Columbus Marathon: The Course

This is the course map for Sunday's race!  I'm have to admit that I'm a little more excited about the Columbus Marathon now that I heard that it's rated one of the top 20 marathons in the country by runnersworld.com.  So it's not like I'm just doing a marathon cus it's in my city... it also happens to be a pretty good one, at least according to other people!

I'm trying to approach this as a brand-new race, which involves forgetting the negative memories I have from the Cbus half last year, when I ran it the day after having the flu, when it was 30 degrees at the start, and when it was raining (notice my conspicuously absent race report... the only one I've ever failed to write, I was so sad).  This is harder than it seems, but given that the forecast is now 50 in the morning, 70 by midday, and sunny, maybe the brighter weather will help :o)

View Columbus Marathon 2010 in a larger map

So the course starts downtown, and goes east of the city and back, then through and around German Village (an old part of the city, where there will be some cobbled brick streets).  Then we head back into downtown and north along High Street (there is a long gradual hill for miles 11-12-13).  When we finally head west of High Street at the northernmost edge of the course, we'll go through the campus of Ohio State University, and then around southern Upper Arlington (a wealthy/nice neighborhood).  Grandview Heights will have a hill around mile 23, and then we head back south toward downtown through Victorian Village/Harrison West/Short North, which has a lot of old homes and such and is kind of the "hip" area of the city.  I'll know when we go by Goodale Park close to mile 26 that the pain is almost over.

This is a pretty epic tour of our city.  I live about 1.5 miles north of the northernmost part of the course so we're not going through my neighborhood... but other than that they really have us going through the "coolest" neighborhoods of the city, plus OSU.  I am hoping that I'm not so slow that no supporters are left on the course by the time I get to those final miles.

There will be some people from my running club manning the water stop near mile 6 but I'm not sure how many of them I will know, if any (most people I know are also running).  Jess will be at the 15.4 mile stop.  And after Sam finishes the half, he will bike to somewhere along the course to see me in those final painful miles, probably somewhere between miles 18-22, so he has time to get back to the finish.  I'm sort of hoping there will be the pleasant surprise of seeing others from my running group on the course at some point or another, but they will probably be faster than me, since most are doing the half (and the one I know who IS doing the full is going to do it probably 30 minutes better than me).

If you want to follow my progress on Twitter, I signed up for TweetMyTime.  My name on twitter is VegetariRun, so feel free to add me.  (The tweets won't be duplicating to facebook because I'm a shameful coward about owning my slow pace in front of a couple BQ runners I know..blah.  When will I ever stop being insecure about that??)  Basically my timing chip will somehow magically tweet my time live as I pass the  10k, 13.1, 17ish miles, and the finish, I think.

Nervesnervesnerves.
Friday night I'm having pizza to carb up with some running buds... and at some point I plan to watch Spirit of the Marathon, which is available on hulu (a documentary about marathon running).  I'm kinda psyched.