2009 Asheville Citizen-Times Half Marathon, New Course, September 12, 2009

A couple of positive changes for this year in the Asheville Citizen-Times Half Marathon:

• A new course with fewer crossings of Merrimon Avenue, elimination of the run down past McCormick Field in the beginning and less traffic overall.  Some interesting new parts east of Charlotte Street in the first half and additional parts of Woodfin in the second half.
• A 7:30 start.  The earlier the better for a half marathon in September.

I’ve run this race three times (2005, 2006 and 2007) and plan to run it this year.  I always enjoyed the course for its variety but I always appreciate the minimization of traffic and I see this in the new 2009 course.  I plan on “deconstructing” the 2009 half marathon (break it into shorter segments).  I’ll run each one and report back here.  Then I’ll run the entire course for practice a few weeks before the race.

I mapped the course at USATF.  You can visit the course and zoom in for street-level details at:
http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=298950

Visit the race page and register at:
http://www.citizen-times.com/race