Marathon Build Up Program
2025 Marathon Build Up
Do You Want to Run a Marathon? --- Jeff Weiss – Marathon Build Up (MBU) Program Director
The Badgerland Striders have a program that helps you train for a marathon. The Marathon Build Up program brings a large group together every Saturday all summer and helps you to run your long run with support. The program is 14 weeks long from the end of June through the end of September. This is perfect timing for Our Marathon, the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon. There is no requirement that you must run our marathon and with a slight modification the program can easily be tailored to another fall marathon.
As I said, the program meets every Saturday except for two weekends where the program is interrupted by our Cudahy Classic event on July 26th and the Strider Estabrook Half Marathon on August 23rd. Program participants are encouraged to run the 10 Mile distance at Cudahy and the Half Marathon distance at the second event. These distances fit handily into the mileage chart for your training.
The program provides Aid Stations approximately every 3 miles manned by beautiful volunteers providing Gatorade and Water and GUs for longer runs. The Start and Finish varies each week in various Milwaukee County Parks thus providing you with some varied scenery along your routes.
The finish has refreshments including Gatorade, Water, Fruit, Snacks and Watermelon. Other refreshments and foods are supplied sometimes on special occasions.
And! The program is free! It will start this year on Saturday June 28th 2025 in Lake Park.
Over the next few weeks, I will tell you more about the program and how you or your family may be able to help this program survive and thrive for years to come.
Marathon Build Up Program 2025 Part 2 - History of the Build Up ---Jeff Weiss – Marathon Build Up (MBU) Program Director
I described the Marathon Build Up program last week and how it functions to aid you in training for a Marathon.
This week I will talk a bit about the History and the Future of the MBU. The Marathon Build Up program began before the birth of the Lakefront Marathon. As far as I can tell it began in March of 1978 as a precursor to the Mayfair Marathon, which was our marathon before the Lakefront. The Mayfair Marathon took place in May. That means 2025 is the 47th year of the Build Up.
It was simpler then. They just set out water for the runners along the course and the course was the same every week, just longer. The program was 12 weeks long and the maximum distance was 18 miles. The maximum distance now is 22 miles, and we have to hold runs in different places depending upon where we can get permits from the Parks Department and, of course, to vary your scenery on the run.
I’ve been the director for 14 years. Before that I was part of a team that co-directed and did the work behind the scenes for many years. Now we have a great team of volunteers that man the aid stations, help to set them up, provide aid to the runners at each aid station and provide fruit and snacks at the finish
Future of the Build Up
I would like to reduce my workload this year and add some new members to the MBU team. In the process we can hopefully develop a succession plan for the future.I would like to add some “Captains” who would set up selected aid stations, help in procurement and transport of Build Up supplies and perhaps take over the hosting duties some Saturday’s during the program. These Captains could step up for a week, several weeks or the whole program.
A problem that needs to be addressed promptly is the storage and navigation of equipment. I have moved to the east side of Milwaukee and no longer have a driveway to park the van or a garage to store build up equipment and supplies.
Please send me suggestions for a new way to do things.
Also… share your good (or bad) experiences at the Build Up.
https://milwaukeelakefrontmarathon.org/
We need plenty of volunteers for setting up and staffing aid stations, consider signing up to help!
Marathon Build Up Volunteer Signup
Build Up Run schedules are also on the Badgerland Strider Facebook Page.
Program Coordinator Information
Jeff Weiss
Email: runnerjeff@outlook.com
