IU Health 500 Festival Mini-Marathon.

IU Health 500 Festival Mini-Marathon 2027: Course, Route Profile & Map

The start is on West Street in the middle of downtown Indianapolis. Inside the first kilometre the course drops down Washington Street to the White River, past White River State Park and the Indianapolis Zoo, at 208 metres the lowest point of the first half. From there it runs consistently west: West Michigan Street, Holt Road, 10th Street and finally Main Street up into Speedway, the small town that gives the track its name. Over those ten kilometres the course lifts barely fifteen metres, and you will not feel a metre of it.

At kilometre 9.2 Shaw Drive takes you onto the grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. What follows is a complete lap of the 2.5-mile oval in the racing direction: north up the backstretch, west across the north straight at 224 metres, the high point of the day, then south down the main straight alongside the pits and over the Yard of Bricks, where runners traditionally stop to kiss the bricks. You run on the warm-up lane and the pit lane, not on the banked racing surface. At kilometre 14.3 the course leaves the oval again.

The way home is the fastest part of the course and the most monotonous: 16th Street, Olin Avenue, then roughly three kilometres arrow-straight east on 10th Street, then New York Street. Shortly before kilometre 20 the course drops to the White River one last time and climbs four metres back onto the downtown terrace over the closing kilometres. The finish is on West New York Street beside Military Park. The surface is closed city asphalt throughout, and with more than 20,000 starters and around a hundred music and cheer acts along the route it is loud almost the whole way.