![]() Custom Race Map & Elevation Profile Service.Request a Race be Added to the Pace Band Page.Request a Marathon be Added to the Marathon Time Converter Tool.Lots of amazing buildings and homes with beautiful, old architecture. Try to take your time and enjoy the city and what it has to offer. Expect a big city race with great crowd support and plenty to see while you are pounding out the miles. If you’ve been thinking about trying Pittsburgh, I’d highly recommend it. Pittsburgh, you rocked this marathon and I thank you! Not easy but a big city race, done right. I was beyond thankful for the plethora of water stations, ice stations, cold rags, multiple fueling stations that offered either Carb Boom Energy Gel or Pure Protein bars. Many thanks to the firefighters who opened the fire hydrants for us! Temps climbed to 78 degrees and it was full sun, all day long. So many great homeowners put out sprinklers and dug out water guns for the kiddos, fed us oranges, licorice, candy, pretzels, offered beer and handed out water in little dixie cups. Great spectator support by all 13 communities! I loved the music and bands. One LONG downhill that I was thrilled to see, then it flattened out for the last 2 miles to the finish. It was too much for my body so I took my time and ate a few of my Sour Patch Kids and watched everyone else struggle up the hill. I stopped running the climb about 1/2 way up. The most difficult hill to climb was at mile 12. ![]() Why isn’t the Birmingham Bridge yellow like all the rest? Birmingham Bridge – which isn’t yellow by the way! It’s green. Start was crowded and we spent the first several miles running on the sidewalks to get around the walkers. Staggered start with 5 minutes between corrals. Race day came and we were excited and ready to run! Temps were warm and the sun was shining. The University of Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning (pic 3). Carnegie Music Hall & Museum (pic 1 & 2). Home of the Pittsburgh Steelers & Steeler PRIDE everywhere. Market Square which we found a little too late, lots of bars, restaurants & shopping. We’ll run Pittsburgh the way we run every race, mile by mile with one goal in mind, the finish.įirst some sightseeing: The Strip District for shopping and walking around. No need to ruin the experience by stressing about the course. Regardless, we kinda laughed about the hills cuz what could we do? Nothing. That’s a lot for us Midwestern flatlanders! Hello hills! Course map below.Įlevation chart, showing elevation climbs up to 985 ft. We enter the city and it’s a pleasant surprise. There are varying reports as to the exact number but according to Popular Pittsburgh, there are almost 2,000 bridges in the area! More bridges than Venice, Italy! What? Really? Check out this article HERE to see some of those amazing bridges and the history behind them. Pittsburgh, we came to find out is the City of Bridges. We registered a month in advance because Pittsburgh is in PA and that’s a new state for us. I saw that Pittsburg was on May 3rd, pulled up google maps and discovered that it’s only 4.5 hours from my new home. Then we looked at the marathon calendar and tossed out a couple options. Julie said, “Hey, I’d really like to run a marathon at the end of April or beginning of May.” I said, “If you wait til the beginning of May, I’ll go with you”. On that note, we picked the Pittsburgh Marathon the way that we pick most of our races. And that makes things interesting in a fun and adventurous way. Some of those places weren’t exactly on my “must visit” list. Regardless, I’m on a journey that is taking me places. Maybe and most probably, I decided that if I ran more marathons, I could run fewer of those unsupported, boring, long runs. Maybe my kids were driving me crazy and I decided to run more and drink less to blow off steam. Maybe I woke up one day and decided there were so many great marathons and too little time to run them. ![]() ![]() Maybe it was the fact that I would train so hard for ONE marathon a year and then never get the desired result due to injury, training fatigue, life, stress or weather. In fact, I would have thought them to be the “crazy” one. If someone had told me 2 years ago that I would be running more than one or two marathons a year, I wouldn’t have believed them. I’m not really sure how I became this “crazy” marathon runner who’s current goal is to run a marathon in each of the 50 states.
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