Boulder Dash 5K returns April 25, winding through Forsyth quarry

Matt Waligora, production manager at Martin Marietta’s Cumming Quarry, has long positioned the Boulder Dash as a way to bring neighbors "behind the berm" and show why the operation emphasizes safety and outreach, and that effort will be on full display when the Boulder Dash 5K returns Saturday, April 25, 2026, with an 8:00 AM EDT start. The race finishes inside Martin Marietta’s active Cumming Quarry at 2015 Ronald Reagan Boulevard and concludes with the Martin Marietta Spring Fling festival on the finish field.

The course is notable for a rare urban-industrial panorama: runners wind through an active quarry and along a crowd-pleasing quarry face, then cross into a finish-line village with exhibitor tents, food vendors and equipment displays. The event attracts individual runners, families and corporate teams of five or more employees competing in the corporate challenge; Lou Sobh Kia will host packet pickup Friday, April 24 between 11:00 AM and 6:00 PM at 1135 Buford Road in Cumming.

Organizers have staged logistics to manage safety and access at an industrial site. All parking is at Northside Hospital-Forsyth, 1200 Northside Forsyth Drive, and a continuous shuttle loop will move participants between the separate start and finish locations, with volunteers directing cars into the Women’s Center or MOB parking lots. Because the course traverses an active quarry, the event page lists restrictions including no dogs and posted safety directions enforced by volunteer marshals; organizers note that shade and restrooms are provided in specified areas only.

Public-health partners are prominent this year: the Healthcare Association of Forsyth County, an initiative of the Cumming-Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce, is involved in organizing, and Northside Hospital-Forsyth is a lead partner on race-day staging. Those institutional ties help explain why race planners emphasize controlled access and post-race medical readiness for a field that has numbered in the low thousands at past editions: the event drew roughly 1,300 runners in 2019.

Martin Marietta frames the race as part of a broader community-outreach program that recorded 834 volunteer outreach hours and reached 13,673 residents through events, donations and media, while past proceeds have benefited groups such as the American Heart Association and the Forsyth County Parks Foundation. Tent and exhibitor registrations were required by Friday, April 8; registration pricing on the official pages lists children 10 and under at $15 and teens and adults at $40, with prices rising after April 24 at 4:00 PM.

As organizers prepare for the April 25 start, they say they will gather post-event feedback to refine safety and participant experience. For residents this year’s Boulder Dash will again offer the unusual combination of a fitness run through an industrial landscape and a neighborhood-style festival, with Northside Hospital-Forsyth and Martin Marietta anchoring the logistics that make access to the quarry possible.