The Around the Bay Road Race officials have announced that the 30K route will be altered for the March 30, 2014 event to avoid the train delays that affected the race this year.

The 30K route begins in downtown Hamilton, Ont. and crosses a bridge over the Hamilton Harbour into Burlington, Ont., where it winds up and down some hills before looping back into Hamilton for a dramatic finish inside Copps Coliseum.

The route change only involves the first 10K of the race, and the new course is actually just a reversion back to a previous route along Burlington St. See a map of the adjusted route HERE.

Related Link:

https://runningmagazine.ca/sections/news/train-delays-marathon-leaders/

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The historic 30K, first run in 1894, is the oldest continuously running road race in North America, and in recent years has adopted the tagline “Older Than Boston.”

Both Around the Bay and the Boston Marathon have a long history of occasional train tie-ups. In 2009, a rumbling freight train interrupted Around the Bay at the 13K mark, creating a traffic jam of runners and took about 10 minutes to pass.

In one of the most famous train delays that had the potential to affect Canadian marathoning history, Canada’s Tom Longboat was among the 10 frontrunners in the 1907 Boston Marathon who crossed the train tracks in South Framingham before the gates went down to close off the road to the 114 other runners in the race. Longboat went on to win, but runner-up Robert Fowler, who finished 3 minutes behind Longboat, complained bitterly afterward that he wasted a good two minutes waiting for the train.