What is the hardest/hilliest marathon of a major US city

Knoxville Covenant Marston in Tennessee. Starts uphill and gets worse at mile seven Nolte rd is so steep it has volunteer hill helpers to cheer and motivate you to get up it. It sucks but I keep coming back.

Country Music marathon is the big race in Nashville. That race only exists for people who want a tough race or don't want to travel to a race.

What does OP mean by "hardest"?

Hardest to win? Surely Boston

Hardest to finish? Something down south during the summer with a shorter cutoff time

Hardest to PR? Going to depend on a lot of individual things, but mainly a combo of weather, terrain, and pre-race BS. A lot of big city marathons have shuttles to the start and hours long waits in corrals. Not a great way to maximize performance.

Raleigh's marathon (city of oaks) is showing > 1900ft of elevation gain on Strava. Have always figured it's got to be one of the harder marathons given the terrain it covers - it has some serious climbs throughout the course.

Yonkers Marathon, just to the north of New York City.

Especially the original course.

I think the New York City Marathon is the biggest in that metro (50,000 finishers vs. 100).

Findmymarathon.com shows about 1200ft for that course. Strava elevation figures are sometimes a little screwy because they use people's windy GPS paths instead of following the actual route, and that adds lots of ups and downs that don't actually exist. Look at how jagged the Strava profile is, I'm sure in reality there are some parts of that course that are flat or at least a smooth grade.

Case in point: Strava has four different segments for the full San Francisco marathon, with elevation gains ranging from 1,335 to 2,756 feet.

Colorado Springs Marathon has a big chunk of climb...has to be over 1000 ft. ....and on gravel and at 6000ft elevation approx...

Go for the running career. As long as you understand that you won’t make any money from running.

ChatGPT apparently can't tell the difference between a marathon and a half marathon.

I ran this as my first marathon back in 2021. Strava had it at about 1150 elevation gain. The earlier description is accurate. Some decent hills early on with a decline at mile 10 that will destroy your quads. Coming back to that hill at mile 20 or so is brutal going up. Greenway description is pretty accurate, a lot of twists, turns and bumps for a bit.

Cincinnati's hills are brutal. There are both rolling hills and then just straight, steep hills coming up from the river. Have not done the Flying Pig, but some of my running friends have and they concur. I ran the Heart Mini 15k in March and my Garmin has 692 ft of elevation gain for a 15k and a random 150 ft climb about two-thirds of the way through that destroyed me. I don't think the Garmin properly accounts for some bridges, per usual, but the race made my quads a bit tender, nonetheless.

The Seattle course changes every year because the city provides zero support to road racing on its streets.

I ran the half in 2017, and according to my Strava, the *half* had more than 1000 feet of elevation gain. The full had roughly twice that - around 2000 ft of gain. Definitely harder than SF.

However, other years it has had less gain. It's always hilly, though, and often rainy and/or windy.

The Yonkers Marathon has to rank up there as being one of the hilliest.

Vancouver Marathon isn't in the US, but it has a gain of ~400 m, or 1312 ft. The course is net downhill but I don't think that helps too much. The net downhill is right at the beginning, so of little use. The winning times are usually quite slow even though the fields are decent and the weather is not usually very hot in May. The course records are 2:15 (Kawauchi) and 2:34 (Pidhoresky).

I have never raced it but I used to do the non-downtown (where all the elevation is) part as my long run workout loop, so can confirm it's legit. The Camosun St hill climb is particularly nasty.

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Scratch the Riverside-San Bernardino Mission Inn Run. from the list It's always been a half marathon.

Def agree with this. I did the relay the last year they had it I was 15 I think. Satyr hill is no joke lol. I looked it up after reading this 90-100 meters of gain in a mile from 18 to 19 oof. Hard enough for me at end of 10k I dont want to think about the full. Plus uphill first 7 and all the hills in the reservoir area.

I always post about Gary Bjorklund running 213? on that course at a time when the WR was like 210 truly incredible. Also fun fact the Maryland marathon was bigger than NYC until like 1977 or so. Then the two races took different paths sigh.