49th Detroit Free Press Marathon 2026

On October 18, 2026, I ran the 49th Detroit Free Press Marathon. The full race FPV/POV video can be viewed on YouTube here:

After Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon, I was sick for about a week. My HRV was Low and my Garmin Training Status was Strained. However, on October 16 I was finally back up to Maintaining Status with Unbalanced HRV.

So due to recently being sick, I started the race with no expectation, only hoping to finish and check off another state.

The day before the race, I walked too much due to wanting to sight-see the city. It was about 10 miles so not too bad when compared to other trips.

Since the race is sponsored by Detroit Free Press, participant names were printed in a special section of the newspaper the day after the race.

Some things I did:

• I rode the entire Detroit People Mover loop which took about 35 minutes.
• I ate at Eminem’s Mom’s Spaghetti restaurant.
• Visited the Guardian Building which looked cool on inside.
• Stopped by the Spirit of Detroit many times for pictures.

Travel

I flew from DCA to DTW direct via American Airlines on October 16. My flight departed a little later than scheduled due to the flight crew not arriving on time from their previous flight due to weather delays.

To get into the city, I rode the Detroit Air Xpress (DAX). It only runs about every 1 hour and 30 minutes so it is quite a wait depending on when you arrive. I decided to pay when I boarded which cost $8. If you buy ticket online it would cost $6. The actual ride into the city took less than 30 minutes, but a lot of time was spent on the operator accepting fare and loading luggage on the bus. It was much cheaper compared to a $45 ride on Uber I saw.

I stayed at Hotel Indigo Detroit Downtown by IHG. I stayed three nights. The hotel was booked via the Detroit Marathon lodging website. I chose it because it was the lowest cost option near the start line of the race. Coincidentally, it is located near the DAX stop in the city.

The travel home was fortunately uneventful. I took the DAX bus back to DTW airport Monday morning and flew back to DCA. This time, I purchased the DAX fare ahead of time online and saved the $2.

Expo

The expo was held at Huntington Place. It was a short distance from my hotel. I was there on Saturday, October 17. The bib/shirt pickup area was at the far end of the room, past all the exhibitors. I guess they wanted to ensure you had to walk past them to get the bib and shirt. I decided to purchase arm warmers to try out since the weather forecast expected it to be about 40degF in the morning which is a little cold for me; it is the temperature I would start to wear gloves. After leaving the Expo, I later learned that I received the incorrect shirt and had to return to exchange it. I received the half marathon shirt. Luckily my friend who also was at the expo detected the issue. Otherwise, I may have never noticed since I normally just pile shirts from races in a box and never look. I wonder how many other incorrect shirts I have received.

Carb Loading

Since the race was Sunday, I started eating extra Thursday morning. I tried to count the amount but a lot of items were not prepackaged so it was difficult to ascertain a number for each item. My estimates for each day:
Thursday: +500g
Friday: +509g
Saturday: +485g

Race Day

Weather

The weather was nice at start and still nice at finish time. It was a sunny day, but the cool temps helped keep it bearable in sunlight.
At start around 7:00am, the temp was 38F with 32F dew point.
At around 11:20am, the temp was 50F with 36F dew point.

Extra Stuff

As per usual, I was wearing my recording gear:

• GoPro Hero13 Black with Ultra Wide Lens Mod, Headstrap 2.0 and Contacto
• Anker Portable Charger

Arm Warmers:
The day before the race, noticing the cold weather, I purchased arm warmers at the Expo to wear during the race. It was my first time wearing arm warmers and I was glad I purchased them because I was cold, but I did not want to wear long sleeve shirt either. I had planed to remove the arm warmers if it got warm, but it was never warm enough for them to bother me.

Nutrition

Before the race started, I ate about a cup of crispy rice cereal which provided about 30g of carbs.

Carry:

• 1x Bonk Breaker Green Apple Energy Chews
• 3x Sport Beans(R) Jelly Beans Assorted Flavors
• 8x Mott’s(R) Assorted Fruit Flavored Snacks

On the course, I skipped the first few water stops but then did start visiting them a few times around mile 13. I skipped any food stations as usual though. I relied on the water stops for Gatorade to supplement the carb intake. I will have to look into other food options that don’t require chewing since at some points I did find it difficult to chew and swallow due to being tired. At one point I started choking a bit since I think it was accidentally going down the air pipe. Also, the cold temps made the gummies harden which contributed to the difficulty to chew. In the end, I still had 1/2 serving of Bonk Breaker and two unopened Motts. As with Milwaukee, I did not carry LMNT with me, but I did drink a packet of LMNT the day before.

