Having run both the Toronto Waterfront Marathon and the Toronto Marathon (half-marathon), I have plenty of opinions to share but I'll try to keep it succinct.
- The Toronto Marathon may have come first and possess a heart-warming mandate of being "grassroots" but the Toronto Waterfront Marathon is just a more exciting event. There is nothing exclusionary about the Toronto Waterfront Marathon hosting elite runners; if anything, seeing the elites fly by is motivational for tortoises like me.
- The Toronto Waterfront Marathon is better situated on the calendar. In the years that I have run the event, late September has consistently offered perfect racing weather. In contrast, I have been deterred from running The Toronto Marathon due to its October timing, and the two times that I have run the event, I struggled with the freezing temperatures.
- I would love for Toronto to continue hosting two marathons, with the Toronto Marathon moving to the spring, but if I had to choose one, my past actions make the decision easy: my money has gone repeatedly towards registering for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.
2 comments:
Well, you know that we can only settle this one way... each marathon organization chooses a champion and they will compete. The fastest runner wins the right to be the only marathon in town.
I've never run the Toronto, but I did the Waterfront half this year and I thought it was an awesome event. It was well organized and seeing the elite athletes fly by was so inspiring. I think drivers should stop complaining about two Sundays of road closures and we should keep both, but failing that I vote Waterfront too.
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