Florian Basier's Staging Area

If you ran the Houston Marathon and struggled with the “hills” of Allen Parkway, this 25k is a perfect training. While not on Allen itself but on Memorial, this is the left bank of the same Bayou so you get the same hills and are doing them 6 times (3 back and forth).
If you are not training for Chevron, I would discourage you from running this except if you love running on a debris-filled highway with no shadow and very sparse aid stations. Also, a very small field with a very wide range of running skills, from the sub 90 25k runners to the walkers (walking all 25k!), so the third loop feels really alone, not really motivating when it gets hard.

Very scenic race.
Half marathoners stay with the marathoners for the whole first 13.1mi so you don’t have to worry about slower runners on the course, and people self-corraled in a very clean way so there was absolutely no slaloming required.
The rolling hills are no joke, especially on the second half. My only concern is with the open roads: having cars drive in-between runners in a sometimes unsafe way did not felt good at all.

Very well-organized race on a scenic, flat course. Lots of races claim to be flat, this one definitively is.
Only issue is with the aid stations: there are very few of them, under-staffed, and the cups are filled all the way making it hard to “pinch and drink”. Very nice otherwise!

You have to be ready for these rolling hills: there are three in the first half, and only one in the second, but it is at the worst place: a 4.5mi continuous climb with up to 11% gradient between miles 20 and 25.

Well marked course with a lot of animation, either official ones (rock bands on scenes, faces of the fallen) or just random mariachi bands and cheering spectators (a lot of them!).

My main concerns are with the distribution and location of porta potties, which had only 2-3 at a time before the half/full split, creating long lines. Sometimes they had groups of them close to each other, sometimes they were miles apart, with no indication, creating useless lines as there were empty ones 200-300yds further. Sometimes the porta potties were very close to the course (so the lines were blocking the runners), other times (on Fort Sam Houston), they were 200 yards off course !

Another issue was the non-enforcement of corrals. There were at least 16 corrals which is great, but there were a lot of people in corrals 12+ who snuck into 1-7 corrals, leading to 1-overcrowded porta-potties in the corrals and 2- out of pace runners crowding the first 5-6 miles. It’s really disappointing that such an easy-to-do enforcement of corrals was not done.

Quick, 2-loops race. What you’d expect from a 10 miler in the burbs. Nothing more, nothing less.
Pretty large spread of levels, from sub-50 10 milers to very slow 5 milers, which on a two-loops course means some slaloming on loop 2 but nothing too critical either.
I was only running it as a gear test before an upcoming marathon and got exactly what I was expecting from it!

A very well organized race (World Athletics Gold Label).
Lots of animation along the course, from the giant American flag mile 2 to the multiple bands and of course lots of supporters cheering.
It is a flat, fast course with only two obstacles: the Westpark bridge at mile 13 and the Allen parkway underpasses towards the end.
Corrals are checked so there is limited slaloming needed in the first miles even if the half marathoners crowd the road as the pace groups are consistent.