I’m sure you know that this Sunday is the Chevron Houston Marathon, but did you realize that there’s some hot marathon action happening on Saturday, too?
The 2012 Marathon Trials course
Organizers for Saturday’s U.S. Olympic marathon trials arrived Tuesday to find a city and a race course doused by rainfall, cooled by a timely cold front and poised for what organizers describe as ideal conditions for Saturday’s stop on the road to the 2012 London Olympics.
Saturday’s trials, a prelude to the 40th annual Chevron Houston Marathon on Sunday, will feature an estimated 158 men and 223 women racing for the three spots available in each category for the 2012 Games.
And the weather, in contrast to the miserable conditions that have gripped Houston for months, could scarcely be better.
[…]
Saturday’s trials will take place over a course that may be unfamiliar to fans of the Chevron Houston Marathon, which celebrates its 40th anniversary with Sunday’s run, but is well-known to the tens of thousands who attend the city’s Fourth of July celebrations in the Buffalo Bayou greenbelt west of downtown.
After runners start from the Discovery Green area near the George R. Brown Convention Center with an initial loop through downtown, the 26.2-mile Olympic trials course will follow an eight-mile loop on either side of the bayou following Memorial Drive to South Shepherd to Allen Parkway.
Runners will travel the loop three times before hitting the finish line at the convention center.
Here’s the Marathon Trials website. The main thing you need to know, at least if you live in my neck of the woods, is that Studemont and Heights/Waugh will be closed off between Washington and Dallas. They’ve had marquee signs up advertising that since New Year’s Day. It confused me a bit at first, because I knew the 14th is a Saturday, and the Marathon is always on a Sunday. Now I know. Metro service will also be interrupted by this, so beware. You want to see some really skinny people run really fast for two hours, this is the place to do it.
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