Grandma’s Marathon breaks weekend attendance record, becoming the biggest ever

UPADTE: Grandma’s Marathon has updated the amount of finishers for the full marathon. It has now broken the attendance record. In a statement they say, “we are now showing 7,525 finishers in the still unofficial results of this year’s Grandma’s Marathon.”

Despite a little bit of rain in Duluth, 2024’s Grandma’s Marathon weekend broke the collective attendance record, becoming the biggest weekend in the organization’s history.

Including each of the weekend’s three races, Grandma’s Marathon, the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon, and the William A. Irvin 5K, the 2024 race weekend had 17,401 total finishers across the three events.

The William A. Irvin 5k broke it’s individual record with 2,188 official finishers (894 men, 1281 women, 9 non-binary). That beat last year’s event by 35 participants.

RELATED: More WDIO Grandma’s Marathon Stories
Full Grandma’s Marathon results can be found here.

The individual races also came very close to being their individual records.

For the full marathon, 2016 still remains the largest with 7,518 finishers in Duluth. This year’s full marathon came super close. This year there were 7,359 total finishers (4,323 men, 3,012 women, and 20 non-binary). Meaning they only needed 160 to break the record.

And This year’s Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon was the second largest in history, with 7,787 total finishers on Saturday morning (3,112 men, 4,651 women, 20 non-binary). Again 2016 still holds the record with 7,917 participants crossed the finish line. The half needed 131 more people to break that record.