T Y's Staging Area

Less than 100 finishers for the marathon, but you wouldn’t think that based on the organization. Great communication leading up to the race, well marked course with volunteers at the more major areas to help point you on your way. Not a lot of crowd support if you need that, but very supportive volunteers at the aid stations. A little bit of hills during the first 5ish miles, then on the bike trail for mostly flat the rest of the way. Altitude could be an issue if not used to that, but it didn’t seem to feel too bad. Great post race food and celebration. Neat age group awards and nice 1/4 zip/medal too.

Five sshoes are not high enough for the race production with this race. The pre-race communication and website information was fantastic. If you didn’t find an answer to a question then you either didn’t read well enough or you really didn’t need to know it. The race director was also super accessible at packet pickup and pre-race pasta dinner. This was my 15th marathon and this was the most well marked course I’ve ever run (including 20 halfs). Color coded route arrows on the pavement and corriplast signs as well as at least 2 volunteers at each turn made it impossible to get off course. I think the website described it as ‘challenging but fair’ and I would agree with that. Net downhill according to my watch, but that wasn’t really noticeable. Some rolling hills at various parts with a couple of steeper ones later in the race, particularly a down into the cemetery and then a couple ups closer to the end of the cemetery. Most of the inclines weren’t really noticeable though.
Crowd support was decent, but it’s a smaller race mostly through NH countryside, so if you need the roar of a Chicago crowd, this probably won’t work for you. Volunteer support all weekend was top notch. Pre-race pasta dinner was good with an enjoyable program (Frank Shorter this year). Post race food was okay, cookies and chocolate milk were my favorites, some fruit, bagels and vegetable soup (heavy on chickpeas and beans) this year. The course was mostly open to traffic, which at times was not great but manageable. Several times you were running with traffic, but the drivers seemed more courteous to runners than I’m used to. Porta-potties were not super plentiful and were fairly spread out (none from 4 – 10, roughly every 5 miles after that). I also had significant overlap with half marathoners (they start 1 hour later, I ran mid 3 hours), passing the same runners 4 or 5 times based on how the courses were set up, so that got a little old. All in all, a fantastic race weekend (nice quaint small town also), highly recommended if you are a 50 stater needing New Hampshire. They also do a very cool thing with your bib for 50 staters, at least by my wife and I’s nerdy standards.