Alex Abbe's Staging Area

All around this is a great race. It’s large enough to be competitive (250ish for the Half Marathon) but small enough so that everything dealing with logistics is crazy easy (ex: packet pickup the night before took me 2 minutes from car to door to packet to car…or very easy packet pick up the morning of the race that will take the same amount of time). There is busing involved to the starting line, but the whole process is always very smooth, effortless, and painless.

The course is as flat as a pancake and connects Carlisle to Indianola via a bike trail. It’s great for attempting a PR. The scenery consists of a wooded bike trail through mostly fields and pasture and over several creeks and rivers. This year’s route added a full loop around a small lake which was a nice change of scenery with 5 miles to go. There’s definitely a fall feel to the whole thing.

The TShirts always have great designs and are a good ol fashion cotton T you can wear anywhere. The medals are well done, unique, and of high quality (in my experience this isn’t always the case with local races that are raising money for local charities and scholarships) and the food at the end of the race is awesome (homemade hot biscuits and gravy, chocolate milk, homemade pie) and just what you need after a cold run.

A cool plus: Finish in the top 3 of your age/gender category and your prize is $15 off next year’s race. Perfect for repeat runners.

It’s entirely volunteer run and that’s proven to be a great thing. Those involved do it for the right reasons and they do it very, very well. This is my third straight year running the race and I intend to run it every year if I can. It’s a great final race of the year. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of a larger, fancier, more expensive race, but if you’re looking for an affordable fall race to wrap up the year that’s well run and well run by good people, this is it.