United States Air Force Marathon
Open-knowledge reference entry
The United States Air Force Marathon is an annual event held on the third Saturday in September at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, home to the National Museum of the United States Air Force. It was established in 1997 to celebrate the Air Force's 50th anniversary. The inaugural event had 2,750 entrants. In 2013, the race hosted 15,424 runners.
The event includes a full marathon, half marathon and 10K race. The Friday previous to the marathon includes a 5K race at the Nutter Center. The 26.2-mile (42.2 km) race has runners travel around historical places on Wright-Patterson and Fairborn, Ohio, including the Air Force Institute of Technology, Air Force Materiel Command headquarters, the Wright-Patterson flight line and the Wright Brothers Memorial Monument. The Air Force Marathon is a qualifying race for the Boston Marathon.
Registration for the race opens on 1 January each year, with special discounts on opening day. For the 2016 race, there were a total of 15,500 slots; 3,000 for the full marathon, 7,000 for the half marathon, 3,000 for the 10K, and 2,500 for the 5K.
The Air Force Marathon has a $14 million economic impact to the Dayton area.
“United States Air Force Marathon” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, States and Force can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“United States Air Force Marathon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, United, States and Force provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7889220. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2013 and 2016.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “United States Air Force Marathon”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow United States Air Force Marathon primary sources, United States Air Force Marathon archive and United research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “United States Air Force Marathon”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “United States Air Force Marathon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.