Deconstructing the Asheville Citizen-Times Half Marathon – a 10 Mile Practice Run

After running every part of the course in three different practice runs, I decided that I wanted to do a longer run to revisit portions of the course, but before doing the entire 13.1 miles in a single run.  So, I mapped out a nice 10 miler.

Here’s a link to my run at USATF …

http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=306201

I parked in the lot of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce just off Montford Avenue and I240.  A good place to park within about a quarter mile of the starting point of the Asheville Citizen-Times Half Marathon.  It’s a nice little warmup run to the Citizen-Times building right across from the back side of the Grove Arcade.  I started out and ran the race course four about 5.5 miles and then improvised because I didn’t want to cross Beaverdam because I figured if I go that far I’ll wind up doing the entire course.  So I took some detours and headed toward the end of the course, to pick up the trail on Edgewood, west of Merrimon.

I took Country Club to Dogwood and found my way to the top of the rose garden and headed back down to Kimberly.  I took Kimberly south to Edgewood and headed west across Merrimon to the intersection of Edgewood and Barnard, which is where I reengaged the course.

The pull up Broadway was tougher than when I did it a few weeks ago.  I was already 8.5 miles into this run when I encountered it and it was warm and sunny.

This is a good, tough practice run.  I probably added some extra hill work to it, especially with my detour on Country Club and Dogwood.  Great run, finished off with some Gatorade and a Latte with a Vanilla Bean Scone!