➡️ The essential weekly newsletter for marathon runners — featuring training tips, upcoming US races, last week's results, and stories from the running world.
⭐️ Training Tip
Sleep as Your Secret Training Tool: How Rest Transforms Your Marathon Performance
Most runners obsessively track their miles, monitor their heart rate, and fine-tune their nutrition. Yet one of the most powerful performance enhancers available is completely free, requires zero equipment, and is available to every single runner — and it’s the one most commonly sacrificed when training ramps up. Sleep isn’t passive recovery. It’s active adaptation. And if you’re not treating it like a training session, you’re leaving serious gains on the table.
▶️ Upcoming US marathons for the next two weeks
This section is sponsored by:
⭐️ 5/16/2026 - Famous Idaho Potato Marathon - Boise, ID
⭐️ 11/15/2026 - Battleship Half Marathon - Wilmington, NC
🏞 FLAT & FAST COURSES - Best for PRs and Boston Qualifiers
May 16 - Cleveland Marathon — Cleveland, OH
May 16 - Ogden Marathon — Ogden, UT
May 24 - Vermont City Marathon — Burlington, VT
May 30 - Fargo Marathon — Fargo, ND
⭐️ SCENIC & DESTINATION RACES - Worth the travel
May 17 - Colfax Marathon — Denver, CO
May 23 - Bayshore Marathon — Traverse City, MI
May 24 - Ottawa Marathon — Ottawa, ON
📢 BIG CITY & HIGH-ENERGY RACES - Crowds, atmosphere, and scale
May 25 - Buffalo Marathon — Buffalo, NY
🏃🏻♀️ SMALLER & COMMUNITY RACES - Low-key, personal, often PR-friendly fields
May 16 - Beach to Bay Relay Marathon — Corpus Christi, TX
May 17 - Windermere Marathon — Vantage, WA
May 17 - Med City Marathon — Rochester, MN
Fort De Soto Oktoberfest 15K•10K•5K
Have a blast and kick off Tampa Bay’s race season at historic Fort De Soto Park with a 15K, 10K, or 5K and a fun Oktoberfest celebration.
❤️ 💬 Enjoying the content? Give it a like, share it with a running buddy, and drop a comment - we’d love to hear from you!
👉 Catch up on the past week's results
The weekend of May 9-10 delivered a full slate of marathon action across North America – twelve events in all, drawing a combined field of approximately 1,229 finishers from the Atlantic provinces of Canada to the Texas Hill Country, from the Northwoods of Minnesota to the shores of Portland, Maine.
Billings Skyline Races
The Skyline Races Half Marathon and 30K brings runners to the top of Billings’ legendary Rimrocks for a race like no other. Experience Montana’s wide-open beauty on a paved path of moderate elevation changes that makes it ideal for both competitive athletes and first-time half-marathoners or 30K participants.
⚡️ Cocodona 250: The Race That Breaks You Just Before the Finish
There are ultramarathons, and then there is the Cocodona 250. One of the most brutal foot races on the planet, the Cocodona 250 winds through the Sonoran and Colorado Plateau landscapes of Arizona, demanding everything a human body and mind can offer — and then a little more. What makes it especially cruel, and especially compelling, is that some runners find their limit not at mile 100 or mile 200, but in the final handful of miles before the finish line.
The Numbers Are Staggering
To put the scale in perspective:
250+ miles of trail and dirt road
40,000+ feet of elevation gain
125 hours to finish — roughly five days
Temperatures swinging from desert heat to near-freezing nights
Terrain ranging from cactus-lined desert trails to alpine forest
Why Do Some Runners Stop So Close to the End?
The phenomenon of runners stopping, slowing dramatically, or having profound emotional breakdowns in the final miles is well documented in ultrarunning, and the Cocodona amplifies it for several reasons…
➡️ Featured race you shouldn’t miss
For nearly five decades, runners, walkers, and families have gathered in the heart of Billings to kick off Father’s Day weekend with one of the city’s most cherished traditions, the Heart & Sole Run.
On Saturday, June 20, 2026, the 47th Annual Heart & Sole Run returns, bringing the community together for a morning focused on health, family, and giving back. What began as a small local event has grown into one of Billings’ most anticipated summer races, welcoming participants of all ages and abilities.
Thanks for reading 🤍
MarathonGuide Team