What does the Half Marathon course of the Hospital Hill Run feature?”
It is 6:30 in the morning, on an overcast Saturday morning, in Kansas City, Missouri. Beth Salinger, race director of the 37th Hospital Hill, and her team, were hard at work on the last minute preparations for the event. The race, the most venerable event in the Kansas City running scene, features a 5k, 10k and one of the toughest half marathons in the country. For me, the race was a step back in time. Off the elevator, I saw Mark Curp, one of the most important elite American road runners of the 80s and 90s. I had not seen Mark since 1986, when I emceed a panel with Mark, Ed Eyestone and Bill Reifsynder at Bobby Crim Ten Miler. Mark was quiet as usual, and was now serving on the Hospital Hill Run race committee. The half marathon is a text book example of how our sport is changing. While over one million runners finished half marathons in 2009, and most half marathons grew an average of twenty per cent in the same year, the Hospital Hill half marathon grew 30 percent in one year! In f
