BestRacesEditor’s note, September 2, 2026: The 39 verified founding years below are unchanged. Since this was published we have also begun reading a founding year from a race’s own name — a “38th Annual” is the race stating how many times it has been run — which now dates 685 more races. Those are derived, not verified, and rank on a separate longest-running list rather than here; the methodology has the distinction.
Editor’s note, September 23, 2026: The 19 races below are unchanged, and so are the 39 verified founding years. The index they were drawn from has grown from 4,870 races to 7,000, and 105 races now carry a founding year we have verified or researched, 31 of them from before 1980. On September 22 we found that RunSignup’s race search returns races in alphabetical order and stops at 5,000 results, so every race we had ever synced was named with a number or a letter from A to F. Searching state by state found 16,101 upcoming US races; the index now holds 7,000, the most our hosting can serve.
History is 20% of a BestRaces composite score. It’s the smallest of our four components, and the only one a race cannot buy, market, or hire its way into. You either started early or you didn’t.
Of the 4,870 races in the index, 39 carry a verified founding year. Nineteen of those predate 1980. Here they are, oldest first:
| Founded | Race | Location | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1897 | Boston Marathon | Boston, MA | 93.3 |
| 1905 | Dipsea Race | Mill Valley, CA | 68.6 |
| 1912 | Bay to Breakers | San Francisco, CA | 83.3 |
| 1963 | JFK 50 Mile | Boonsboro, MD | 65.2 |
| 1970 | New York City Marathon | New York, NY | 100 |
| 1970 | Peachtree Road Race | Atlanta, GA | 79.7 |
| 1972 | Houston Marathon | Houston, TX | 80.5 |
| 1973 | Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run | Washington, DC | 81.8 |
| 1973 | Falmouth Road Race | Falmouth, MA | 80.7 |
| 1974 | Western States 100 | Olympic Valley, CA | 72.2 |
| 1976 | Marine Corps Marathon | Arlington, VA | 90.8 |
| 1977 | Chicago Marathon | Chicago, IL | 94.5 |
| 1977 | Grandma’s Marathon | Duluth, MN | 87.1 |
| 1977 | Indy Mini-Marathon | Indianapolis, IN | 71.8 |
| 1977 | Lilac Bloomsday Run | Spokane, WA | 78.2 |
| 1978 | Richmond Marathon | Richmond, VA | 80.7 |
| 1978 | Gate River Run 15K | Jacksonville, FL | 75.4 |
| 1979 | Bolder Boulder 10K | Boulder, CO | 83.7 |
| 1979 | Crescent City Classic 10K | New Orleans, LA | 76.0 |
Three things the numbers show
The 1970s did all the work. Sixteen of the nineteen were founded between 1970 and 1979. Before that, the list is nearly empty: Boston in 1897, the Dipsea in 1905, Bay to Breakers in 1912, then a 51-year gap to the JFK 50 in 1963. American road racing took off in a single decade of detonation, and the races that caught that wave are still the ones you can’t get into without a lottery.
Old and huge are the same list. The four largest fields in the index all belong to pre-1980 races: New York City (59,000), Chicago and Bolder Boulder (54,000 each), and Peachtree (50,000). Half a century of compounding word of mouth turns out to be the most reliable marketing budget in the sport.
History alone won’t top a ranking. The Dipsea is the second-oldest race we track and scores 68.6, which puts it third on our trail rankings, behind two races founded decades later. It maxes the history component and gives most of it back on field size and credentials. Meanwhile New York, founded 73 years after Boston, is the only race in the index scoring a perfect 100. Longevity helps a score, but it can’t carry a race to the top by itself.
What the old guard actually shares
Look at the character scores and a pattern shows up that has nothing to do with distance. Eight of these nineteen max the character component at 100: New York, Bay to Breakers, Cherry Blossom, Falmouth, Western States, Marine Corps, Grandma’s, and Bolder Boulder. Every one of them is inseparable from a place: five boroughs, a costumed run to the Pacific, cherry blossoms on the Tidal Basin, a Cape Cod summer, a Sierra crossing, the Marine Corps, Lake Superior, Memorial Day in Boulder.
The survivorship lesson is that the races that lasted were the ones a city would have noticed the absence of, whether or not they were the fastest or the flattest.
Full scorecards covering field, history, credentials and character are public for every race above on the marathon and 10K rankings. Founding years for the other 4,831 races are still being verified; when they land, this list gets longer.