includes Washington, D.C. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland and in Virginia: Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William and Loudoun counties and the independent cities within.

Thank you to Henry Peck and Mike Kiernan for assistance acquiring detailed results and Frank Cadle for giving the infographic a second set of eyes.