🛡️ What are all these details about?

Are you looking at the course information and feeling a little blank? Don’t worry! The more you race, they more you’ll understand the details. Here are some questions we often ask ourselves as we are registering for a race, with some explanations of what it all means.

How is the course shaped? Some courses are “out-and-back” (you head out and then turn around to finish at the start), some are “point-to-point” (start at one place and end at another), and some are big loops (usually one time around, starting and ending at the same place, but sometimes you’ll run around the same loop twice or even more). The lululemon Classic City Marathon and Half Marathon are each basically one big complicated loop (there’s some fancy stuff in the middle, but you will start and end at the Classic Center in downtown Athens, covering your course once). Loops make for easier planning, because you’ll end up back where you started!

What is the elevation profile? Another thing to consider on a course is the “elevation” or, specifically, the changes in elevation during the race. Some courses are closer to flat. Others (like ours! welcome to our beloved northeast-Georgia Piedmont region!) include some uphils and some downhills. Flat courses can be faster, if you are prepared to run flat for the entire distance, but courses with some hills give your legs the advantage of using different muscles at different times. Try to train on terrain similar to the terrain your race will cover.

How are the different races and courses related? Some race days, like ours, include multiple races of multiple distances. How does that work? Sometimes the shorter course is part of the longer course, or sometimes the longer race means running twice around the shorter course. Sometimes one race starts earlier than another. If your friend is running a different distance on the same day, these details matter a lot! In our case, all races start together, at the same time, and use the same course for about a mile. After that, the lululemon Classic City Half Marathon course follows what we call the “heart” of the full-marathon course (which means that marathoners will run most of the half marathon course plus also some marathon-only sections). Slower half-marathoners and faster marathoners will end up running the last 6 miles or so of our courses together, after the courses rejoin for the last time. Marathon relay teams will split up but otherwise follow the same course as individual marathoners.

Is the course certified? A “USATF-certified” course has been measured at least twice by a trained expert and approved by the USATF, the major track and field governing organization in the United States. This detail matters for many reasons, including that it tends to mark more professional and better organized races. It also matters because you might want to use your finish time from one race when you apply for another. (Sometimes race organizers use previous times to assign you to a starting “wave” or “corral” with people who run approximately your same pace; sometimes you are only allowed to apply to run a race if you can show that you’ve already finished another one with a fast enough time.) And be ready, if the lululemon Classic City Marathon or Half Marathon is your first long race: Certification experts use the “tangents” at corners, or measure the shortest possible way to run on a given road. The distance on your GPS watch on race day will almost certainly indicate that you actually ran more than 13.1 or 26.2 miles.

What kind of support is there? Distance races almost always provide much more than a starting line and a finish line. As you explore different races, make sure they offer water stops, quick snacks or nutrition on the course, port-a-potties, and medical support along the way. The location of the race provides support, too: If you genuinely prefer running alone on country roads, you can find races that allow you to do that, but most races take place within towns or cities so observers can gather to cheer you on. Our races have a few quiet miles on our lovely greenways but are mostly in town, with plenty of support of all kinds!