SeaWheeze came back after seven years, and New York put 9+1 behind a lottery

SeaWheeze last ran in Vancouver in 2019. It came back on Saturday, and 11,158 runners are on the results board.

Here is the week of August 3 through 9.

SeaWheeze came back after seven years

The lululemon SeaWheeze Half Marathon started in 2012 and pulled about 10,000 runners a year to a course that runs downtown out to Kitsilano and back through Stanley Park. Its last in-person edition was 2019. Two virtual pandemic versions followed, and then it stopped. lululemon announced the return for an August 6 to 8 weekend this year and drew for entries in February. Saturday's results board holds 11,158 names, more than six times the next biggest field on our board this week.

Phily Bowden won the women's race in 1:14:19, eighth overall. The British marathoner has run 2:25:47 and finished 11th at the 2025 London Marathon, and she has 217,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel she started in 2021 and more than 350,000 followers on Instagram. Ben Preisner won the men's race in 1:06:11. He ran the marathon for Canada at the Tokyo Olympics and has a 2:08:58 best from Oita in 2024. Zachary Kinne was second in 1:07:15, Lucas Bruchet third in 1:09:12.

A bib cost C$325 for Canadian residents and US$275 for everyone else, bundled with the Sunset Festival in Stanley Park and the limited-run shorts the weekend is known for. Canadian Running reported last August that the 2019 edition cost C$178, and that when Canadian marathon record holder Natasha Wodak polled her Instagram followers on whether they would register at the new price, nine in ten said no.

Kaylee Frederick won the Eastern States 100 outright

Kaylee Frederick finished 97th at the Eastern States 100 in 2023. On Saturday she beat the whole field and set a women's course record, taking about 84 minutes off Nicole Yokum's 24:34:14 from 2021.

The race sends runners around the Pine Creek watershed in the Pennsylvania Wilds on a single 103-mile loop, with more than 20,000 feet of climbing and a 36-hour cutoff. Its operations board, which still marks its times unofficial, has Frederick first across the line in 23:09:48, Francis Daley second in 24:40:23, and Gabriel Batdorf third in 24:44:46, with 124 finishers from 265 participants. The fastest run in race history is still Wesley Atkinson's 18:23:47 from 2019.

Frederick is 21, from Johnstown, and studies biology and secondary education at Pitt-Johnstown. Her 2023 run here took 34:45:43, or 11 hours and 36 minutes slower than Saturday. In February she was second at the USATF 100-mile championships in 14:49:08, last October she covered 147.66 miles at the IAU 24-Hour World Championship in Albi, France, and she holds the women's Badwater 135 age-group records for 10 to 19 and 20 to 29.

Florea takes Sierre-Zinal, Perin runs away in the Tyrol

Romania's Mădălina Florea won the 53rd Sierre-Zinal on Saturday in 2:55:46, her fourth win in a row and her first at this race, 45 seconds ahead of last year's champion Caroline Kimutai and a minute and a half ahead of Morven Goodrum. Kenya's Philemon Kiriago repeated in 2:26:24, 32 seconds up on Patrick Kipngeno, in a men's podium that finished in the same order as last year and well off Kilian Jornet's 2:25:34 course record from 2024. The course runs 31 kilometers point to point through the Valais Alps with 2,200 meters of climbing, and both fields ran it in mid-30s Celsius heat.

Thursday evening in Austria, KAT100 sent its 105-mile race out of Fieberbrunn into the Kitzbühel Alps and 29,527 feet of vertical. Belgium's Logan Perin ran most of it alone at the front and won in 21:53:17, 51 minutes and 50 seconds clear of Patrick Pape. Martin Stäps was third in 23:29:42, and those three were the only finishers under 24 hours. Angelika Hahn of Germany won the women's race in 31:40. Of 121 starters, 84 made it back.

The rest of the weekend

Friday night belonged to the Williamsburg Bridge Marathon, which advertises no entry fee, no aid stations, no event permit, and more than $1,000 in cash prizes. It draws its distance at random after the gun, so runners left at 9 p.m. not knowing how far they were going. The number posted at 10:27: 21.42 miles, 8.5 laps of the bridge, finishing on the Manhattan side. Joe Cady covered it in 2:30:13 and Maya Geller won the women's race in 3:15:04.

Saturday put 14 races on our board. The Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Hurley, Wisconsin, first run in 1969, went to 18-year-old Samuel Keuler of Kiel in 2:47:29, with 58-year-old Mari Kauri of Monroe, Washington first among the women in 3:33:57 and eighth of 52 finishers overall. At Haulin Aspen on the trails outside Bend, Keegan Rathkamp won in 4:00:16 and Ian Sharman, a four-time Leadville Trail 100 champion who lives in town, was second in 4:14:07 at age 45. Caroline Eyman led the women in 4:50:05. At Skyline Mountain in Eden, Utah, iRunFar reports that Claire Middleton beat the whole 55K field in 5:16, the same weekend Frederick did it in Pennsylvania.

The road halfs were busier. Madison Mini timed 1,674 finishers, with Drew Zink winning in 1:07:18 and Piper Atnip taking the women's race in 1:16:43. In California's Central Valley, 519 runners finished the Hell of a Half in Exeter, where 17-year-old Mason Mamauag of Porterville won in 1:16:37 and Rabecca Kirkham was first woman in 1:31:58. The club-scored Philly Mayor's Cup at Belmont Plateau, Dave McKay Memorial in Flagstaff, Human Race in Fort Collins, Runtastic Heber, Noyo Headlands, and Smelter City Scamper in Anaconda filled out the day, alongside the Falling Water Trail Marathon in Ontario.

