We have some exciting announcements to share with you today.
Rotating Schedule & Extended Calendar
First, you may have read our announcement a few weeks ago that we won’t be holding certain events in 2018. Well, we’re excited to share the rest of the story with you. We have a fantastic collection of events and incredibly loyal runners. We’re so grateful that you choose to run with us.
Some runners like consistency and running their favorite events year after year. Others run each race once with a goal of running the whole series. Either way you do it is perfectly okay with us. What we’re finding (after being in this business going on 7 years!) is that some locations probably don’t merit having a race every single year. If you ran the Grand Canyon Half Marathon last year you might prefer to try the Lake Powell Half Marathon this year and maybe the Zion Half Marathon next year.
So, to support that, we’re moving some of our races to a rotating schedule. Some will take place one year, others will take place the next. We’ll still make Doubles and Triples available, but we will change up how those will work.
Because of the new rotating schedule, we are doing something else we’ve never done before. We are publishing our extended race calendar through 2020! We know that planning your race calendar can be tricky and we want to make it easier for you. This extended calendar provides a longer look into the future so you’ll have more info available to help with your planning.
Understand, that this overall calendar is subject to change, but this should help you better plan for the future.
New Logo/Medal Designs
We’re also really excited to announce that we’re going to begin rotating our medal designs! Beginning in 2018, if you run a half marathon that you have run before, you will get a totally new medal design. It’s a little reward for anyone that run the same race multiple times. Why should you go home with the same medal every year?! The designs will showcase different icons at each park, so you can collect all of them. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the designs.
2019 Race Dates
Finally, we have some of our early race dates for 2019 ready to go.
- The 2019 Zion Half Marathon will be moved to its new permanent home on the last Saturday of February. We will be back to running our original course (Virgin to Springdale on Highway 9). We will open registration on May 18th. Because of the park’s 100 birthday we think the race will sell out quickly.
- The 2019 Antelope Canyon Ultras will be held March 9-10 in an effort to find slightly warmer temperatures. Registration will open May 25th for all 4 distances (100 mile, 50 mile, 55k and half marathon).
We will have the rest of the calendar published early this summer.
Thank you so much for running with us. We hope you’re as excited about the extended calendar and medal designs as we are.
UPDATE: We did a Facebook Live stream to address questions, comments, and concerns. Watch the video below for some additional information.
We look forward to seeing everyone at the races this season (and next season, and the one after that). :)
Do we know a race date for the Grand Canyon Half in 2019, yet? Like which Saturday?
Hi Brad – Details for the 2019 race are still being nailed down but the date and registration announcement will be soon! Keep an eye on our Facebook page, Grand Canyon Half Maratho, and/or sign up for update emails here:
https://www.vacationraces.com/email-management/
Hello!
What is the date for the 2019 Grand Canyon half?
When will registration for the Grand Canyon half open…
We loved the Grand Teton half in 2016!
Well done!
Thank you for always paving new trails for us🏃🏻♀️
Hi Tricia – The Grand Canyon Half will be held in October but we haven’t released the exact date yet, but it will most likely be either October 12th or 19th. Registration will open in the fall.
Here. It said most likely oct 12 or 17th weekend. I’m sooo bummed it’s in June.
Hi Christina – Aw, yes. We had to play with the date a bit to get it to work and June is going to be the best time for it. Sorry it doesn’t work out for you!
I’m not too happy about all the changes to the logos. Having run four of your events I set a goal to get out and run all of the races to collect the awesome medals. But you keep changing the designs! The 2018 Great Smoky Mountain Half is much better than the 2019 design. The 2018 Glacier is much better than the 2019 as well. I don’t understand the need to change things up all the time and think I will probably abandon my goal of running all of your half marathons. You put on great events but the changes just aren’t winning me over.
Hi Andrew, I’m sorry to hear you’re not a fan of the new designs. We’ve had the current designs since we opened the company and figured it was time to change things up a bit. I do believe the original designs will come back into rotation though so all is not lost. Hopefully that helps a bit.