Lost Dutchman Half Marathon in Apache Junction, Arizona
Awesome Arizona! This is a special race! It's the first destination race that piqued my interest after officially joining the 50 States Half Marathon Club. The 2025 Lost Dutchman Half Marathon had just happened, so people were sharing their experiences and pictures. Everybody raved about it and the medal was beautiful. They do an interesting thing where they introduce a new medal for the full marathon each year, and shift the previous year's medals down to the next distance. This meant I had a pretty good idea that the awesome, state-shaped (!!!) with a cactus, full marathon medal from 2025 would be headed to the half distance in 2026... I wanted it! My first state-shaped medal! Fast forward a year, and I was pretty close to bailing on this trip. We'd squeezed in a family Disney Cruise vacation the first week of February, and it hadn't quite been enough time for me to feel excited about heading back to the airport yet. Plus, we’ve been passing around a cold since Christ...