CCTX Marathon

Almost nothing on the marathon calendar runs between Christmas and New Year's, and that gap is most of the reason this weekend exists. V F Productions builds it with the city: a Saturday 5K, then a Sunday morning that sends the marathon, half marathon and two-person half relay off together from the Hilliard Center on North Shoreline Boulevard. The full is the smallest of the four races and does not sell out, so the pressure is financial rather than competitive. Entry climbs through five tiers, from the early-bird price to nearly double that in race week, which means a late decision is an expensive one. Minimum age for the full is 16.

The opening six miles work the downtown grid. Runners drop south on North Shoreline, cut inland along Resaca, Chaparral and Mesquite, climb North Broadway to a turnaround inside the Whataburger Field parking lot, then come back through Leopard Street, Spur 407 and the Sartain and Water Street blocks toward the water. Everything after that is one long out and back. The route heads south on Shoreline Boulevard and then Ocean Drive past the bayfront parks to a turnaround just short of the Naval Air Station gate around mile 16, and retraces the same ten miles home. The finish line sits on the same block of North Shoreline the race left from, and nothing in between rises far enough above the water to count as a hill. Wind takes the place of terrain. When twenty of the twenty-six miles are a straight line down the bay and back, the direction of the breeze decides which half of the race hurts.

Late December on the Texas coast normally means starting near 50 and finishing in the middle 60s, which is about as good as marathon weather gets in this state. Humidity holds up through the winter, so the air rarely feels as dry as the temperature suggests, and the sun is unobstructed on the bayfront half of the course. The variable worth watching is the wind and its direction. A steady onshore breeze off Corpus Christi Bay is the default setting, and a norther arriving behind a front can knock twenty degrees off the forecast and turn the ten miles back up Ocean Drive into the hardest stretch of the day.