Key West Half Marathon
Key West, Florida
Sunday, January 20, 2013

I race walked the Key West Half Marathon held in my hometown Key West, Florida on January 20, 2013. The temperature ranged from 69 to 75 degrees with mostly cloudy skies and a gentle breeze. Water stations were located about every mile and were manned by plenty of enthusiastic volunteers. Because of the major construction in Key West, the normal loop course was replaced by a mainly out and back course which I found to be a much nicer course with better scenery, nicer Key West sights and no crossings of major roads; thus, very little traffic congestion occurred as a result of the event. The course used about 4 miles of roadway which was locate in old town and only had sparse amount of traffic and the rest was bike paths and walkways. Every intersection had at least 2 enthusiastic volunteers to control the little amount of traffic and keep the participants safe. There were also friendly police officers stationed at key intersections. The event has really grown in size as there were over 1100 finishers in the Half Marathon. Hal Higdon, a well known author of running books and articles who won the Boston Marathon many years ago was a celebrity for the event. The race was extremely well organized and fun to do and had a very nice finisher’s medal. I do hope next year’s event can find a larger place for packet pick-up as there were too many people for the space allocated. That was to only negative aspect of the event. The rest was extremely positive.