Race-day morning at the 28th Flying Pig Marathon arrives Sunday with the field staged on Pete Rose Way in downtown Cincinnati and the marathon and half marathon set off together at 6:30 am. Race weekend opened on Friday night with the 50 West Mile in Mariemont and rolled through Saturday's 10K and 5K, the Flying Piglet kids' race and the 26th Mile community event, before Saturday afternoon's expo at Duke Energy Convention Center wound down. By the time the runners assemble at the start, marathon weekend will already have moved more than thirty thousand bibs across the line. A four-person relay starts alongside the marathon, with marathon-distance handoffs at Eden Park, Hyde Park, Mariemont and the Otto Armleder transfer to bring fresh legs into the toughest sections of course.
The course remains the loop the Pig has carried for almost three decades. Runners head south across the Ohio River on the Taylor-Southgate Bridge into Newport, take the Roebling Suspension Bridge back across the river, climb Gilbert Avenue out of the basin, then turn into Eden Park and Hyde Park before heading east through the village of Mariemont and out as far as Fairfax. The descent from the Mariemont turn back toward Lunken Airport into Columbia Township is the section runners try to hold form on rather than chase down a personal best, with the course's last six miles paid for by an unforgiving climb out of the river valley. Cincinnati Parks have closed the riverside paths in Sawyer Point and Yeatman's Cove all weekend, and the Pittsburgh-style block-long start corral arrangement is being used again to space the field across five waves.
The race continues to operate as a fundraising vehicle as well as a marathon, with charity partners ranging from Project Purple's pancreatic-cancer programme to local children's hospitals and Cincinnati's homeless-services charities. Pig Works, the year-round arm that runs the marathon weekend, the Queen Bee Half in October, the TQL Beer Series and the FCC3 supporter race for Cincinnati's MLS club, has pulled record sponsorship across the weekend and confirmed all four marathon medals as part of the rotating "Run a Pig, Get a Pig" series, with the 28th edition's medal completing the second full set. Runners who collect every medal in the four-year run unlock a bonus piece, and the 28th-edition piece released today is the third in the second cycle.
The forecast for the marathon is favourable: a 7°C start in the basin, climbing through 14°C by the Mariemont turn, with light wind and dry conditions through the morning. That is on the warm side of where Cincinnati's marathon has averaged in recent editions but well inside the range that the elite athletes traveling for the race have been training for. The field is led on the men's side by 2024 winner Mulgeta Birhanu Feyissa, returning to defend the title he won in 2:14:31, and on the women's side by 2025 champion Jane Bareikis. The men's American field is led by veteran Jared Ward, while a small Australian contingent has come for spring marathon prep.
Cincinnati's road-closure list runs to more than fifty streets across the basin, Northern Kentucky's Newport and Covington and as far east as Mariemont, with the Roebling Bridge and Taylor-Southgate closed to traffic from before dawn. Live coverage runs on WCPO and is streamed by the Pig's own broadcast partner, with the elite men expected to come into Eden Park around the second-hour mark. The full marathon, half marathon, four-person relay and 10K all share the early kilometres, with the half-marathon split coming at Mariemont and the 10K turn at Lunken; the relay handoff zones use the same volunteer corps that ran the Pittsburgh Marathon a year ago. Bib pick-up at the expo closes Saturday at 6 pm; race-day bibs are not available.