A land filled with forests, rail trails, lakeside stretches and plentiful waterfalls — that’s what awaits runners here in Upstate New York at the Gorges Ithaca Half Marathon, which makes its 7th annual running this summer on a course organizers describe as “one of the fastest and most scenic half marathons you’ll ever run. Period.”
Gorges Ithaca Half Marathon
Date
Jun 8, 2025
Starting Time
7:00 AM
Course
Trail
Fees
$90+
Location
Ithaca
Participants
500-1000
Terrain
Challenging
Environment
Temperature
High: 74°
/ Low: 56°
Overview
Course Description
The point-to-point route for the race begins along Dubois Road in the nearby town of Ulysses, which if you’ve read your Homer you will recognize as the Latin name for Odysseus — the hero of the epic poem The Odyssey — who hails from the Greek island of Ithaca and it’s there that he spent the entire story trying to return.
Runners will follow the road into the Cayuga Lake valley for the first mile or so before turning onto the recently completed Black Diamond Trail, an 8.5-mile-long rail trail that was once the home of the Black Diamond Express, a luxury passenger service on the Lehigh Valley Railroad that ran from New York to Buffalo until 1959.
The stone-and-dust path heads south along the lakeshore until you run into Ithaca, a city of just over 30,000 people here at the southern end of Cayuga Lake.
The scenery along the way changes from farmland to towering canopies of trees, as well as the sounds of water falling through the numerous ravines and waterfalls you’ll see along the way.
Past Results
