Overview Beach to Bay is a relay marathon on Armed Forces Day in Corpus Christi: a team of six splits 26.2 miles into legs of about 4.4 miles each, starting on the sand of North Padre Island, running through Naval Air Station Corpus Christi and finishing at McCaughan Park on Shoreline Drive. It always falls on the third Saturday in May. The race calls itself America's largest relay marathon and draws more than 2,000 teams a year. Solo marathoners joined the field in 2016 and two-person teams in 2017. The Corpus Christi Roadrunners run it. On site The gun goes at 7 a.m. at Beach Access Road 5 and Eliff Road, near the Briscoe Pavilion on the island. Buses carry runners out to the exchange points. Leg 3 climbs the JFK Causeway and leg 4 winds through the naval air station. At McCaughan Park the finish turns into a party with a band, food, beer and vendor tents, and teams can rent shade tents ahead of time. A Sports Exposition with packet pickup runs the day before, and the awards are handed out from the awards ceremony stage. Every runner gets a medal and a shirt. Audience Nine in ten runners come from Texas, and many have run it for years; the race's count puts its youngest runner at 9 and its oldest at 75. Teams also draw runners from Kenya, England and Mexico. A Runner Connection board matches runners without a team to teams short a leg. The race fills about 5,000 hotel stays, and the weekend is known locally as Beach to Bay Weekend. Track record Captain John Butterfield started the race in 1976 as a tribute to the armed forces, and the 2027 race is the 50th Armed Forces Day Beach to Bay. The organizers put its economic impact at nearly 3 million dollars a year for the Corpus Christi area and its unpaid media coverage at nearly 50,000 dollars. Registration and sponsorship money goes to Coastal Bend causes, among them Texas Special Olympics and a Corpus Christi university cross country team. Brand presence Sponsors are placed on the finish-line banner by level, at the top, middle or bottom, and on the official race shirts. The presenting level adds the race bib, a display at the Sports Exposition and at the awards stage, and a half-page ad in the race program, and the upper levels come with free team entries. Herrman and Herrman was named title sponsor of the 2027 race, and two Corpus Christi TV stations, KRIS 6 and Action 10 News, were among its presenting sponsors.