St. Jude Rock ‘n’ Roll Nashville Marathon & Half Marathon

Course highlights

With a start in front of the honky tonks on Lower Broadway, a tour past the Country Music Hall of Fame, Music City Center, and down Music Row, plus a grand finishing festival in LP Field, we know you’re in for a sight from start to finish. The course follows a point-to-point course that starts off with a gradual uphill for the first few miles, which unfold through downtown Nashville and then head south, passing by the campus of Vanderbilt University. From there, the unfolds along a hilly and sometimes challenging route, with plenty of rolling hills throughout both the full and the half marathon courses, and ends on the other side of the Cumberland River that cuts through the city, on the grounds of the Nashville Stadium and LP Field, the home field of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. Along the 13.1 miles of the half marathon route, participants will encounter much of what makes the city a destination for country music lovers around the world — in recent years, the first mile of the race along Broadway has featured live music for the entire length of the mile. The next few miles — which head into residential areas south of downtown — feature the longest uphill stretch of the half marathon, a gradual climb that peaks in the Belmont neighborhood around mile 4. That’s followed by a downhill stretch over the next couple of miles and then an equally gradual downhill descent in the second half of hte race. The rest of the race will also have live music and entertainment, thanks to what organizers say will be hundreds of cheerleaders from area high schools stationed along the route, as well as dozens of bands blasting all kinds of music out for the runners — including country, rock, blues, jazz and more — as they pass by one of more than two dozen stages along the course. The final couple of miles bring runners past the Tennessee State Capitol building and Bicentennial State Park before they head over the bridge at Woodland Street, to the finish line at LP Field.