WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Garden of Life Palm Beaches Marathon took over the streets this weekend with 3,500 runners, including Simon Boudreaux and Alana Rodriguez, who won a 26.2-mile race Sunday for the first time.
Participants from 31 countries, including Australia, and 41 states made their way here to take part in downtown West Palm Beach. In temperatures of 76 degrees, the marathon started and ended outside Meyer Amphitheatre.
“We’re all native from Brazil actually," current West Palm Beach resident Paula Meyer said. "We love Palm Beach. It’s beautiful, it’s flat, very organized. The race was awesome.”
Rodriguez, 39, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was the first woman across the marathon finish line in 3:01.08. Rodriguez took over the lead from Fort Myers’ Paige Filmanowicz at 21 miles. Then Beth Reed of Lake Mary also passed a fading Filmanowicz to finish second in 3:14:04.
Rodriguez said she was happy to be running in a warm weather and beautiful place like West Palm.
“Yeah it seemed like this would be a really fun race and the weather did cooperate," Rodriguez said. "This was wonderful. So happy to be here.”
She works at the Center for Global Health Equity at the University of Michigan.
In the men's race, Boudreaux left his 6-month-old daughter with grandparents in Quebec City, Canada, and headed to Florida for a five-day vacation.
His girlfriend and their sisters cheered him on along Flagler Drive.
Bordreaux, 31, won his first marathon Sunday in a Boston-qualifying time of 2:39:39.
Participating in his fourth marathon, he led from start to finish with his previous bests third and fourth.
His finish Sunday was more than eight minutes faster than West Palm Beach resident Samuel Luttier, who ended in 2:47:48.
"It felt great. The wind was tough, some heat, but a great course,” said Bourdeaux, who is an accountant working for the Canadian government. "I came down here from the cold but the heat didn’t affect me as much. It wasn’t a personal- record, but I was happy with the race."
In the half marathon, winners were Wellington native Charles Richardson (1:19:04) and Palm Beach transplant Leigha Torino (1:25:06). Like the marathon, they each won that distance for the first time.
Richardson, 22, originally ran neck-and-neck with Palm Beach Gardens' Hudson Gates and Brandon Smith. Gates, fifth a year ago in this race, was second (1:19:57) and Smith (1:20:21) equaled his 2022 third-place finish.
“That was the goal,” Richardson said of his win. “My family is here and I’m down for the holidays. I thought I’d pop out and do my best. It just worked out. I tried to play it smart and be efficient with the way I ran. I ran a lot in other people’s drafts.”
Richardson, a Wellington High School graduate, is a computer science major who graduates from the University of Florida in five days. Two days later, he and two buddies are biking 200 miles from Orlando to West Palm Beach “because it’s a cool thing to do.”
“I just got this thing I like to go Zone 5,” Richardson said. “I go all out in everything. Today I was going to win or die. At the end of the day, I like to have fun. Anything to have fun and push it to the limit.”
Torino, 24, who ran track at Duke in the 800 meters, participated in her first Half Marathon. She wasn’t expecting it to also be her first win.
“It was a surprise but I’ll take it,” she said. “I was kind of going with the flow. I didn’t know what to expect.”
On Saturday, the 5K events took place.
The weekend’s races benefited Special Olympics Florida, which serves over 60,000 athletes statewide.
Palm Beach Gardens-based Garden of Life, a Nestle Health Science brand, is in its fourth year as title sponsor of the race.