Portions on beach dropped from 26.2 with Donna marathon

When thousands of runners take to the streets of Jacksonville and the Beaches for the start of Sunday's 26.2 With Donna marathon, they won't notice a change in the air.

Instead, the change is on the ground.

The disappearance of the race's beach segments will be the biggest adjustment for participants in Sunday's ninth annual race, the national marathon to fight breast cancer.

The traditional sections of the route along the beach are gone this year, replaced by runs along First Street and Second Street in Jacksonville Beach.

That's moving about 2 miles of the marathon course and 1 mile of the half marathon onto the pavement.

"I've had a number of people say to me, 'I've always wanted to run this race but I didn't want to run on the beach,' " race founder Donna Deegan said. "Now, they're going to go out and give it a try."

The difficulty of aligning a viable weekend race date with favorable tide conditions prompted the change.

"We've had to flip-flop the dates [in the past] to ensure that the tides are low," race director Amanda Napolitano said. "It's better for the runners, sponsors, everyone to be able to know that the Donna weekend is the second one in February."

Napolitano didn't rule out a return to running on the beach at some point, but said the 2016 and 2017 routes will remain on the roadway.

The shift from sand to asphalt will likely result in faster times for many runners.

"We're already the fastest marathon course in Florida, so we just got a little faster," Napolitano said.

Although some of the middle may be different, the beginning and end of the race, at ATP Tour Boulevard in Ponte Vedra Beach and the Mayo Clinic respectively, remain unchanged.

So when the runners, estimated to number nearly 10,000 counting the entire weekend's events, finish their journey to the finishing tape, they'll know what to expect.

The new route will affect residents in southern Jacksonville Beach, but Napolitano said the changes won't have a significant impact on traffic beyond the usual closures.

It also shouldn't change the festive atmosphere. If anything, supporters around the route may have even more opportunities to cheer the runners along.

"As beautiful as the beach is, it's really our Beaches neighborhoods that bring the party," Napolitano said.

As the 26.2 With Donna continues to raise its national and local profile - CNN highlighted it on its October list of seven U.S. marathons worth the trip - the race continues to fund research and support, as it reaches the ninth year of its effort to end breast cancer.

"If you look back at the last nine years and everything we've been able to accomplish, the research, the women we've been able to help, I'm really pleased," Deegan said. "We've seen tremendous progress."