Run by the same athletic organization that stages the fabled Boston Marathon each April, the Boston Athletic Association Half Marathon is a much younger sibling of the full 26.2-mile marathon — just over a dozen years for the B.A.A. half vs. nearly 120 years for the Boston Marathon.
The 13.1-mile course for the race takes runners on a tour of different parts of the city, starting at Franklin Park and heads through the city all the way to Roberto Clemente Field in the Back Bay Fens neighborhood near Fenway Park, and then back along the Arborway to the Riverway to Franklin Park, where the turnaround point back to the finish line lies.
With numerous rolling hills along a combination out-and-back and loop course made up entirely of Boston’s paved city streets, the B.A.A. Half shows off the city’s parkland areas, taking runners past Olmstead Park, Jamaica Plain (and the Jamaica Pond) and the Arnold Arboretum on the way to Franklin Park. The loop portion of the course occurs around Olmstead Park, as runners run along either side of the park in the first and second halves of the race.
This ran has been run annually since 2001 and has more than 5,000 finishers at the race each year over the past few years.
Part of that is due, no doubt, to the course’s route along Boston’s “Emerald Necklace,” the system of linear parks designed by legendary urban architect Frederick Law Olmstead (for whom the first park along the Necklace is named).
Part of the mission of the event is to raise both funds and awareness for the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, which aims to re-establish the parks according to Olmstead’s vision with new landscaping and distinctive waterways and trails for everyone, from walkers and runners to bicyclists.
Proceeds from the race also will go towards the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund, which funds and conducts research towards finding treatments and with the goal of finding a cure for many of the major cancer types.
