VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Thousand of runners hit the boardwalk Sunday morning for the 50th Yuengling Shamrock Marathon.
Runner Cathleen Brown said the weather couldn’t have been more perfect.
“It was great!” Brown said. “I’m from New England, I’m in the middle of relocating, so to run a race in March in a tank and shorts and sun is a pretty special thing for me.”
Sunday morning was the grand finale of the three-day event. The final races, the full and half marathons kicked off at 7:30 a.m.
“Right after the pandemic to have something normal and it was just so much fun,” marathoner Michelle Shearon said. “And it’s my birthday! So it’s a fun one!”
This is the first Shamrock Marathon for father and son team, Joe and Joe Terranova.
“We tried doing it in 2020 when I first moved here,” Terranova said. “He came down all the way down from Boston, but it got cancelled because of COVID. So finally got to it, two years later.”
Last year, pandemic restrictions forced organizers to scale back the race to a much smaller, timed event. In 2020, the event was cancelled entirely.
This year there were more than 20,000 registered runners, which is a big spike compared to last year’s 4,500.