Loco Marathon & Half Marathon

The race follows a loop course that starts and finishes at Rockingham Junction, where Ash Swamp Road and Exeter Road meet next to the Rockingham Country Club. From there, the course follows a counter-clockwise loop around Ash Swamp Road, Campground Road, Grant Road and Bald Hill Road and onto the Rail Trail for the final few miles of the race. The event is a small one — fewer than 400 runners crossed the finish line in both races combined last year, and organizers say that the field size offers an intimacy and friendliness that past runners have described as “low-key” with a course that’s “not over crowded, and the landscape was beautiful.” The first half of the race features a gentle uphill climb from the start to the half-way point in Epping, along Campground Road, followed by an equally gradual downhill in the second half of the race — past runners say it’s fast but not flat, as there’s plentiful rolling hills. But it’s also a great race to qualify for Boston if you’re running the full marathon, as organizers note that nearly a third of those who run the full marathon end up qualifying for the big Beantown marathon. The course is not closed during the race, they add, and the course time limit for the half marathon is 3 hours.