Atlanta Marathon Weekend – News – With A $20k First Prize & World Team Spots, USATF Half-Marathon Championships Attract Top Fields

WITH A $20K FIRST PRIZE & WORLD TEAM SPOTS, USATF HALF-MARATHON CHAMPIONSHIPS ATTRACT TOP FIELDS
By David Monti, @d9monti.bsky.social
(c) 2025 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved – Used with permission.

(05-Feb) — It may not show up on Google Maps but the road to San Diego runs through Atlanta, at least for USA athletes hoping to run in the half-marathon at the World Athletics Road Running Championships on Sunday, September 28.  The Atlanta Track Club is hosting the USATF Half-Marathon Championships on Sunday, March 2, as part of the Publix Atlanta Half-Marathon at The Home Depot Backyard, and the top three men and women will earn qualifying spots for Team USATF in San Diego.  A huge field of 110 elite athletes will compete for a $110,000 prize money purse, and the winners will take home $20,000.

KELATI LEADS WOMEN’S FIELD

The women’s field is particularly strong led by national half-marathon record holder and reigning USA 10,000m champion Weini Kelati (Under Armour/Dark Sky Distance).  Kelati, 28, who just lowered her own national record to 1:06:09 seventeen days ago at the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon, will be trying to qualify for her second consecutive World Athletics Road Running Championships, and her first at the half-marathon.  At the first edition of those championships in Riga in October, 2023, Kelati ran the 5-K and finished seventh.

“It’s always an honor to represent @usatf and the red, blue and white,” Kelati wrote on Instagram after competing in Riga in 2023.

Half a dozen other women are hoping to challenge Kelati led by rising road running star Amanda Vestri (Brooks/ZAP Endurance).  Vestri, 25, is coming off of a pair of quality half-marathons achieved over a stretch of 44 days.  Last December 7th, she ran 1:08:12 at the OUC Orlando Half-Marathon in Florida in her debut at the distance, then on January 19th she ran an even faster 1:07:35 at the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon.

Emma Grace Hurley (Asics), the reigning USA Running Circuit Champion, is also in the field and boasts a 1:08:26 personal best from her one half-marathon run in Indianapolis last November.  A trio of marathoners –Sara Hall (Asics), Annie Frisbie (Puma/Minnesota Distance Elite), and Dakotah Popehn (Puma/Minnesota Distance Elite), are also on the entry list and have run 1:07:15, 1:07:34, and 1:08:04, respectively.  Another marathoner, Jessica McClain (Brooks), who finished fourth at the 2024 Olympic Trials, is hoping to make the national team and also lower her…