Working Class Runner

Illness derailed my training for the 2024 Vancouver Marathon, which led me to drop down and run the race’s concurrent Half Marathon for the first time. I had a great time, not just because I only had to run 13 miles instead of 26, but because the race is run on a somewhat different course and provides a different and fun experience.

Run Van‘s Half is actually quite a bit more popular than the full marathon, drawing over 10,000 runners compared to the roughly 5,000 the full gets. This is consistent with most marathons that concurrently run a half with their full race.

I didn’t train for a peak performance and chose to just enjoy the run. Along the way, I took note of some items and have a few tips that may help you if you decide to run the half.

(It is worth noting that the City of Vancouver plans to replace the water supply infrastructure under Stanley Park over the next couple years, which could impact this race as the route travels past construction areas. The 2025 race appears to retain the same course, and it’s possible with contractors taking Sundays off that the sites may be quiet enough to allow running on the normal course. But I will keep an eye out and update this in case Run Van makes any changes.)

A very early start with cooler weather

While the marathon starts at 8:30am, the half marathon starts at 7:00am. This is because the half field is much larger and both races use the same start and finish lines, allowing the half runners to start and finish in time to clear out for the marathon start and finish.

In prior years for the marathon, I could take my time getting ready (I’m a very early riser in general) before heading over. But for this race I had to wake up early, quickly be ready to go and head over well before 6:00am. This time around I felt a bit rushed, giving me flashbacks to prep for my old Chicago races (many of which also started early).

Compounding this is there’s a lot more runners with the half, so the crowds making the mile long hike from the train stations are much larger, the lines at the toilets are much longer, and you’re wading through larger crowds to your starting corral.

I could get to Queen Elizabeth Park as late as 20-30 minutes before the full and comfortably get in, but here it was a good thing I got to the Park 40 minutes before. I ended up needing quite a bit of that time to get situated.

Another difference, because of the earlier start, is that the typically cool May weather is even cooler in the morning, probably even cold for many. Never mind if it’s drizzling or raining, which this year I believe it did a bit. You may want to bring a toss-able layer of clothing if you have trouble warming up in colder weather.

There’s more, tighter turns in this race… starting right away

The first tough turn in this course, right after the race begins with a gentle curve to the left, is where the half marathon course first diverges from the full… turning right at Cambie Street instead of the marathon’s left turn, only about 400 meters into the race.

Compounding this is the street angles: While the left turn to the southwest is a more gradual and gentle 45°, the right turn northeast is a sharper more consistent 90°, as Cambie only turns north after the intersection.

While a 90° turn is generally annoying but manageable, remember you’re taking this turn with a very large half marathon field that just started a race, most of which are going out fast and not in the mood to charitably give space to other runners when space is at a premium.

Once you make it around the starting line bend, you may want to quickly settle in with a suitably fast or slow pack of runners and take that first sharp right turn together as a group. Look to take it a bit wide rather than hug the corner, as the crowds will give you very little margin for error, and avoid any sudden moves until you’re through the turn and heading north on Cambie.

Well… north, and downhill. Quite a bit downhill.

A non-running street view of northbound Cambie Street at W 29th where the half marathon first turns north. Notice you can’t see the bottoms of the buildings on the horizon. You have to descend that far along this roadway.

Cambie Street’s Boston-like opening descent

Those who have run the Boston Marathon can tell you about the downhill start of the race, which compounds the runner’s tendency to go out too fast or hard by pounding your quads even more into putty before the last 25 miles of that race.

While you’re only running half the marathon’s distance, your race will also start with a similar substantial downhill. Cambie Street takes you north towards False Creek, requiring a substantial 3km of descent from Queen Elizabeth Park’s higher ground towards sea level.

Yes, the full marathon also has substantial descents in the 1st half of that race. But opening the race with this descent on Cambie compounds the problem of runners going out too hard. If your quads take too much of a pounding before you cross False Creek, the rest of your race may be doomed before you know it.

Once you begin the descent on Cambie, settle into a pace that seems easier and maybe even slower than you instinctively feel you should be taking on a downhill like this.

Unlike the start and the first big turn, now it’s a better idea to filter towards one of the edges of the course, and let others charge past you if they want. You may very well be passing their tired, beaten legs in the last 5K, if not sooner.

Once you reach the Cambie bridge a bit after 3K and the course levels off a bit, you will want to to counter-intuitively stay towards the left of the course even though the course will veer right and turn south onto Quebec Street. The first fluid station will actually be on the left once you’re turned south onto Quebec Street towards Science World.

For reasons I’ll get into, I definitely recommend taking some fluid at this 1st fluid station if you otherwise wouldn’t. It’s early in the race, and aid stations after this are a more typical 3km apart. But upcoming parts of this race are going to be deceptively challenging, so topping off your hydration early is help you probably could use.

Once you get your fluid, once again you’ll want to settle in with a crowd and avoid making moves… because a few hundred meters after the fluid station you have to make a hard U turn onto northbound Quebec Street.

Run Van’s standard Vancouver Marathon start line photo is ironically from their half marathon.

