Overview The Frederick Running Festival is a spring race weekend in Frederick, Maryland, built around a Sunday half marathon that runs down historic Market Street, through Baker Park and past the city's minor league ballpark before finishing on the track in front of the grandstands at the Frederick Fairgrounds. Saturday carries a Twilight 5K and a Kids Fun Run, and a two-person team relay runs with the half. Corrigan Sports Enterprises, which also organizes the Baltimore Running Festival, produces it. The festival calls itself a big time race with small town charm. On site Everything starts and ends at the fairgrounds on East Patrick Street. Packet pickup runs there on the Saturday, the Kids Fun Run goes off at 4 p.m. and the Twilight 5K at 5, out and back along Church Street past St. John the Evangelist Church, built in 1837. The half marathon and relay start at 7 on Sunday morning, with seven aid stations of water and Gatorade and fruit and salty snacks at some of them; the course closes after 3 hours 25 minutes. Finishers come back into the Celebration Village on the track infield, with grandstand seating, live music and cold beer. The 2026 medal was a custom-cut Frederick skyline on a hinge that opens into a 3D display, and half finishers also got an embroidered cotton crewneck sweatshirt. Audience Runners who want both days sign up for the Nut Job Challenge, the 5K on Saturday and the half on Sunday, which earns a third medal and a prize for the fastest combined time. Others use Frederick as the first leg of the Black Eyed Susan Challenge, which adds the Baltimore Ten Miler in June and the Baltimore Running Festival in October; finishers of all three get a 6-inch medal and VIP tent access at each race. Local clubs take part too: the Frederick Steeplechasers marshal the half-marathon course as a club tradition. Track record The festival grew out of the Frederick Marathon, a local race that also carried a half. Corrigan Sports took it over in 2007, and the last full marathon ran in 2010. The Frederick News-Post reported that it was dropped because it did not draw enough runners, and the half has been the main race since.