The Expo Half Marathon and 10K/5K — known as Expo — celebrates several milestones this weekend including the 60th anniversary of the Knoxville Track Club.
East Tennessee might not be the first place you think of for running, but the Knoxville Track Club says otherwise. Six decades of dedicated runners and events in the University of Tennessee’s Big Orange Country will celebrate the club’s founding at the 45th running of Expo. The race was created in 1978, well before the 1982 World’s Fair arrived in Knoxville.
If you’ve ever visited Knoxville or have seen the iconic gold Sunsphere downtown, that was the logo for the fair. It remains today in Expo Park, where the races will begin and end. So, the weekend will see the 40th anniversary of the fair, 45th running of Expo and six decades of the KTC. Very cool!
Expo Half Marathon
To celebrate, the club is offering a special edition Expo half marathon this year. It has stipulations: runners must finish in at least three hours 30 minutes. The course will be closed at 11 a.m.
More familar to runners are the 10K and 5K events. For 45 years these have attracted runners from all over east Tennessee and elsewhere. The KTC even has categories for families, with mother/son, mother/daughter, father/son, father/daughter, wife/husband, and “three generations” categories. How cool is that? Other track clubs could take a lesson from that effort.
Course route for the half marathon includes some familiar Knoxville landmarks including the World’s Fair park, Volunteer Boulevard, through the University of Tennessee campus, Neyland Greenway and Volunteer Landing. The 10K/5K route has some similarities.