10,000+ is a crowd

The biggest difference I noticed running the half from the full is that this half marathon crowd is so big it never really seems to thin out. It feels more like running a World Marathon Major where you’re always surrounded by other runners.

Be careful about surging to get past other runners, not so much because you risk running into others, but the extra effort to get some space might not do you much good most of the time. It seems once you surge past one or more runners, there’s another group of runners directly in your path. You’ll wear yourself out early trying to do it every time you get annoyed with a slower than desired group.

This is one half marathon where pacing yourself and settling in with others might be a good idea in general more often than not, simply because there’s so many runners around you from start to finish.

Millennium Gate in Chinatown. The uphill view is appropriate as that’s the direction the half marathon runs through the gate.

Climbing through Chinatown

About 6.5km in you make a sharp left off Columbia Street onto Pender Street in Chinatown, beginning the first of several smaller climbs. Speaking of Boston, the climb through Chinatown like Heartbreak Hill hitting you way too early.

This gradual climb while mild seems to hit harder than it should due to context: You just started the race with a substantial descent, so even running on flat ground can feel a bit tougher afterward. Add in any kind of hill climb, and part of you feels like you’re climbing stairs.

Like the Chicago Marathon, and most races that run through a Chinatown, there is typically a Chinatown band playing for you at some point in the neighborhood.

Enjoy it, but pay attention, because along with the deceptively challenging climb there’s another significant challenge on this course.

In the years since this colorful Hamilton Street photo was taken in Yaletown, they’ve taken out the power lines but they haven’t fixed the lumpy, uneven pavement.

Sorry! Uneven paved terrain!

Like most cities, Vancouver struggles with funding and scheduling road maintenance in the city core. It has clearly been a while since most roads in Chinatown and Yaletown have been re-paved. Unfortunately, you’re running on several of them.

These roads have their fair share of potholes, uneven cracks and repaved slabs, poorly aligned manhole covers, and so on. Plus, many of these roads have a pronounced camber, sloping side to side and further making your running surface uneven.

Avoid settling into auto-pilot from Chinatown to Yaletown, as you need to be alert for the uneven shifts in the surface you’re running on from here to Beach Avenue (still about 2-3km away).

Tight turns and tighter bottlenecks in Yaletown

Again, if you’re surrounded by runners through Chinatown, you will want to settle into pace with an appropriate crowd and ride the next section out, while treading carefully along the uneven pavement.

After turning left onto Homer Street, you’ll begin a bit of a downslope as you enter Yaletown, but the roads start to get progressively narrower and you’ll be making a few more tight turns on said roads. You may feel like an F1 driver in Monaco through much of Yaletown.

After a left on Nelson and a short right later on Hamilton Street, you reach the 8km mark and the road gets even more narrow, especially with the next fluid station a short time later.

If you have the ability to do so I’d run easy through the fluid station as you grab your cup, and worry about drinking after running a few more meters once the narrow road opens up a little bit. The next fluid station is at 10.5km, so if you feel confident you can handle 2km more without fluid you could just pass this fluid station and avoid some traffic.

Even though you’re confined to the right lane of the southern lanes, you have a lot more room to move on Pacific Street.

Wider open Pacific Blvd and Beach Avenue

A couple lengthy blocks later you dogleg left at Davie Street and immediately turn right onto thankfully wider Pacific Blvd. It will take a couple long blocks along Pacific before you approach the downhill descent beneath Granville to Beach Avenue (the same route the First Half takes to Stanley Park).

You should have a lot more room to move for the next 3-4km, so if you were patient to this point you can open things up a bit and pick up the pace a bit. Don’t overrun your game plan. Just now with room to move you can focus on running comfortably brisk.

Beach Avenue does roll down and uphill a bit as it gradually works toward Stanley Park, and again the 10.5km fluid station pops up around Broughton Street, a couple blocks before the road curves right around English Bay. Unlike the Marathon, you will not descend towards the seawall, staying instead on the road as it gently inclines around the beach and becomes Stanley Park Drive.

You will spend most of the rest of this race on the roads the cars use. Shortly after the next fluid station, you finally make a sharp right turn onto Lagoon Drive, get a lengthy relaxing run (well, as relaxing as this section of a half marathon can be) west of the Lost Lagoon before heading under Highway 99 to Pipeline Road.

Once you’re on Pipeline Road, you might wish you were in a car instead.

The southern end bottom of Pipeline Road in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. After 14km of running, this is not a particularly welcome sight for half marathoners.

Climbing the Pipeline Through Stanley Park

The most aggressive climb of the entire course comes just before the 15km point, as you head up Pipeline Road towards the north end of Stanley Park. This is complicated further once again by the crowds you’re running with, as you should still be surrounded by other (likely tiring) runners.

Eventually the climb peaks and Pipeline begins a gradual, very mild descent… one you may not notice due to fatigue by this point. You may notice the road narrowing a bit after a bit, and you will definitely notice the sharp hairpin turn right onto Stanley Park Drive, clearly marking the final segment of this entire course.

Half Marathon runners have a lot more space to share on Stanley Park Drive.

