Austin Marathon

[msdw24]

The 2009 Austin Marathon and Half Marathon starts in about 10 1/2 hours at congress and 1st street. I'm only doing the half. Com out and support your Austin area runners as we run by tomorrow morning.

Anyone on here who is running also, I wish them good luck.

 

[TexonLongIsland]

how did it go? What was the weather/crowd support etc like.

I ran the full marathon years ago on the old course - start at Arboretum then along town lake and finish at Auditorium Shores

 

[Bluepies]

Weather was perfect.

Crowd support was pretty good overall. Great in some places. The course does a lot of smaller streets in neighborhoods that I'd imagine are hard to get to, especially with lots of streets closed down during the day.

My first marathon was Austin 2006, the last year of the old route. This one is much more challenging, but the last 8 miles were all downhill and with the wind. I managed to never truly hit the wall, a first for me.

Broke my PR by one second, on a hillier course. I'm happy.

 

[msdw24]

The weather could not have been better, and even though I only ran the half marathon I did have a new PR by about 3 min at 1hr 58min 37seconds.

I loved the bands along the way and all the people that came out and supported us. The best band/music I thought were the chinese drums right after the congress bridge near the bat statue...very cool to hear right off the bat.

The only thing I did not like was right after mile 3 the course turned west off of south congress onto what felt like a back alley to a strip mall. 14000 people trying to run down a "street" about 18 feet wide at some points just didn't make sense.....it wasn't too long, maybe a quarter mile, but it was right at the start of the race and the field wasn't spread out a lot either, and really slowed you down...Just my view point though. I heard that they had to change the course last minute because Clinton was speaking at UT or something.

Overall the race was a lot of fun and the crowds were great....there were a TON of people at the south first bridge and 1st ST. They were on both sides of the street and everyone was cheering...very cool. I could run it a million times and it would still be exciting.

Thanks to everyone that came out!

 

[Aspen1]

Agree with everything in your post 24, especially the part about I turning west off of south congress onto what felt like a back alley to a strip mall. Unbelievable how narrow the "street" was at that point in the race.

Felt better this year than any of the previous 9 I have done.

 

[Bluepies]

The answer to the bad road at mile 3 is obvious: just get in front of the masses by enough that squeezing through is no problem.

Didn't bother me one bit.

The Dean Keaton hill, on the other hand...