The 8th Annual AthHalf Half Marathon takes place this weekend. There are some changes to the event. In addition to a news course, due to construction at Sanford Stadium, a 5K has been added. Jill Helm is Executive Director of AthFest Educates.
“We thought we would add a 5K as a way to let family and friends who come out to support their runners also get involved in race weekend,” Helm said. “It’s such this hyper-local event that we wanted to be able to expand it to people who might not care to train for 13.1 miles but are happy to train for 3.1.
The 5K is Saturday at 3:30 pm and the AthHalf is Sunday at 7:30 am.
The race is rated one of Shape Magazine’s must-run half-marathons and ranked number one on HalfMarathon.net list of top 9 Great College Town Half Marathon.
The race provides the bulk of the money to support AthFest Educates.
“The nonprofit organization that produces the AthHalf Half Marathon and 5K is AthFest Educates. What AthFest Educates does is we award grants to support music and arts education for kindergarten through eighth-grade youth in Athens-Clarke County. And probably 90% or so of the grant money that we have available comes from the race.
Helm says since 2009, the organization has awarded over $310,000 in grants.
