I ran this race in fall of 2006. My wife, our 3 daughters, and our 2 son-in-laws all went out there together. Marathon is a little town about 30 miles east of Alpine. Alpine is about 100 miles north of the Big Bend State Park in far West Texas. We stayed in Alpine at the Holland Hotel. It was great! It was decorated in 1920s style and had a great German Restaurant inside. The race organizers put on a really good pasta dinner the night before the race in Marathon,at the race headquarters. The morning of the race, we only had to drive about 4 miles to the starting line. It wasn't a big race, there were only about 45 marathon starters. The race itself was pretty hard. 26.2 miles straight down the side of a 2 lane highway! The surrounding mountain scenes were nice though. The finish in front of the Gage Hotel in Marathon was well done. My son-in-law, Brian, ran the marathon with me and my wife and 3 daughters all ran the 10K event. Our other son-in-law, Jessie, drove our Tahoe over to Marathon and was waiting for us at the finish. The best part of the whole race weekend was the post-race awards party back in Marathon Saturday night. They brought in a Tejano band from Terlingua to perform. My wife and daughters loved it! Dancing under the stars! The next day, we left Alpine, drove through Fort Davis and went up to the McDonald Observatory. This made for an interesting side trip. All in all, I thought it was a good, unique race and a fun family trip. You should try it!
