Catherine Walts's Staging Area

– Very easy race bib & t-shirt pick up the night before the race
– Mostly flat course
– Great weather on the day we ran
– Start line was kinda crowded and nothing to write home about…basically started in an empty field
– 6 water/Gatorade stations along the half marathon route (different flavors of Gatorade at each)
– Most of the course is on the Swamp Rabbit Trail with no car traffic (only bike/pedestrian traffic)
– Great, post-race food (breakfast burritos, individual packaged snacks, coffee, beer)
– The end was in downtown Greenville at the Pavillion, which was very cool. However, it was incredibly crowded with little room to mingle or sit after the race.

With the race being in February, we had mild winter weather on race day (start ~40 degrees, warming up to ~55 degrees; sunny entire time). While we had great temps, there wasn’t much to see on the Swamp Rabbit Trail course b/c most of the trees didn’t have any green, yet. There were a few little areas with some art or sculptures but the majority was fairly “plain”.

Instead of the 3 miles at the beginning before getting onto the Swamp Rabbit trail, I wish we had done those 3 miles thru the Furman campus. We could have taken that Furman running trail off of the Swamp Rabbit and run around their campus. That would have provided much better scenery than the highway at the beginning.