About half of marathon tourists take spouses or friends with them when they travel, he says. Most are professional people. Most are Type A personalities who want to keep busy on a trip besides running. And most are good travelers who don't complain, Gilligan says: "As runners, they run in snow, rain and mud, and they don't mind carrying their luggage once in a while."
Don Kern, director of the Grand Rapids Marathon, has carried a lot of luggage this month. He just got back from a trip running a world record seven marathons on seven continents in 35 days. His races were in Alabama, Egypt, Spain, Antarctica, Argentina, Australia and South Korea.
He spent 84 hours on airplanes, traversed 12 countries, and managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing, such as Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. The cost? About $15,000.
"Life is short, and what it cost is inconsequential," says Kern. "Ten years from now, I won't even notice what I spent. But 10 years from now, I'll still have the memory of this adventure."
Marathon Tourism on a Budget
Not everyone has thousands to spend on traveling from marathon to marathon. In fact, most runners are on a budget, says Lois Berkowitz of Riverview, Michigan. A founder of the 50 States Marathon Club, she knows runners who stay at Super 8 Motels, who bunk with four people to a room, who drive no matter how far the distance, who sleep in their cars.
When she travels, she tries to book official race hotels, which often discount rooms up to 50 percent for those reserving early. Berkowitz's club also has a spot on its Web site so its 1,200 members can try to find other members going to races so they can share a room or a ride.
Marathoners Jeanne and Randy Bocci of Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, recently ran marathons in all 50 states in three and a half years. They drove to most of them in their conversion van, leaving Friday afternoon, driving like crazy, running the race and coming back on Sunday night to get back for work Monday. They sometimes camped in their van near the starting line of races, using porta-johns at the site.
Marathon tourism? "You can make it as expensive as you want to or you can make it where it could fit anybody's budget," says Bocci, 63, who has been running since 1964.
Howard Moses, a triathlete and owner of the Cruise Authority travel agency in Atlanta, says that while some runners spend thousands on travel chasing personal goals, his experience is that most runners are penny-pinchers.
"The joke is they got into running because they were too cheap to do anything else," he says. "It's not a question of having money. It's a question of whether they are willing to spend it."
He hopes so. He is currently selling a 2008 cruise called the Great Alaskan Maritime Marathon that will combine running in Alaska with cruising (Runner's World columnist John (The Penguin) Bingham will lead it). The price? To be announced.
One major reason marathon tourism has taken off is that half-marathons--13.1 mile runs--have drawn a lot of new people into the circuit. Half-marathoners are traveling all over the world, too, and spending just as much money, says Ball. Most marathons now include half-marathons or even 10Ks to draw more entries and more cash.