Race

From my hotel, I walked to the start line very near by, about 1/5 mile away. I think I left my hotel around 6:10am and got to my C Corral at 6:18am.

I started the race at slightly above 9:00/mi. My heartrate stayed mostly steady throughout the race, since my goal was to keep a steady not-hard effort throughout the race. Although, there was a jump in heartrate early in the race so do not know if that was an issue with Garmin not accurately tracking the HR at the beginning. The only major expected shift was at the end of the race where I tried to sprint to the finish. Otherwise, if my heartrate went too high, I tried to slow down to bring it down.

Early on in the race, I felt the need to use the potty, but I held it since I didn’t feel it that urgent. I still tried to keep drinking water to prevent the same issue at Milwaukee of not enough water for too long. I did eventually stop at a potty around 12 mile. Thankfully there was no line, probably due to the generous amount of potties along the course.

As I checked my mile splits during the race, I thought in the back of my mind that a sub 4:00 marathon may be possible. But I expected to positive split the race which would have put me above 4:00. But I knew I would have massive PR regardless. Between 16 and 17 mile, my WorkOutDoors app crashed on my Apple Watch, but luckily my Garmin was still running so I relied on that to track when I should eat (since I go by time, not distance). I like the WorkOutDoors due it having both separate auto-split and manual-splits I can look at. I did restart WorkOutDoors when passing 17 mile.

As I passed 18 mile, I pondered if I would be able to continue the same pace to reach 4:00. I just kept pressing forward, but the splits I was getting was not looking great for maintaining 4:00 target. But I was not ready to resign and start walking. Finally after 22 mile and the beginning of the return trip, I decided to try harder. The split started to go down a bit. After 23 mile and looking at my elapsed time, I knew 4:00 was within reach. I pressed forward determined to make 4:00 happen. I noticed I passed quite a few people along the way, which helped the motivation. But the issue is the wind was blowing against me on the way back. I tried to find people to run behind to block the wind but it did not seem to help. And most people were shorter than me. I did stop at each water stop along the way to the finish to top off my sugar level with Gatorade to hopefully prevent falling apart. As I was closing on 26 mile, I was checking my watch and looking for the mile marker. I eventually saw it and knew it was time to let loose. I tried to pickup the pace to the finish. My right leg started to cramp a bit along the way but I was able to continue and claim my prize and a 20 minute PR improvement! I’ve never really cared much about targeting a sub 4 hour time, but now that I got it, I feel there is something special of now getting a “3” in front of my time instead of “4”.

Some other thoughts:

• I was concerned that I would get stopped on course at border crossing due to how much stuff I carry, such as the vest with water bottles and GoPro but I had asked the officer who were at the Expo and they said it was fine. And indeed it was no issue on race day. I did unfortunately pass by somebody that got stopped.
• Running into Canada was really fun and cool. The bridge view was spectacular! I was wondering how many people jokingly say they want asylum while running in Canada.
• The tunnel return was cool. Passing the labeled border was fun. But it is kind of warm down there. Exiting the tunnel with fresh air outside made it obvious how stuffy it is in the tunnel.
• I was wondering how people were calling out first timers. Forgot they got a green color bib to distinguish them.
• Several mile markers were misplaced based on being way off, like 0.2mi, compared to my watch GPS.
• The course had generous amount of water stops and potties.
• As with any race with multiple distances running concurrently, I was afraid I would miss the turn point or turn the wrong way, but it was clearly marked, even when it rejoined and resplit again.
• I stopped at a potty on the race course which added about 0:35 to my time.
• I made sure to drink more of my carried water to prevent digestive issues like what happened at Milwaukee.
• My knee started to hurt around 10 mile and would go away and return periodically.
• I saw somebody who was wearing the same running vest make/model as me and had to give them a compliment on their fine choice.
• Our names were printed on the bibs so spectators could shout it out. It was motivating to hear my name, along with the usual comment about the camera on my head.
• The neighborhood portion of the route has many speed bumps but you can weave into the gaps some had to not have to go over the bump.
• During the sprint to the finish, my right leg started cramping.