It begins in a truly coastal village, surrounded by water with buildings dating back to the age of whaling. The briny smell of ocean mixes with aromas of food emanating from the many kitchens lined along the street. Woods Hole, picturesque and inviting, was in the day a place of maritime industry: fishing, whaling and a fertilizer works that mixed bat guano and various pieces of marine animals into food for plants. Today, multimillion- dollar waterfront homes sit atop a piece of real estate locals avoided in the 19th century for the smell.
As the starting gun sounds, runners cross the drawbridge, metal grated and lifted in summer months to a regular schedule. A stone bridge once stood there, baring access to Eel Pond to all but the smallest watercraft.
Up Woods Hole Road, the course turns on to Church Street, crossing the bridge over the Shining Sea bikeway. In 1872, the train came to town connecting freight and vacationers to the ferries and Martha’s Vineyard beyond. The puffs of steam from engines are replaced now by the sound of walkers and bikers reaching the end of the Bikeway.
Through the shaded hills, the runners wind their way to a low stretch of road along Nobska Beach overlooked by Nobska Light. Through sunny summer afternoons and stormy winter nights, the light has stood for almost 150 years guiding mariners through the Cape Cod passage.
This first hill provides panoramic views of Nantucket and Vineyard sounds. At one time in the Cape’s past, this waterway was among the busiest in the world. Towering sails filled the narrow sound that is now largely crisscrossed by pleasure cr33aft. Nobska Light’s keepers kept a log of the marine traffic traversing the passage, providing a view into the busy 19th-century world of this busy stretch of water.
Down the hill and into the woods, the route crosses under the Shining Sea Bikeway carried over the road by the same steel bridge that once brought the train to Woods Hole. When the rails were abandoned by the Penn Central in the 1960s, a group of locals led by Joan Kanwisher pushed the town to purchase the property, and after some legal wrangling, their dream came to fruition. In 1976, a three-mile bike trail from Locust Street to the Steamship Authority parking lot opened. Later additions brought the trail to more than 10 miles in length.
The race continues through the woods on Oyster Pond Road by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Quissett campus, a sprawling complex supporting the mission WHOI has fulfilled since 1930 when scientists put to sea in the 144-foot ketch Atlantis.
Once again and for a final time, the race crosses the bike path before opening up on the long stretch of Surf Drive. Beachside houses nestle up to one another along the shore. Hurricane Bob, which came ashore the day after the 1991 road race, uprooted many of these houses, and the rebuilt seaside cottages were put up on stilts. Some still sit, stubbornly, defiantly, on the beach.
The end of the long, flat and often baking roadway along the water turns at a 90-degree angle at the Old Stone Dock. Before 
Falmouth had a harbor, this enclosure provided some respite to transiting vessels. Today, a semicircle of large stone encompasses a pool of water, providing for a popular public beach.
Runners charge up Shore Street, back to the water, before running the length of Clinton Avenue, the end of which takes another sharp turn. Before Falmouth Harbor came into being, Clinton ran right over what is today the harbor’s mouth and on up into The Heights. When Deacon’s Pond was opened to the sea and Falmouth Harbor welcomed local vessels, the present-day Clinton found itself at a loss, shorn short of the original destination, and instead we travel up Scranton Avenue to the end of the harbor. Coal schooners brought their cargo to the foot of this later road, and so the name of the Pennsylvania coal city adhered itself to a 
small piece of Falmouth.
Rounding the harbor, runners begin their final mile of the race along Falmouth Heights Road, past boat yards that service pleasure craft now but once turned out landing craft in World War II.
The ocean becomes visible once again as you begin that last hill and find the name “Heights” is no mere moniker. It is a tricky hill that seems to summit more than once before the runners hit the peak and sprint down the other side to the finish line.
The old bar and former finishing location of the Road Race, the Brothers Four, no longer exists. The ballpark at the finish line is very much the same as it was on that first race in 1973. Large crowds don’t often collect to see a baseball game play out as they did in the early 20th century, but as the race winds down, the crowds gather in this grassy expanse to bask in victory, even if that win is simply completing an over-seven-mile course.