Danville native Steve Scott has run marathons all over the state, country and world, always traveling outside of his hometown to participate in these races. He was ready to see a marathon event in his own backyard.
In June 2024, Scott and other members of Danville’s running community started kicking around the idea of a local marathon.
They knew it would be a long process, Scott said, involving buy-in from the community and local government, permitting, advertising, traffic control — and outside certification, since they wanted the race to be a qualifier for the Boston Marathon.
“Having a race like this in Danville, it’s an opportunity for our city to be involved with a larger part of the world,” said Scott.
Over the past year and a half, the Danville marathon event — called the Three Sisters Marathon — slowly but surely came together.
On Saturday, runners from all over the country are coming to Danville for one last chance to qualify for the 2026 Boston Marathon. Or they’re coming to participate in shorter runs and experience the fanfare of the city’s first-ever marathon event.
Over 800 runners have signed up for the Three Sisters Marathon, said Scott.
Scott has run the Boston Marathon four times himself. Each time, he ran a qualifier race in Erie, Pennsylvania, the closest high-ranked qualifier to Danville.
Now, runners in the area have a Boston qualifier in their own region — and the timing couldn’t be better.
The Three Sisters Marathon comes on the last weekend before the Sept. 12 deadline to sign up for the next Boston Marathon, which will be held in April 2026.
“It gives people a last opportunity to try to qualify for Boston,” Scott said. “If you’re in Danville or North Carolina, you don’t have to travel to Erie anymore.”
And because it’s one of the last qualifiers before the Boston sign-up deadline, the Danville marathon has attracted runners from other states as well, including Arkansas, California, Florida, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas, Scott said.
“It’s amazing. We’ve got people flying in from the West Coast to run in Danville, Virginia,” he said.
The race weekend also includes a Vegas-themed 5K fun run on Friday evening and a half-marathon on Saturday morning.
Building a Boston qualifier
Scott didn’t start running until seven years ago, when he was 55. He got into the lifestyle sort of by happenstance, he said.
“I used to play racquetball at the YMCA,” Scott said. “But when they built the new Y, it didn’t have racquetball courts. I asked my friend, ‘well what are we going to do now?’ He said, ‘Let’s run’ and I said, ‘Dude, I don’t want to run.’ But we ended up running.”
Scott said he fell in love with running, and has since completed countless marathons — both alone and alongside kids with disabilities, pushing their custom racing wheelchairs across the finish line.
He is one of fewer than 200 people in the world to have finished the World Marathon Challenge, in which runners complete seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.
In 2019, Scott and a small group of other runners met in Cape Town, South Africa, and flew five hours to Antarctica for their first marathon of the challenge.
“It was 30 below zero, the wind was blowing 40 miles an hour,” Scott said. “It took me 6 hours and 5 minutes to run the marathon, and I’m usually about a 3-hour-and-30-minute marathon runner. So it was a tough run.”
He flew back to Cape Town to run another marathon the next day, followed by consecutive daily marathons in Australia, Europe, Asia, South America — where it was 103 degrees in Fortaleza, Brazil — and North America.
His family met him at the final marathon in Miami, where he crossed the finish line with his son and grandson, Scott said.
“I was running 120 miles a week to train for that,” Scott said. “Some days I was running 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening.”
Scott has finished marathons across the country and the state, and he once ran the distance between Danville and Richmond over the course of three days to raise money for charity.
“I’ve run everywhere, and it was to the point where I wanted to bring something to Danville,” he said. “I thought, let’s put eyes on Danville and say we can be part of the running community throughout the world.”
The city has hosted 5K runs and half-marathons before, but this is the first full-fledged marathon event with several races of different distances and the Boston qualifier designation.
To earn that designation, the race had to meet standards set by the Boston Athletic Association and then get certified by a national governing body for distance runners, like the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races or USA Track and Field.
“You have to call a certified individual, and they come out and ride the course on a bike something like four times,” Scott said. “At every mile, they stop and put a nail in the road, take a picture of it and send it off to the [USA Track and Field] organization.”
