6 min readEarlier this month, hundreds of runners who had planned on making two loops through the picturesque parks of Hilton Head Island in South Carolina—did not. They did not appreciate the relative ease of the Hilton Head Island Marathon’s course, with only two inclines, crossing over Broad Creek on the Cross Island Parkway. They didn’t receive their finisher medals, and they weren’t offered much information either, about why the race they’d registered and spent months training for was suddenly canceled on January 30th, just two weeks before the event’s marathon, half, and 5K were scheduled to take place from February 15 to 16.
In a Facebook post and email to registered participants, the race organizers announced that the weekend’s events would be canceled “due to unforeseen safety and support challenges.”
“Not to be dramatic, but this ruined my month,” Kaeli Johnson commented on the post. It was supposed to be Katie Brazell Jaynes’ debut marathon, and Rebecca Ortlauf’s too. Ortlauf turned 40 on February 16, the day the race would have happened, and she’d chosen to celebrate the milestone birthday by running her first marathon on that day.
Chloe Zegas, a 23-year-old fitness trainer in Charleston, started running about a year ago, and had a plan of running the Charleston Half Marathon, and if she didn’t meet her time goal there, she’d have the Hilton Head race as a backup, just three weeks later. Her sister was planning to fly in from Colorado to run Hilton Head with her and spend the long weekend together. Then, for totally different reasons, both races were suddenly cancelled, uprooting those plans.
“And I was just super frustrated because there was really no reason for it [Hilton Head] to be canceled, and the email they sent us was really just a horrible email. They really didn't give us any explanation,” she says.
Multiple attempts were made to speak directly with the race organizers and employees of Ventures Endurance, the company that oversees the Hilton Head Marathon and various other events, including the popular Hot Chocolate Run series, the Statesman Cap10K in Austin, and the Milwaukee Marathon. The only response Runner’s World received came from the public relations arm of Gannett, the parent company of USA Today Network, which owns Ventures Endurance.
An unnamed representative responded with a boilerplate quote similar to the original cancellation announcement, saying, “Please attribute the following to a Hilton Head Marathon, Half Marathon and 5K Spokesperson: ‘Despite our best efforts working with local leaders, the 2025 Hilton Head Marathon, Half Marathon and 5K will not take place. We were unable to secure a permit due to unforeseen safety and support challenges from local jurisdictions. We hope to return to the city of Hilton Head next year.’”
However, according to local authorities, the permitting and safety concerns were not unforeseen. While it’s true that a permit was applied for, the Assistant Town Manager of Hilton Head Island Angie Stone told WSAV.com that there were “significant security concerns from town leaders and the sheriff’s office.”
“We encourage folks who are planning events on our island to ensure that they have a permit in hand before they get into the point of registering people and collecting funds and getting folks excited. We did not have that permit approved prior to them going out and soliciting folks to run the marathon,” said Stone in an interview with WTOC.com.
Beaufort County Sheriff PJ Tanner cited the New Orleans truck attack on New Year’s Day as a factor in the decision to withhold support for the marathon. He told WTOC that his office refused to allow the event, because it would have traveled along several roads, including some with speed limits of 55 miles per hour. According to WSAV, the Sheriff’s Office had concerns that Cross Island Parkway, where a large portion of the race would take place, could be a potential target for a terror attack, and that they did not have sufficient manpower and infrastructure to provide security and keep runners safe.
“We value their safety over the inconvenience of having trained and not being able to run and I don’t mean that to sound callous,” said Stone. “I hope they understand that primary responsibility and primary aim here is to ensure that events that are happening here on the island are safe.”
Chloe Zegas told Runner’s World that she understood that rationale, but was dissatisfied with the way the race organizers handled the situation. She compared their response to the way the Charleston Half Marathon organizers communicated with runners when that race was cancelled last-minute due to weather. She’d been disappointed by that news as well, but appreciated their human approach to the situation.
“They were sending us daily paragraphs about how sorry they were, what they were going to do to try to fix it for us, all this,” Zegas says about the Charleston Half organizers. “They gave us a clear cut answer, and for Hilton Head to only give us a two-sentence, little explanation that didn’t really sound that authentic, it just leaves us more confused.”
Zegas appreciated that the race at least offered to refund runners their entry fee or put the credit towards another race, “but still, it doesn’t make up for waking up at like 5 a.m. for four months train,” she says, “and just putting all that effort in, buying the shoes, buying outfits. It’s just really expensive for them to just cancel for no reason.”
Some runners were traveling from out of state, and even internationally, and had costly non-refundable flights, hotels, and other travel arrangements on the line. Such was the case for Joe Dumas, a Tennessean who has run the Hilton Head Marathon seven times. He’s on a mission to run 100 marathons, and was intending to make the 2025 race number 97 on his list, but “Marathon #97 will just have to wait a little longer,” he said via email.
“If they were having organizational difficulties, it seems they should have known things were off track long before January 30,” Dumas continued. “The more of a heads-up they could have provided to the runners, the fewer travel plans would have been messed up.”
Dumas noted that the Hilton Head Marathon’s ownership has changed hands a few times since he first ran the race 10 years ago. It was previously operated locally by a company called Bear Foot Sports, then from 2020-2021, it was taken over by a New Hampshire-based outfit called Loco Sports, and has been run by Ventures Endurance since 2022.
“For a variety of reasons (course changes, pre- and post-race amenities, etc.) the race has degraded in quality of runner experience ever since it has not been produced by a local organization,” he noted. “It seems the event is now viewed as more of a ‘cash cow’ as opposed to the nice, low-key event it used to be.”
Dumas and his wife opted to make the best of the situation and keep their Hilton Head travel plans anyway, but he says, “I have no confidence that something similar won’t happen again in the future. For that reason, I sincerely doubt I will ever sign up for this race again, nor will I recommend it to friends.”
Many other runners pivoted, finding replacement races on the same weekend or in a similar timeframe so that all their training wouldn’t go to waste. That’s what Zegas did, changing her plans to compete at the DONNA Marathon Weekend in Jacksonville, Florida on February 2, instead.
“So luckily, I got that all booked and everything right after Charleston was canceled and Hilton Head was canceled that same week,” she said. “So it ended up working out for me perfectly, but I mean, it was definitely inconvenient.”
She had to drive four hours to Jacksonville and book a last-minute hotel, all within five days of the race, making the experience much more expensive than it would have been otherwise. In the end, she came out victorious, snagging a 13-minute PR.
“I ended up taking it all in, and was like, maybe this was a sign that I needed to go somewhere warm, do a race in good, sunny weather,” she says, “and I think that’s partly why I did better, because of the weather, and just me letting out my anger during the run.”
And while hundreds of runners didn’t get to tackle the full marathon on the island, the race’s title sponsor, Palmetto Running Company, hosted a free, unofficial community run/walk called The Run Goes On, offering participants a consolation experience, complete with a free commemorative T-shirt (which says The Run Goes On) and post-run celebration.
“Runners, we know the disappointment of a canceled race—weeks of training, early mornings, and dedication, only to have the big day taken away. But your hard work still deserves to be celebrated!” wrote store representatives on Instagram.
Abby Carney is a writer and journalist in New York. A former D1 college runner and current amateur track athlete, she's written about culture and characters in running and outdoor sports for Runner's World, Like the Wind Magazine, The New York Times, and other outlets. She also writes about things that have nothing to do with running, and was previously the editor of a food magazine.
