An 86-year-old retired nurse from Orange will attempt to maintain her streak of finishing a race in every edition of the Surf City USA Marathon when it is held for the 30th time Sunday despite suffering a mild stroke last month.
Dorothy Strand is the only runner to start a race each year the event has been held. She ran the 5K in 57:42 last year.
Strand became a runner in her late 40s. Her sons were running cross-country at Orange Lutheran High School when her husband, John, decided to join them in road races.
“I thought, `Heck, I need to join in on this,”’ she said.
Strand is among the 5,200 runners to have entered Sunday’s 5K, which is set to begin at 11 a.m. after starting at 8:10 a.m. last year. The change was prompted because of the “significant growth” of the 5K field and in an attempt to “reduce congestion at the finish line when the lead marathon and half marathon runners are coming through,” race publicist Dan Cruz told City News Service.
The 5K drew a capacity field of 4,500 last year.
The race has attracted its largest field since the coronavirus pandemic, with 3,000 runners entering the marathon and 12,000 runners entering the half-marathon, which are also capacity fields, Cruz said.
Runners from 47 states and 18 nations have entered.
The marathon and half-marathon drew 2,000 and 9,300 entrants in 2025, also capacity fields.
The race’s primary benefiting charities are the American Cancer Society, which is expected to raise more than $100,000, Ainsley’s Angels, will have 33 push-team duos of runners pushing wheelchairs ridden by children with special needs and disabilities, and the Huntington’s Disease Society of Greater Los Angeles.
Ainsley’s Angels of America, is a Virginia Beach, Virginia-based charity which aims to build awareness about America’s special needs community through inclusion in all aspects of life.
The charity is named for Ainsley Rossiter, who was born in 2003 and was diagnosed with infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy, an extremely rare terminal illness slowly causes global paralysis, just before she turned 4 years old.
When Ainsley went for her first jog during a local road race in 2008, she gave a radiant wind-induced smile. Running provided the family with a way to fight the pain of having a daughter with a terminal illness. She died at age 12 in 2016.
Ainsley’s Angels was founded by her father, Kim `Rooster’ Rossiter, a professor of disability culture at Old Dominion University and a retired Marine Corps major.
Huntington’s disease is a fatal neurodegenerative disease often passed down through a changed gene from a parent.
The marathon will start on Pacific Coast Highway between the Pacific Ocean and the Waterfront Beach Hotel. The 26-mile, 385-yard course will then quickly pass the Huntington Beach Pier. Miles two through nine go through Huntington Beach’s Central Park and miles 9 through 15 through the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.
Miles 16 through 25 are on a beachfront running path paved over the sand. The final mile takes runners along Pacific Coast Highway to the finish line, also near the Waterfront Beach Resort.
The marathon is set to start at 6:30 a.m. and half-marathon at 7:15 a. m.
The race will prompt the closure of Pacific Coast Highway in both directions from First Street to Beach Boulevard from 1 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and from Warner Avenue to First Street from 4 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
This is one of three times a year a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach is closed. The others are for the Independence Day parade a 10-mile race held in September, Cruz said.