Buffalo Marathon 2015: Route, Course Map, Times, Event Details

Memorial Day weekend is a major travel weekend all across the United States, with families and friends packing into cars and setting out on holiday getaways. However, thousands of folks in Western New York will be doing most of their travel by foot as they participate in the 2015 Buffalo Marathon.

The Queen City's big race is schedule for Sunday, May 24. Last year, Kenyan Kiplangat Tisia won the men's division in a course-record time of two hours, 17 minutes and 16 seconds. The first female to cross the finish line in 2014 was Waynishet Abebe of Ethiopia. She took down the course in two hours, 55 minutes and eight seconds.

Buffalo Marathon showed her crossing the finish line in 2014:

The Buffalo Marathon is sold out this year, per the event's website. According to WIVB's Brittni Smallwood, this is a first for the race, so expect a packed course and plenty of onlookers cheering on the participants.

Here's a rundown of the crucial event details.

Route

The route takes runners from West Huron Street near Niagara Square up toward Delaware Park, back down and along Lake Erie and then back up through parts of Delaware Park before heading back downtown to end at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.

This is a slightly different route than in year's past, but the early stages should prove to be more accommodating for the large field.

"The course has changed slightly, this year we'll run up Delaware for the first two miles, it's a wider street to give the seven thousand runners more room, and then we've had to make some adjustments for construction through the city," said race director Greg Weber, per WGRZ.com.

Course Map

A course map for the half and full marathons can be found here.

Buffalo Marathon also tweeted out a picture of the road closures:

Times

No mystery here; the Buffalo Marathon will start at 7 a.m. local time. 

Event Details 

There is more than one way to get out and run on Sunday. The half marathon is run at the same time as the full, and teams of four can divvy up the miles and run a relay marathon.

According to Weather.com, Buffalo is in store for some prime distance-running weather. With partly cloudy skies, 12-mph winds, a high of 74 degrees and a zero percent chance of participation, there should be very little holding runners back on what should be a fine Sunday.

Memorial Day does call for scattered thunderstorms and a 50 percent chance of precipitation, so an unusually fast-moving storm may put a damper on things for the last runners in, but that seems unlikely at this point. Still, the conditions are always worth monitoring as race time approaches.

BuffaloMarathon.com has a course record challenge this year with a monetary prize. The event will award $2,000 dollars to any participant who beats the men's or women's course-record times, held by Kiplangat and Russian Elena Orlova (2:42:44).

With a first-time sellout on the books, ideal race conditions and monetary motivation, there could very well be a new course record set this year. It would certainly add spectacle to what should be a fine day of marathoning in Buffalo.