Austin Marathon? how bad is it? (Read 886 times)

Hi, I was looking for a late marathon to attempt a boston marathon qualification. Houston is sold out. A friend is doing Austin, but said it was hilly and I read that elites are putting a 3 min penalty on it. What's that mean for us mere mortals? 15 minutes? If so, I'm totally hosed. Anyone have suggestions for a marathon? I head Boston tends to fill up end of Jan or Feb, so I'm cutting it close. (I live in No. CA). thx.

Thanks Modal. But I took a look at the elevation chart and it doesn't look easy to me. In fact, it's an uphill climb at mile 24! are they trying to give heartbreak hill a heart attack? Is it actually easy, and I'm just being a chicken? I saw one post in the link you posted that it's challenging. Have you run it before? What do you think? thx. and happy trails.

Hi, I was looking for a late marathon to attempt a boston marathon qualification. Anyone have suggestions for a marathon?

How about this? http://www.marathonguide.com/races/racedetails.cfm?MIDD=1717080217 (sorry if the link doesn't work; I'm not very good at this.)

Austin is just Boston without a B.

For what it's worth, I seem to recall seeing a side-by-side profile of Cowtown and Austin, with Cowtown looking slightly less hilly. It was on http://www.fwrunco.com/, but that site doesn't have much in the way of archived pages, and the graph was in the 6-month hole between Google cache and the Wayback machine, so I'm not sure where to find it now.

Austin Freescale is no longer an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying race because the course is aided. There is a 137 meter elevation loss from start to finish - that's over 3 meters per kilometer net loss.

For what it's worth, Freescale is no longer sponsoring the race. I think it's now the AT&T Austin marathon. Or something like that. I think I'll just call it Austin.

Thanks everyone for the posts and info. While Austin may not be an Olympic qualifying marathon, I'm happy to say that it is a Beantown qualifying one, and that's plenty fine for me. seeEricarun - good luck! I'll post if I end up there. (though my training is taking a serious hit this holiday!) Thanks kevinyoder for the link (it worked!). I actually grew up in Cincy, but after years in temperate California, a midwest marathon in February would kill me (if the miles themselves don't)