You board a school bus in the dark at Billings Senior High and ride west to Molt, a grain-elevator town on the open prairie where the marathon starts at 7:00 a.m. The first miles roll across wheat and pasture, and what stays with you is the cold, dry September air and the Rimrocks sitting on the horizon for most of an hour before they finally draw closer. The course is paved the whole way and drops about 1,000 feet net, with the sharpest stretch on the hogsback descent into Echo Canyon, so save your quads for the last 10K through Billings neighborhoods. The finish at Pioneer Park is small-town friendly, and a 6.5-hour cutoff gives you room. This is Montana's oldest marathon, and in 2025 about 220 people finished the full, so you will have company without crowds.
Fully paved net-downhill route from the prairie town of Molt, down the 'hogsback' through Echo Canyon and Billings residential streets to a finish at Pioneer Park, with roughly 1,000 ft net drop. Course map ↗
Registration runs through RunSignUp (the 406 Race Series 'LEARN MORE' link). Entry fees and the close date were not published on the pages fetched. Marathon runners are shuttled to the Molt start from the Senior High School parking lot, buses 5:30-6:00 a.m.; there is no parking at the start. Register ↗
- 406 Race Series bills it as the oldest marathon in Montana; the 2026 RunSignUp page calls that edition the 46th running, which puts the first race in 1981. ↗
- The marathon starts at 7:00 a.m. in Molt, west of Billings, and finishes downtown at Pioneer Park with over 1,000 ft of net drop. ↗
- FindMyMarathon measures 520 ft of gain and 1,351 ft of loss (max 4,208 ft, min 3,131 ft) and rates it a Boston qualifier; 13.6% of 2024 finishers and 3.6% of 2025 finishers ran BQ times. ↗
- Marathon cutoff is 6.5 hours (about 15 min/mile) and every course closes at 1:30 p.m. ↗
- RaceRaves reviewers rate it 4.6/5 from 24 ratings, with difficulty scored 2.8/5. ↗
Checked 2026-10-14. Always confirm on the official site before booking travel.