This was a two-day process in Danville, and Scott accompanied the official on her bike ride to evaluate the course.
There’s not a set number of Boston qualifying marathons. Any race that gets the proper certification, has at least three participants, takes place outside and is advertised to the public can be a Boston qualifier.
If the course is altered from year to year, it must be recertified to retain the Boston qualifier status.
In Virginia, Boston qualifying marathons are run in Abingdon, Arlington, Chesapeake, Covington, Danville, Lexington, Richmond, Roanoke, Newport News and Virginia Beach.
The Boston Athletic Association keeps track of the highest-ranked qualifiers, or the races where the highest percentages of runners qualify. Scott always traveled to Erie to qualify, since it was higher ranked than any of the Virginia races.
He said he’d like to see the Danville race eventually become a top-ranked marathon.
The Danville marathon route starts and ends at the Caesars Virginia casino resort, near the trio of smokestacks that once belonged to a Dan River Mills textile plant and inspired the races’ “Three Sisters” name.
According to the race website, both the marathon and half-marathon courses “offer a smooth, enjoyable experience with beautiful views of the Dan River and the city’s picturesque surroundings.”
After designing the course and getting the Boston qualifier designation, the race organizers worked with the police department, fire and rescue services and the city government to create the event, Scott said.
They’ve also done a lot of door-knocking and advertising, making sure the community knows about the event and the road closures that come along with it — and encouraging people to participate as supporters and volunteers, if not runners.
“It was a little slow getting people on board at first, just because this kind of event is so new,” Scott said. “But people started seeing the vision, and now it’s so close, everyone is getting excited.”
More than just a race
With hundreds of runners participating in the race, likely bringing family and friends to cheer them on, the city is expecting between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors on race weekend.
The draw of a Boston qualifier will have ripple effects that touch the entire community, Scott said.
“People will be staying at our hotels, eating our food, going to our bars, going downtown to shop,” he said.
The community should return that support to runners by cheering them on, Scott said. The atmosphere of a race course has a huge influence on runners, and a positive environment can push them through the more difficult parts of the course, he said.
Downtown businesses like Crema & Vine on Main Street are doing their part to make the course enjoyable for runners. Outside the coffee and wine bar will be a block party with music and a large American flag hanging over the course, Scott said.
Other parts of the course will offer music, and the event will be followed by an afterparty with local live music, food trucks and “a sense of community that will keep the celebration going,” according to the website.
Everyone is welcome at the afterparty events, Scott said. You don’t have to be a runner to attend.
Friday night’s 5K is a fun run-style event, says the site, and will feature an Elvis impersonator, light show and DJ.
Runners can participate in the Double Dan challenge by running the 5K on Friday night and the full marathon on Saturday morning.
Local volunteers will help runners get registered during a two-day Expo before the race, hand out water along the course and distribute medals at the finish line.
Adam Jones, a local runner and owner of the Brick Running & Tri Store in the River District, is volunteering to help time runners during the marathon.
The time needed to qualify for the Boston Marathon varies by age and gender. A male runner between 18 and 34 years old needs to finish in under 2 hours and 55 minutes to qualify, and a female runner in the same age bracket needs to finish in under 3 hours and 25 minutes.
Several members of the Brick’s running club are participating in the race, Jones said.
“We’ve been in the running business in Danville for 13 years, and for 13 years you’ve had to travel [for a Boston qualifier],” he said. “Usually you’re driving home sore and tight, but this is right in our backyard.”
Jones said he hopes residents and local businesses get out to support the race in its inaugural year.
The race organizers hope to make it an annual event, and each year should bring more local enthusiasm alongside the city’s growth, Jones said.
“The city’s on a growth trajectory,” he said. “There’s a crane on every corner, there are roads being paved, parks being built. We’re moving at the speed of sound in terms of growth. There’s no better time for an event like this.”
