The Kansas City Course

So the relay is tomorrow. I did sign up for a 5k on Thanksgiving Day for a bit of fun, but aside from that, this will be the only official race I will be doing between now and Arizona. It will also be my first experience of a marathon atmosphere, having never attended one before.

Last weekend, Jill and I drove the marathon course, to get an idea both of how difficult, and how scenic it was. Turns out it is moderately difficult (though my leg isn't too bad), and very scenic. The first leg goes past a number of Kansas City's more popular districts and landmarks.

The first picture is the of newly built Sprint Center, one of KC's primary concert and sports event destinations. The crowning jewel of the new Power and Light Entertainment District, it sits at far north of the marathon course, and runners will go by it a mile or two in.

The picture on the right is the Liberty Memorial monument. Runners run an out and back almost to the steps of the entrance at around mile 4.

The third picture is of the fountain in front of the Country Club Plaza. Both first and second leg runners will go by the Plaza, which is home to one of Kansas City's oldest and most popular shopping destinations.

The second leg is the most scenic of the four (and the one I am running. Yay.) Hyde Park (right), and some of Kansas City's stately homes punctuate this part of the course.

After that, the third leg traverses through the trendy Waldo and Brookside districts before the final leg returns near to where the race began, the last leg containing a significant amount of uphill running.

People think of Kansas as flat and may expect Kansas City to be the same. Two notes about that. Firstly, most of Kansas City is in Missouri, and the entire marathon is on that side of the border. Secondly, unlike the state after which it is named, the town is not at all flat, with rolling hills a constant throughout the metro area.

The marathon website describes Kansas City as a "City of Fountains", and indeed, there do seem to be water treatments around every corner. The statement "more fountains than any other city in the world, except maybe Rome" might require some fact checking, but it, along with the extensive downtown renovations have made my home town a surprisingly attractive, energetic place to live and work, and, of course, to run.