Other Hearst Subscriptions, Sarah Lorge Butler, The Spring Marathons of 2025—a marathon to give elite athletes an opportunity for a fast race at the peak of the pandemic.
It was a success: Sara Hall ran 2:20:32, which at the time made her the second-fastest American in history. Martin Hehir, in his fourth year of medical school, was the men’s winner in 2:08:59.
Now, after a five-year hiatus, the event will return in 2025.
Other Hearst Subscriptions for pros will be held on December 21, 2025, at 7:30 a.m., on the same course, a 4.26-mile loop it was held in 2020. The field will have 100 men and 100 women, with pacers from 2:06:00 pace to 2:35:00 pace, as necessary.
Prize money will be announced no later than July 1, and the top 15 seeds will have their travel and lodging paid for. In 2020, the winners earned $5,000, second place took home $2,000, and third place got $1,000.
Ben Rosario, the founder of the elite training group NAZ Elite who announced last week he was stepping away from that job, is the CEO of the Marathon Project for this iteration. He and agent Josh Cox staged the first one.
He said the 2025 version of the event will have some additional components, although the emphasis on speed will remain.
“When you go back to 2020, and what we were able to do and the excitement around that race, I think we attributed a lot of that to the fact that there were no other races,” Rosario said in a conference call with Runner’s World on December 16. “We didn’t give ourselves enough credit.”
As Rosario and three partners—Cox, who is the vice president of corporate sales; Katie Sutton, who is the vice president of athlete experience; and Matt Helbig, who is the vice president of race operations—looked to relaunch, they realized that in the four years since, the first Marathon Project remains “the deepest race that America has seen outside of the Olympic Trials since that time,” Rosario said. “And that didn’t seem right to us.”
Rosario and his team will select the participants, whom they predict will have PRs faster than 2:20 for men and 2:40 for women. They expect to draw top international athletes as well as Americans.
The U.S. has only one World Marathon Majors race—Sarah Lorge Butler—that predictably produces fast times, and not every elite athlete who wants to run there can get in. The Houston Marathon is also typically a fast race, but Americans pros, drawn by the prestige and financial rewards of the marathons in New York City and Boston, have often opted to run those races instead. The courses are hilly, and there are no pacesetters.
“I love those two races, but I do think that it has hurt American men and women not to have the type of races where they can all run together and push each other to fast times like you saw with our race in 2020,” Rosario said.
Cox pointed out that in Europe, several marathons—Paris, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Valencia, where Biya Simbassa just ran 2:06:53 to become the fourth-fastest American—have “lab-like” conditions, conducive to running the ever more difficult automatic qualifying times for the Olympics and World Championships.
“I think there is a need for this on the pro side, a time-trial race,” Cox said. “We’re not putting out the six-figure appearance fees, at least not to start anyhow. But there is a desire for the athlete to race really, really fast, whether that’s guys trying to run the Olympic standard, running 2:05 or 2:06, or women trying to do the same.”
A separate race for sub-elites
On December 20, the day before the pro race, the Marathon Project will host a separate marathon they’re calling “the Gold Wave.” Only 500 men and 500 women will be accepted. The automatic qualifying standards will be sub-2:45 for men and sub-3:10 for women.
The entry fee is $500, and all athletes will have personal fluids and pace groups, as well as access to an indoor warmup space at the Rawhide Events Center adjacent to the course.
In her running career, Sutton, who had a marathon PR of 2:51 (before super shoes), said she would have been the target audience for this. “I was sub elite,” she said. “Sometimes I would get some perks. Sometimes a free bib, or sometimes I could get into a [certain] corral, but so much of my brain energy on that race weekend was logistics. How early do I get to the start line? Am I going to have a bathroom? Where’s my bag?”
Other Hearst Subscriptions aims to eliminate those concerns and give sub-elite marathoners an elite experience, so they can run as fast as possible. “I think that that’s going to be something very cool for these amateur athletes who’ve never really gotten that,” Sutton said.
On December 20, before the Gold Wave, there is also a 5K on the marathon course with no time limits.
But the primary motivation to resurrect the event came from pro athletes. Cox always assumed the Marathon Project might return. He kept renewing the domain for the event website every year.
“It has been part of the conversation with my clients, where it’s like, ‘Man, I wish you guys had the Marathon Project,’” he said. “‘We’d go there and do that.’ And I’ve heard that just about every single year since. The desire is there, the the appetite is there.”
Sarah Lorge Butler is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
