Lake Placid Classic @ Olympic Oval, Lake Placid, New York, United States on 06 September 2014

Set to mark its 44th annual running here in the area that served as the home of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games, the Lake Placid North Elba Half Marathon takes runners through the town streets of this small village in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, and features views of the rolling hills and mountains all around.

Virtually every American who was born before the late 1970s will remember Lake Placid for the Olympics and perhaps most famously for the “Miracle on Ice,” when the U.S. hockey team defeated the heavily favored Soviet national hockey team by a score of 4-3, an Olympics that also made a hero of speed skater Eric Heiden (who won all 5 gold medals in his events).

Runners follow a point-to-point course for the half marathon, which starts near the Olympic skating oval on Main Street and then takes runners on a tour around the shoreline of Mirror Lake, first along Main Street and then onto Mirror Lake Drive.

Next, the course heads onto Parkside Drive and then proceeds south toward the Olympic ski jump area and the Lake Placid Airport, where runners will make a left turn onto Riverside Drive, and follow it for a long out-and-back stretch before heading back to the North Elba Show Grounds for the race finish.

Along the winding race route, runners are treated to views that will take them back to the Olympics (briefly at least), as they pass by the site of the Olympic ski jumps rising in the trees just off the course. Runners will also pass by Lake Placid’s historic John Brown Farm, where the now famous abolitionist built his “Freed Slave Utopian Experiment,” which today is the site of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.

A small race with an intimate sized field of participants — in recent years, the race has seen between 200 and 300 runners cross the finish line each year — the Lake Placid North Elba Half is considered an excellent early fall warm-up race for marathons throughout the New York area later in the fall.

Scheduled starting time for the race is 9:00 AM, and runners will need to complete the course within 4 1/2 hours, as on-course support will no longer be offered after 1:30 PM.