Martian Marathon

RF Events has run this in Dearborn for over two decades and commits to the theme rather than decorating with it: green medals, a kids' marathon of 1.2 miles started in colored waves, and a Milky Way combination that pairs the 5K with the half so the day adds up to 26 kilometres instead of 26.2 miles. The full is the thinnest field of the morning and shares prize money with the 10K, which brings out a faster front of the field than the entry count suggests. Everything runs out of Ford Field Park on the Rouge, with packet pickup spread across a weeknight, the Friday before and race morning itself.

Two laps from Ford Field Park, and the spine of each one is Edward Hines Drive, the parkway that traces the Rouge River through the western suburbs. Runners leave the park through Dearborn streets, skirt the edge of Dearborn Country Club, drop onto Hines and follow it west to a turnaround near Inkster Road, then retrace the whole thing into the park. The road is wide and closed to cars for the morning, lightly rolling rather than dead level, and USATF course MI26002MN records zero net drop, with the finish back where the start was. Aid stations come about every two miles and restrooms every five. Two things to plan around. Hines Drive sits low enough on the Rouge that a flood course is kept on file for the half and the full. And there is a hard checkpoint near mile 13: anyone not through it in time gets turned toward the finish and scored in the half marathon instead.

An April morning in southeast Michigan is a coin flip. The middle of the distribution is a start somewhere around 40 degrees and a high in the middle 50s, which is close to what you would order for a marathon, and it is one reason the course has a reputation for fast Michigan times. The tails are wide though, and the same slot on the calendar has produced 70-degree afternoons, snow squalls and long stretches of wind off open ground west of the city. The Hines Drive corridor is exposed, and running it twice means whatever the wind is doing, you meet it more than once.