Your comprehensive race day forecasting
First and foremost, congratulations to all runners who happened to run Twin Cities and Chicago. Chicago had more rain than I expected but overall, both races had excellent running conditions. Okay, onto the two biggest Michigan fall marathons, Detroit and Chicago!
Let's look at Detroit first. The course itself is set up in a strange fashion, not north/south/east/west, and that's because of Detroit position on the Detroit river, placing the course in a mostly ENE to WSW position, out and back. Wind and temperature won't make much of a difference from miles 7 to 8 under the tunnel, but when there's wind, it will affect you most of all on the bridge and on Belle Isle, miles 19 to 23, approximately. https://www.freepmarathon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MarathonMap-Final-9-27-18.pdf So setting up for race day, forecast models are predicting winds out of the NW from 5 to 10mph. This will affect you most of all from 22 to 23, so once you turn left from 23, you're going to be mostly in the clear with the exception of a cross wind. In fact, there will be cross winds throughout most of the race. Some will push you along, like when you're in Canada, and some will be slightly a headwind, such as the final 23 to 26.2. Temperature look ideal in the mid to upper 40s, with partly cloud skies. Now only Grand Rapids. The strength, and maybe weakness of this race is that there's never a lot of wind. That's because for most of the miles, you're running in the trees. Grand Rapids is mostly a northeast to southeast to northeast course (http://grandrapidsmarathon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Course-Map.png) so on a colder day, you will find some headwinds in the final 3 miles when you're out in the middle of a meadow and heading into the city. While that's not great for post-wall running, the good news is that a north wind will help keep temperatures low. I'm looking at the lower to middle 40s with NNW winds at 5 to 10 mph. I might actually run this race, so say hi to your favorite weather man if you see me on the course! Look here for any updates to the forecast - if things don't change, this is your final forecast!
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Chris Rozoff and Jesse Sweeney, content contributors.Chris is the expert meteorologist and MVP. Jesse is someone who watched the weather channel a lot as a child and breaks it down for the masses. Chris runs ultras. Jesse runs road and ultras. Archives
April 2019
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