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Texas > Armadillo Dash Half Marathon & 5K
College Station, TX • Sunday, March 3, 2013 • Course Map
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In just its sixth annual running -- the event's inaugural race was held in 2007 -- the Armadillo Dash Half Marathon & 5K brought out more than 2,800 runners for both races combined in 2012 to the streets of College Station, the home of the "Aggies" and Texas A&M University, making last year's run the largest "Dash" to date.
Run along an out-and-back course that begins and ends at the city's Veterans Park on Highway 30/Harvey Road, the race unfolds along a wide, sweeping loop through the rolling hills and scenic country roads just outside College Station, with a few intown neighborhoods mixed in. More than 1,200 finishers completed the half marathon alone in 2012.
The event is the brainchild of local running enthusiast and event organizer Jennifer Friedman, who had moved to Texas three years prior to starting the event and noticed that the city didn't have any half-marathon events on its local road racing calendar, and in fact hadn't staged a 13.1-mile running event in over a decade. She wanted to brand the event with a name that would evoke a sense of place, and named it after the rodent seen so often along the side of the road in the southwestern part of the country.
The course for the race takes runners along roads that lie just couple of miles away from the A&M campus, which gives the city its strong identity as "Aggieland" and is the alma mater of famous country singers like Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen (one of whose more well-known songs, appropriately enough, is "Armadillo Highway"). Much of the course is predominantly farmland, some of it dotted with trees and the rest of it wide-open spaces, which means plenty of flat terrain for most of the race.
There are a few hills along the course, however, most notably between miles 7 and 9, and runners in the past have experienced some windy conditions in the last two to three miles of the course toward the finish, which take runners from the bottom section of the loop course onto Highway 6 and then onto Harvey Road. Other than those few hilly stretches, the rest of the course is "pancake flat," as one past participant described it.
Race Weather & Climate
Late winter weather conditions are usually mild to moderately cool in College Station, located about 80 miles northwest of Houston, in the land between the Brazos and the Navasota Rivers. In March, average area temperatures range between 73°F and 50°F, while rainfall amounts average just over 2.8 inches for the month.
On the day of the race (March 3), the average high is 70°F and the average low is 47°F.
Course Map
View the race route map for the Armadillo Dash Half Marathon
Fees
$50 for the half marathon, if registered by December 31, 2012
$60 between January 1 - 31, 2013
$70 between February 1 - 27
$90 at the race packet pickup
Registration
To reserve your spot in the late winter/early spring 2013 running of College Station's Armadillo Dash Half Marathon & 5K, register online at Active.com.
Official Race Website
www.armadillodash.com
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