Stanley Park Drive: More trees, less sea, more space… less energy

From your turn onto Lagoon Drive until you finally split off Stanley Park Drive onto the seawall trail around 19K, you are surrounded by trees. The shade may or may not be welcome depending on how bright or covered the sun is on this day.

What you won’t get is much of a view of the sea, as you would during the end game of the full marathon… at least not before you join the seawall towards the end. Trees obscure much of the view on Stanley Park Drive, and they’ll obscure yours as well. You do get a shot of the Bay as you reach a sharp turn at the Brockton Point lighthouse (not as sharp as the turn onto Stanley Park Drive, but still sharp), plus the next fluid station.

Also, beware that Vancouver also hosts an 8K race with the Marathon that runs through this same park. The kilometer signs for the 8K are strewn along this portion of the route, and can be deceptive to half runners that encounter them. Since you’re now on the back half of your race, your kilometer markers should have two digits instead of one (e.g. 17K, not 4K).

At least (except for the sharp turn near the lighthouse) there is now an abundance of road space for everyone still struggling with you to spread out a bit. Certainly take advantage of it, and open things up however much you can with your pace.

I personally lost the pop in my legs after Brockton Point and could only focus on moving my feet as quickly as I could manage. While I admit I wasn’t in A-shape for this race, the varying, shifting challenges of the first 16K or so can clearly take their toll on you. By the time you make it over Pipeline Road, you might not have much of a rocket booster to take advantage of the gentle, gradual slope towards the cutoff to the seawall.

Once you’re near the Seawall, the rest of the half marathon course matches the full marathon’s finish, including the final fluid station after you reach the seawall trail. The rest of the course is the same deceptive, slight uphill incline as it winds around Denman Street onto Georgia Street, then veer onto the more obvious final stretch of Pender Street to the finish line.

While the Vancouver Marathon finish line can be busy, the Half Marathon finish is much more crowded and difficult to navigate out of.

The post-race crush

Remember I said this half marathon field is much larger than the full marathon field. In past years I remember a busy but fairly open finish line area I could freely walk through and exit with little trouble.

That is definitely not the case for the half marathon. After you receive your medal, and maybe take a victory photo, a bottlenecked crush of thousands more runners ahead slowly seeps past the food and drink tables, hairpin turning slowly around a questionably placed barricade, before turning towards the north and the only exit for everybody, spilling out into an equally overcrowded street festival that takes blocks of wading through to get to an exit.

Contrast this with the multiple corridors and exits the marathon finishers got in prior years. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this current setup (maybe security?) that I’m not aware of.

Run Van’s map of the Finish Line setup, useful for reference while reading the below tips.

Once you get to the Festival crowd, here’s a bunch of random post-race tips:

• If you want to get out of the area, you have to go east to at least Burrard Street. You could perhaps go north as well, depending on where you want to go. But the entire race course boxes in everything to the west (there is an ill-advised “crossing” at Jervis, which I would avoid as I notice it never works well), so exiting to the west will probably do you no good unless you happen to be staying on the waterfront in Coal Harbour.
• If you didn’t check any gear and no one is waiting for you in Runner Reunion to the east, I’d actually recommend going further north to Cordova to get out of the Festival, and then continue east.
• Gear Pickup for the Half is to the west, again the opposite way you probably want to go. A Change Tent is also this way. To avoid wading back through the crowd after picking up your gear or changing, I would recommend going further west, then turning right at Bute to get to Cordova Street and out of the festival.
• If you have a use for the Waterfront Skytrain or your hotel is closer to Canada Place, then I would exit to the north and go as far north as you can to head east.
• Don’t sit somewhere waiting for traffic to thin out. Remember that the marathon starts at 8:30, those runners start filtering in around 11:00, and more runners will cross that same finish line until about 3:00pm (15:00). Traffic is not thinning out any time soon. Just get out of the area as soon as is reasonable.
• In general, any nearby brunch spot is going to be packed, while most coffee spots that also do food might be more reasonable. If you want brunch I’d opt for a place focused on coffee, and I would try to get several blocks from the race course before seeking a place out.
• If you go down Burrard or Thurlow planning to head west, get at least as far south as Georgia Street before trying to turn west or you will run into course and spectator traffic, possibly also some angry motorists who don’t follow the local news.
• Oddly enough, some of the lesser trafficked food and drink spots post-race are in the West End (which the race course surrounds on three sides), due to marathon closures and traffic making it much harder for visitors to get there. They’re still busy, but getting a table isn’t hopeless. It’s one reason I generally like to get a hotel in the West End for race weekend.

I had a great time running the Half Marathon at the Vancouver Marathon this year. Because of the crowds and the early start, I’m not convinced I want to do it again more than the full Marathon. I had only done it as a fail-safe following my February illness and, while I liked how much more relaxed of a race prep I could have, I also find the race day experience for the full Marathon a lot more relaxed and to my speed… even if running the Marathon is a lot harder.

However, as evidenced by the crowds, a lot of people do want to run the Vancouver Marathon’s Half. I hope this guide is helpful to everyone who is interested in giving it a shot.