Garden of Life Palm Beach Marathon Review

I just finished the Palm Beach Marathon in West Palm Beach, Florida. After qualifying for the Boston Marathon, but not making the cut off this year (needed to be almost 8 minutes under qualifying time!!), I decided to push through and register for the Garden of Life Marathon.

The Garden of Life Palm Beach Marathon is held in the middle of December, meaning that the temperature is still warm but not super hot. It is a flat race with a half marathon and marathon starting at the same time. They also have a 10k run the day beforehand, so many options for a variety of runners. 2024 was the largest showing, but it was still a pretty small race IMO with only about 5,000 runners total (1,200 marathoners).

Race conditions vary and unfortunately this year the weather was not on our side. Leading up to the race, it was beautiful out but closer to the race day, the wind and rain picked up. Right before the race, the skies opened and drenched all the runners. Like Florida weather, the rain came in and left just as quickly. However, it left our shoes just enough soaked to be a nuance.

The rain wasn’t the worst of the weather, it was the WIND. And holy moly, the wind could blow! There was a king tide that came in, so the course was rerouted to avoid a flooded area. However, the reroute lead us into part of downtown, between buildings, and a total head wind that made me run almost backwards! It was a little intense! The temperature was in the upper 60’s and finished in the 70’s which is pretty warm but great in my opinion.

Even though the weather was less than ideal, the course was great! There were a crowd of people in the middle of the course, which also served as the start and finish line. Starting in the middle, we ran north along the shoreline and circled around. Being a smaller race, there were not many spectators (other than in the middle) which isn’t ideal but okay. The course was stocked with water stations which was amazing and allowed a sense of spectators. In hindsight, I should have brought a bottle of electrolytes with me to replace all the salt I lost as they only had Powerade and I needed some more sodium.

The half marathon course ended and the marathoners knew they had to do another lap. After running a marathon that was a mile repeat, this felt amazing to me! I love knowing where I needed to run and what was coming next. At mile 18, I started feeling it and unfortunately I did not push myself. I was on track to qualify again for Boston, but felt discouraged by the lack of training and decided to make it a fun race. I saw many people struggling at this point, walking, and even the pacer ended up cramping and being treated by medics! I knew there were two ways to go, but I got nervous and decided to enjoy the rest of the race (hindsight is always 20/20).

I finished the race with a smile on my face and quickly met up with my sister and mom. My sister was amazing and ran part of mile 25 with me, which was super sweet and fun!! Following the race, they served water and pancakes with sausage. I really needed something bland like pretzels or chips with salt but they only served pancakes and sausage, not very ideal after running 26.2 miles. I am not sure if the half marathoners ate the other food or what, but next time I will be sure to pack a post race banana and pretzel bag!

Overall, it was a nice race. I loved the loop of two and the flat course. The weather was less than ideal and a headwind for half of the race made it very hard to PR. The water stops were great, but I needed to pack extra electrolytes at the end to combat the sweat loss from all the heat. Also, post race snacks are a must! If you decide to run the Palm Beach Marathon, please note that there aren’t a ton of spectators so you will need to bring your own cheering squad or just plan on motivating yourself 🙂 Overall, I would do the race again and just pray for better weather conditions!

Also a few notable things: Their swag at the expo is amazing, you get 5-6 containers of Garden of Life vitamins/supplements, they give you professional pictures for free and getting to the start/parking is super easy!

For those wondering, I completed the race in 3:36:19. Pretty cool 🙂