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Texas > Armadillo Dash Half Marathon & 5K
College
Station, TX
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Date
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Event
Details
In just its second annual running -- the event's inaugural race was
held in 2007 -- the Armadillo Dash Half Marathon
& 5K brought out more than 660 runners for both races combined
this year to the streets of College Station, the home of the "Aggies"
and Texas A&M University. 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.
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 this year 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.
Conditions at the start of this year's race were mostly foggy, but that
reportedly gave way to a beautiful day of sunshine for the rest of the
race, with temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s. The race begins at
7:30 AM -- for runners in both the half and the 5K -- and the post-race
celebration and awards ceremony begins at the Veterans Park pavilion
between 9:30 and 10:00 AM.
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 February, average
area temperatures range between 66°F and 44°F, while
rainfall amounts average around 2.38 inches for the month -- making
February the city's second-driest month of the year on average.
Fees
$35 if registered by January 31, 2008
$40 between February 1 - 20
$50 on February 21, 22, 23
$60 on the day of the race
Registration
Online registration is not yet available for the 2009 running of the
Armadillo Dash Half Marathon or 5K. Please check back later
in the
year for updated information on how to register.
Website
www.armadillodash.com
Course Map
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Your Race Story
Ever run in College Station's annual Armadillo Dash Half Marathon or
5K? Share
your impressions and read fellow runners' stories and tips for the
event.
Discuss it in the HalfMarathons.Net
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