Austin Marathon Route Reconnaissance

This afternoon, armed with better information about the proposed new Austin Marathon route, I set out to drive some of the new course. The route that we took on Saturday wasn't totally accurate, and I wanted to check out the correct course to see if it was any better. I based this on the verbal description on the RunTex website.

I joined the route at Enfield and Pecos. The Galloway Scenic route came down Pecos, so I knew the hills on Pecos, just backwards from the way they will go in February. So far, not too bad. Pecos has gently rolling hills, but nothing awful. A fairly flat trip across Windsor dumps back out on Exposition. We will have to negotiate the bad parts of Exposition, but again, they should be okay if we pace ourselves properly. We've certainly run them enough.

The rollercoaster drop down 35th will be a challenge to quads, but it IS a downhill, so we should be grateful for that. The first nasty hill on Balcones is still in the course, and it's tough, but maybe with training we can handle it on race day? The course turns off onto Edgemont after just a half mile or so on Balcones, so in training, we'll be able to avoid the parts of Balcones that feature heavy traffic. Edgemont still basically makes the same rise as Balcones, but at a more moderate rate. There's even some decent downhill running in there, before a pretty tough hill at the very end of Edgemont that continues all the way up to Balcones again. From there, the course is pretty decent. Very slight uphill to flat running on Shoal Creek, Great Northern, and then flat to modest downhill trends for most of the rest of the course. There's a handful of hills in there, but nothing too terrible. For instance, there is a nasty little hill on 38th right before Duval, but by then, we'll be running on autopilot anyway. :-) I only drove as far as Duval and 38th Street, but from there, it's a nice downhill run almost to the end of the race, using the same 2 or 3 miles that we've run so many times before. We will have a tough triple decker hill right during mile 26, just to the East of the Capitol, but for the most part, the last half of the race is built for decent running.

After this scouting drive, I'll keep my options open for the marathon here. The new course will require some good pacing and strategy to run it well, but there's enough flat to downhill running on it that it may be a decent course after all. I'll just have to really back off on the steepest hills on race day, and be patient about catching back up to Goal Pace, whatever that number will be in February.