The 35th Annual Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon will be run on May 20, 2012.
I have always wondered about the name. The race is the 35th annual Cleveland Marathon, but it started out as the Revco Cleveland Marathon -- Revco was a chain of drug stores -- and the runners headed west from downtown Cleveland through the western suburbs of Lakewood, Rocky River, and Bay Village, where they turned around near the house where Sam Sheppard's pregnant wife Marilyn was bludgeoned to death by a one-armed man. Sam Sheppard was convicted. The U.S. Supreme Court said that the trial was a circus and ordered a new trial. F. Lee Bailey represented Sheppard in the Supreme Court and in the new trial, winning an acquittal, became known nation-wide and began his rocky journey as a prominent criminal defense lawyer..
Whatever. I just wanted to use the word "bludgeoned," and that word didn't really fit into a post about the Cleveland Marathon -- but I figured out a way to do it.
The race, just like the original, is still 26 miles + 385 yards, but there are shorter races for those runners who are not total fucking lunatics. And the race doesn't go out near Sam Sheppard's house -- the house where Marilyn was bludgeoned (see, there you go -- twice!) was moved from its original location to Huntington Park in Bay Village -- the course is run entirely within the City of Cleveland.