Runners, take your marks!

Tucson is in the final stretch of preparations for the Garmin Marathon, a project where the planning started much earlier with the help of local runners.

Randy Accetta of Run Tucson was one of those runners. He's organized several races in Tucson from the Meet Me Downtown 5k to the A Mountain Half Marathon.

Accetta said they had to make some hard choices on what parts of town the course should wind through while fitting the course requirements for a Boston Marathon qualifier race.

"We started downtown to get desert scenery," he said, drawing the map of the course in the air with his finger. "You go through historic Sam Hughes, and then we rocket ship down Broadway to get the Sunshine Mile."

To fit Boston Marathon requirements, the course cannot have a net-dow

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