Expo, schedule and race morning

Packet pickup

• Saturday, September 12, 2026: 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
• Sunday, September 13, 2026 (race morning): 5:45 a.m. to 6:45 a.m.

• You must pick up your own packet. The club is explicit: nobody else can collect it for you, not a spouse, not a teammate.
• Photo identification is required and your identity is verified at the table.
• You will be photographed holding your bib as an anti-bandit measure. Refusing the photo is a disqualification.
• Race-morning pickup exists but the club strongly discourages relying on it, and states plainly that the start will not be delayed for anyone still in the pickup line at 7:00 a.m.
• Saturday hours are deliberately long (six hours) so that nobody has an excuse to leave it to the morning.
• The bib carries your timing chip and must be worn front and centre, not on a hip or on your back, or the mats will not record you.
• The club sends no participant emails until race week, so do not wait on an email to learn logistics.
• Race shirt is a microfiber shirt that is not gender specific. Size exchanges are only after the race, subject to what is left. A limited quantity of extra merchandise is sold on site.
• Bag drop is at the Beach One / Erie Runners Club Pavilion and uses tear-off tags on your bib.

The published weekend schedule

These are the published 2026 times, taken from eriemarathon.net and the RunSignUp listing in August 2026, and they are firm rather than provisional: the 7:00 a.m. start, the Saturday noon-to-6 pickup and the 5:45-to-6:45 race-morning window are all stated outright for this edition. The arrival deadlines (6:15 a.m. with a packet, 5:45 a.m. without) come from the club's own FAQ. What does not exist is a fuller weekend programme. There is no expo, no pasta dinner, no shakeout run and no scheduled awards ceremony, so the schedule above is genuinely the whole weekend. The one soft entry is the awards handout, which happens whenever the timer posts results rather than at a set hour.

Getting there

There is no race transport of any kind. The club states the reason directly: under its Presque Isle State Park permit, there will be no buses to carry runners or spectators to the start or back to parking afterwards. Everyone parks in the same two free lots outside the park and walks in. Plan the walk as part of your warm-up, and plan the return leg as part of your recovery.

• Free race-day parking is at Waldameer Park, 220 Peninsula Drive, and at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center, 301 Peninsula Drive. Both sit at the park entrance.
• From those lots it is roughly 0.5 to 0.6 miles downhill into the park to the Erie Runners Club Pavilion at Beach 1. It is uphill on the way back, after the marathon.
• Do not park on the side of the road inside the park. The club calls this out specifically as a violation of Presque Isle State Park rules.
• Arrive by 6:15 a.m. if you already have your packet. Arrive by 5:45 a.m. if you still need one. The club will not delay the 7:00 a.m. start for late participants.
• Saturday is different. for packet pickup you may drive to the pavilion and park there. That privilege does not apply on race morning.
• Spectators must also walk in from Waldameer, and at no point may they be on any roadway. The park will fine them. They are also barred from the finish line area.
• Bring your own food and drink. There are no food vendors and no drink machines in the park.
• Flying in. Erie International Airport (ERI) is about 8 miles and 20 minutes from the park, with American Airlines as the primary carrier. Service is limited, so most runners drive. Erie sits directly on I-90 and I-79, which is why the interstate hotel cluster is so large.
• You will need a car. There is no practical transit link between the hotel zones and Peninsula Drive at 5:30 on a Sunday morning.

Published entry tiers

Checked August 2026; fees and tiers can change.