God no please. Streets are made for cars! If you want to exercise go to the gym.

Yeah, fuck people who would rather be outside, breathing fresh air and getting that sweet, sweet vitamin d. Amirite??

/s in case that wasn’t clear.

Streets are for pedestrians and cars, we all pay taxes for the shit sooo

Up until Covid, Worcester had half Marathons, I ran it a few times. I hope it comes back next year.

Ok guess we should cancel all marathons in all cities since they take place on roads

There was a Worcester Running Festival that had a half marathon. Not sure why they stopped doing it.

We should start a Worcester Reddit Run Marathon

Many of them were originally made for horses

We should have a marathon at this point. We have the infrastructure for it. I've seen way crappier cities put on marathons.

Great idea!

Sidewalks are for pedestrians

Putting on an urban marathon is expensive due to street closures, plus police and ambulance costs. The surrounding towns could easily support longer races, though. I've run Stu's run, a 30K that goes around the Wachusett Reservoir. It goes through West Boylston. The nearest half marathon I can think of is in Upton. Marathons are further away

Maybe cause Hopkinton is like 10 miles from woo…

Doesn't stop Lowell

Shut up

I agree, we should take half the space currently allocated to car traffic and turn it into sidewalks.

Until then, however, we should live up to the "sidewalks are for pedestrians" idea. DPW should tow cars that are parked on the sidewalks, every block of road/street in the city should have sidewalks on both sides that are wide enough for two wheelchairs going in opposite directions to pass without leaving the sidewalk, and there should be strict limits on the number of curb cuts in commercial areas to ensure that people using the sidewalk are safe.

Honestly this city is just not built for marathons. Even Boston with all it's craziness makes it work. Worcester just can't do it, the infrastructure is too fucked and the psycho drivers would kill us all before seeing their commute momentarily inconvenienced.

Because Worcester. Fucking. Sucks. Period.

I think it stopped for COVID and no one has been motivated enough to start it back up

Tell me more about Stu's. How bad is it with active traffic? I've always avoided running on country roads like that with no sidewalks but that loop sounds awesome.

It's a great race. It's on a Sunday, so traffic is light to begin with and most of the roads aren't busy at all. It's a little congested as you approach the finish in Clinton, but there's good traffic control and it didn't bother me

I think sneakerama has a group that runs 5k's like once a week maybe you can start there and start a community to organize for a larger race.

The Boston Marathon isn't really available to most runners, given the requirement to qualify or raise enough money. There are marathons in Lowell. Providence, Holyoke, Lincoln RI, Nashua, among others.

Don’t f up the traffic God

Too many Hills 😉

Not to mention some killer hills.

It takes so much time and money to put on a race like a half. I think if the profit margins were there we would see it come back. 5Ks are so much easier because it’s a lower barrier to entry (bigger pool of runners to pull from) and cheaper (less $$ spent on road closures and police details).