OTTAWA MARATHON HISTORY: 50 YEARS OF CANADA'S CAPITAL RACE
The Ottawa Marathon started on Sunday, May 25, 1975, with 146 runners on the start line at Carleton University. One hundred forty-three of them were men. Three were women. Fifty editions later, the race anchors the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend, the largest multi-race road event in Canada, drawing more than 40,000 participants across five distances.
The 1975 Founding
The inaugural Ottawa Marathon was a campus race in scope and resources. Carleton University hosted the start and finish. The course ran out and back through the city's central neighborhoods on roads that were not closed to traffic in the manner of modern marathons. The 146 starters represented one of the larger Canadian road race fields of the year, but the event remained, by any modern measure, a club race.
Growth came quickly. By 1976, the second edition drew 500 starters. By 1979, 2,932 runners crossed the start line, a 20-fold increase from the first year. The 1970s running boom that took hold in North America after Frank Shorter's 1972 Olympic marathon win and the publication of Jim Fixx's Complete Book of Running in 1977 fueled the same explosion in Ottawa as in marathons across the continent.
The Canadian Champions Era
Jacqueline Gareau, one of Canada's most accomplished marathoners and the eventual 1980 Boston Marathon women's champion, ran her first Ottawa Marathon in 1978, finishing second. She returned the following year and won, establishing a connection with the race that would last through her career. Her presence at Ottawa during her peak years gave the event a national profile during a period when Canadian marathoning was still finding its footing internationally.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the marathon's winners often included Canadian runners alongside the growing international entries. The race's qualifying status for Boston brought it onto the radar of Canadian and American age-group runners looking for a fast spring course. The flat profile through Ottawa's downtown corridors and along the Rideau Canal made it well suited to fast times.
The Race Weekend Format
A 10-kilometer distance was added to the program in 1986, expanding the event beyond the marathon. In 1998, the 5K and half-marathon distances joined, and Ottawa became the first running event in Canada to use chip timing for its full field. The 2K kids' distance was added in 1999. The format crystallized into the current Race Weekend structure: shorter distances on Saturday, the marathon and half marathon on Sunday.
The weekend approach, common at the time at Boston and emerging at Chicago and London, gave Ottawa a way to grow without lengthening the marathon course or compromising its qualifying credentials. By the early 2000s, the event drew tens of thousands of finishers across all distances combined, with the marathon itself remaining the centerpiece event but no longer the largest.
The International Elite Era
The 2000s brought sustained international elite recruitment. Kenyan and Ethiopian runners began winning the men's marathon regularly, and the women's race shifted similarly. The course produced increasingly fast times as elite preparation, pacing strategies, and shoe technology evolved through the decade and into the 2010s.
Andualem Shiferaw of Ethiopia holds the men's course record at 2:06:04. Gelete Burka of Ethiopia owns the women's course record at 2:22:17. Both records sit comfortably below the qualifying times for any global championship marathon and reflect the depth of the elite fields the race has drawn in recent years.
The 10K race has produced its own elite history. Deriba Merga of Ethiopia holds the men's 10K course record at 27:24, with Gladys Cherono of Kenya owning the women's record at 30:56. The 10K has functioned as both a competitive distance for elite runners and an entry point for first-time racers across the broader weekend program.
The Tamarack Era
Tamarack Developments Corporation, an Ottawa-based home builder, took on title sponsorship of the race weekend in 2012. The event became Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend under the partnership, with the marathon retaining its standalone Tamarack Ottawa Marathon name. The sponsor relationship has continued through the 2020s.
The 2014 edition marked the marathon's 40th anniversary. By that point the race weekend was the largest multi-race road event in Canada and a recognized international marathon. The half marathon, which started as an addition in 1998, had grown to rival the full marathon's participation by 2014.
The Pandemic and Return
The 2020 and 2021 editions were canceled or modified due to COVID-19, with the 2020 weekend running as a virtual race and the 2021 weekend held with reduced field sizes and modified protocols. The 2022 edition returned with substantially full fields, and the race resumed normal operations through the 2024 edition.
The 2025 edition celebrated 50 years of the Ottawa Marathon, with retrospective programming through the race weekend and acknowledgment of the original 1975 starters. Run Ottawa, the not-for-profit organization that manages the event, marked the milestone with an extensive memory project documenting decades of Canadian marathoning history through the race.
The Course
The Ottawa Marathon course is a flat loop that uses much of the city's downtown and the Rideau Canal corridor. Runners cross the Ottawa River on Pretoria Bridge, run alongside Dow's Lake and the Experimental Farm, and finish in the city center. The course holds World Athletics certification and serves as a Boston Marathon qualifying race for Canadian and international runners.
The combination of flat profile, May timing that typically produces cool conditions, and lack of significant climbs has made Ottawa one of the fastest marathons in North America. The course records by Shiferaw and Burka illustrate what is possible when conditions cooperate and elite fields commit to fast times.
Place in the Sport
The Ottawa Marathon occupies a specific role in North American marathoning. It is not a World Marathon Majors event, but it sits among the major non-Major marathons on the continent, alongside Twin Cities, Houston, and Grandma's. Its 50-year continuous history places it among the longest-running marathons in Canada and gives it a level of institutional memory that newer races cannot match.
The 2026 edition will be the 51st running. The race weekend continues to anchor late May in Ottawa, drawing runners from across Canada, the United States, and increasingly internationally. Its position as Canada's largest marathon weekend and its status as a Boston qualifier ensure it remains a target race for North American marathoners through the foreseeable future.