Sunday ran seven more. James Ratliff won the Humboldt Bay Marathon in Eureka in 2:44:15 and Lucy Andrews took the women's race in 3:10:23, with 96 marathon finishers. Thomas Felton-Smith of the Manx Fell Runners won the Isle of Man Marathon in Ramsey in 2:42:51. Germany had two, the Allgäu Panorama Marathon and the Monschau Marathon, while Geneva in upstate New York and Rio Grande in Albuquerque handled the halfs. The Tunnel Vision Marathon in North Bend, Washington had not posted results by Monday morning. Everything else from the week is in the results archive, and if you ran any of it, tell us how it went.

New York put 9+1 behind a lottery

New York changed how local runners earn their way into the city's marathon on Thursday. New York Road Runners announced that 9+1, the program where members run nine qualifying races and volunteer once to earn guaranteed entry the following year, will be capped at the 15,000-plus members drawn at random from everyone who asks.

Entering is free and runs September 17 to 29, with the draw on October 1, and you have to be a member by September 16 to be in it. Anyone selected pays $99, then completes the nine races and the volunteer shift during 2027 to earn a guaranteed 2028 place, which they still pay the entry fee for. NYRR is adding a Passholder Race Selection Process so winners are not then shut out of the races they need, and reserving free passes for its Race Free program. Anyone already working through 9+1 for 2027 is untouched, and Member Plus is gone, its two-day registration head start extended to every member.

The other door explains why this lands. The general drawing for the 2026 race took more than 240,000 applications from more than 160 countries, up nearly 20 percent on 2025, and let in about one percent. 9+1 was the route that did not turn on luck. Show up nine times, work one shift, you are in. A draw now decides who is allowed to do the work.

CEO Rob Simmelkjaer called it a capacity fix, citing a 24-month audit: "The hardest thing about completing 9+1 should be running the races, not getting into them." Marathon Handbook reported the objection pointing the other way: the $99 stacks a new charge on membership and nine race entries, and a program that ran on sweat equity now opens with a drawing. NYRR booked a live member town hall on its podcast for 6:30 that same evening.

Ragnar's Reach the Beach lost its permit

New Hampshire State Parks denied Ragnar a permit for Reach the Beach, the Union Leader reported Friday, after the company missed an August 1 deadline to pay more than $30,000 it still owed from the 2025 race. The relay has run since 1999 and covers 204 miles from the Lancaster Fairgrounds to Hampton Beach State Park in teams of six or twelve. It was scheduled for September 18 and 19.

Police departments along the route are owed roughly $100,000 between them. Exeter's chief, Josh McCain, told the paper his department is still out $2,250 and that "we were always given the runaround when we tried to contact them." Hampton Area Chamber of Commerce president John Nyhan told the paper, "The permit was denied, so there's no going back." Ragnar and FitLab, which bought the relay company in 2022, did not return the paper's calls or emails.

It is the fourth Ragnar event in trouble this summer. Hybrid Fitness Media reported on July 30 that Ragnar canceled Trail Appalachians a week before race day and Minnesota Trail two weeks out, that a Wisconsin venue terminated its contract over a missed payment, and that announcers, hotels, food trucks, and portable toilet vendors described invoices sitting unpaid for months. Teams in the canceled races were offered a 2027 transfer plus a free second entry, or a full refund. Neither covers flights, hotels, or rental cars.

Demand for the races that do go off has not softened. On August 6 the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon said it had sold out its largest field ever three months out, its earliest sellout in 19 years.

What's next

Leadville runners still do not have a course. The Willow Fire west of town put Hagerman Pass Road, Sugarloaf Mountain, and Powerline inside the burn area, and the race series says all three stay closed for the foreseeable future. The mountain bike race got its replacement route this week, 102.1 miles and 9,916 feet around the north side of Turquoise Lake, and rides Saturday. Entrants in the Leadville Trail 100 Run on August 22 are promised their final route and maps no later than Friday, with crewing and aid station details by August 18. Race director Tamira Jenlink, still working through options with the Forest Service and private landowners, told the Colorado Sun on August 3 that the route was "a moving target."

Three races came off the calendar entirely. Daybreak Racing canceled Wy'east Trailfest on August 4 when evacuation orders from the Grasshopper Fire reached the Mt. Hood Meadows staging area it uses, and iRunFar counted the High Five 100 in Colorado and the Elkhorn Crest 50 in Oregon among the weekend's cancellations.

Twenty-five races are on our board for the week ahead. Bigfoot 200 starts Friday out of Cougar, Washington with live tracking, then Saturday brings Squamish 50 Mile in British Columbia and the Boréalys Mont-Tremblant Odyssée 100K in Quebec. Sunday is the road day: Servus Edmonton, Anchorage RunFest, America's Finest City Half in San Diego, and the Rio de Janeiro International Half.

The European Athletics Championships open Monday at Alexander Stadium, the first time the UK has hosted them, and close on the road. Both marathons run eight laps of a five-kilometer city-centre circuit out of Victoria Square on Sunday, women at 7:30 a.m. and men at 8:10 a.m.

Falmouth is the same morning. The 54th ASICS Falmouth Road Race named its professional field on August 6: 11 Olympians and Paralympians and 14 US national champions, with Conner Mantz and Elise Cranny debuting and Tatyana McFadden back in the wheelchair race. The purse the race doubled for Americans in July pays $5,000 down to $1,000 for the first five, and this field has a lot more than five Americans in it.

Marathon Scout Trivia has five questions waiting, easy to hard. Boston 2027 registration runs September 14 to 18, and our Boston Qualifier index tracks which races still count.