Pasadena marathon: a lot of zig-zagging

I was just taking a look at our online story on the Pasadena Marathon, a pending proposal to squeeze a 26.2 mile race within the city borders.

It sounded like it would be a pretty tight fit to me, so I zipped over to Google Maps to plot out the (rough) borders of the city. My 18.36 mile route might be a bit short around some of the edges, but it is still almost the longest route you could run around the city without having to change directions, and it is almost 8 miles too short.

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What does this mean? There will be a lot of zig-zagging back and forth around the city streets. November 16 could end up be a good day to not try to get anywhere on city streets.