Running News Daily

Bend Marathon has been cancelled for the second consecutive year

Of all the sporting events that have been canceled over the past year in Central Oregon, perhaps none has endured worse luck than the Bend Marathon.

The event — which was scheduled for April 18 and includes a marathon, half marathon, 10-kilometer, and 5K race on roads and paved trails throughout Bend — has been canceled for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the first major events to be canceled in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, the sixth edition of the in-person Bend Marathon will now be pushed back to 2022.

At last week’s Bend City Council meeting, councilors were unable to come to an agreement on issuing the Bend Marathon a special event permit.

Of all the sporting events that have been cancelled over the past year in Central Oregon, perhaps none has endured worse luck than the Bend Marathon.

The event — which was scheduled for April 18 and includes a marathon, half marathon, 10-kilometer, and 5K race on roads and paved trails throughout Bend — has been canceled for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the first major events to be canceled in 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, the sixth edition of the in-person Bend Marathon will now be pushed back to 2022.

At last week’s Bend City Council meeting, councilors were unable to come to an agreement on issuing the Bend Marathon a special event permit.

Marathon organizers Max King and Kari Strang had submitted a proposal that featured several safety protocols, including wave starts of no more than 75 runners, which would adhere to state and county guidelines for outdoor gatherings.

“They didn’t want to risk it,” a disappointed King said. “The spirit of the guidelines are that you don’t get that many people together, and we weren’t getting that many people together.”

King said he was expecting a total of about 900 runners across the four races. About 600 had registered before the event was canceled. In 2019 more than 2,400 runners and walkers participated in the Bend Marathon’s events.

The Bend Marathon course was to feature Bend parks, neighborhoods and the new paved trail through the Deschutes National Forest (paralleling the Cascade Lakes Highway).

King called it bad timing for the popular event.

“We obviously don’t want to spread the disease, and that is what people are risk adverse to,” King said. “When we look at other things that are already happening in the community, such as Mt. Bachelor, restaurants and retail being open, and the lack of spread in outdoor events and the risk being really, really low, I don’t agree with where they’re coming from.”

King and Strang were also planning to decrease aid stations, require masks at the start and finish, and not allow spectators.

The 2021 Bend Marathon will still offer a virtual option, as it did last year. Participants can run their distance wherever and however they want from April 12 to May 25, and then upload their finishing time to bend-marathon.com.

“We want to hype it up and make it fun for people,” King said. “We don’t want it to be just an afterthought. We’ll do some fun events around the race time and some fun videos about training.”

And for now, the plan is certainly for an in-person Bend Marathon in 2022.