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Do You Want to Run a Marathon?  ---  Jeff Weiss – Marathon Build Up (MBU) Program Director

The Badgerland Striders have a program that helps you train for a marathon. The Marathon Build Up program brings a large group together every Saturday all summer and helps you to run your long run with support. The program is 14 weeks long from the end of June through the end of September. This is perfect timing for Our Marathon, the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon. There is no requirement that you must run our marathon and with a slight modification the program can easily be tailored to another fall marathon.

The program meets every Saturday except for weekends where the program is interrupted by our Cudahy Classic event and the Strider Estabrook Half Marathon. Program participants are encouraged to run the 10 Mile distance at Cudahy and the Half Marathon distance at the second event. These distances fit handily into the mileage chart for your training.

The program provides Aid Stations approximately every 3 miles manned by beautiful volunteers providing Gatorade and Water and GUs for longer runs.  The Start and Finish varies each week in various Milwaukee County Parks thus providing you with some varied scenery along your routes.

The finish has refreshments including Gatorade, Water, Fruit, Snacks and Watermelon. Other refreshments and foods are supplied sometimes on special occasions.

And!  The program is free!  

 

History:

The Marathon Build Up program began before the birth of the Lakefront Marathon. As far as I can tell it began in March of 1978 as a precursor to the Mayfair Marathon, which was our marathon before the Lakefront. The Mayfair Marathon took place in May. 

It was simpler then. They just set out water for the runners along the course and the course was the same every week, just longer. The program was 12 weeks long and the maximum distance was 18 miles. The maximum distance now is 22 miles, and we have to hold runs in different places depending upon where we can get permits from the Parks Department and, of course, to vary your scenery on the run.

https://milwaukeelakefrontmarathon.org/

We need plenty of volunteers for setting up and staffing aid stations, consider signing up to help!

Marathon Build Up Volunteer Signup

Build Up Run schedules are also on the Badgerland Strider Facebook Page.

Program Coordinator Information

Jeff Weiss

Email: runnerjeff@outlook.com