The 49th edition of the Amway River Bank Run rolls out of downtown Grand Rapids on Saturday morning with one of the busiest USATF national championship fields in years. The Michigan race has hosted the USA 25 km Open Championships every year since 1995, and 2026 brings record participation, a deep men's and women's elite line-up, and the promise of fast times on the certified loop course that has produced the American 25K record at three of the last five renewals.
Organisers expect more than 10,000 finishers across the 25K, 10K, 5K, and walk distances, with a separate elite wave for the championship women setting off at 8:20:15 to give the leaders a clean course. The full-strength championship men start with the elite invitational pack at 8:30, all of them chasing prize money, USATF Running Circuit points, and a top placing on a route that begins downtown on Ottawa Avenue, traces the Grand River out toward Millennium Park, and finishes back on Monroe Avenue at Lyon Street.
Casey Clinger arrives as the defending champion and as holder of the men's 25K American and course records of 1:12:15 set in 2025, while Carrie Ellwood lines up to defend the women's-only American 25K record of 1:22:24 she ran on the same loop a year ago. Both have used the spring marathon block as preparation rather than as a peak, and both have pencilled the 25K championships in as a sharpener heading into the summer track season and a build toward an autumn marathon. The depth around them is the strongest in several years, with US 5,000m and 10,000m qualifiers using the race to test their road fitness ahead of the Olympic Trials build.
The wheelchair division remains a unique selling point: the River Bank Run offers the only 25K wheelchair race anywhere in the world, and the only 25K handcycle division too. That has historically attracted Paralympic-class fields from across North America, with Susannah Scaroni and Aaron Pike both regular fixtures on the entry list. Saturday's forecast of cool, dry conditions through downtown Grand Rapids should suit the wheelchair pace as well as the foot races, with morning temperatures in the low 50s Fahrenheit at the gun.
Beyond the championship racing, the weekend matters as a community marker. The River Bank Run has positioned itself as one of the largest 25K events in the world and has steadily reinvested in the city's youth programmes through its grant fund. With Fifth Third Bank locking in its long-term sponsorship through the 50th anniversary in 2027 and Corewell Health joining as official health partner, organisers say Saturday's event has already sold out the elite invitational pots and crossed last year's overall participation tally three weeks before the gun. Coverage is live on USATF.TV from 8:15am Eastern.