Devin Toohey's Staging Area

The Saguaro half may be the worst half I ran.

1. The parking situation – whoever planned it actually needs to be fired. There should have been a shuttle or a different location or FAR more people staffing it because it took me 75 minutes to get out of the parking lot. The company took next-to-no accountability, basically sending an email that amounted to “Oops! Well, you should have told us sooner! We never expected to need staff getting people out of a bottleneck!”

Mind you, people had just run a grueling half. Had it been hotter that day, it would have been SEVERELY dangerous, between cars overheating and people getting heat exhaustion/dehydration. Many runners I ran into later that weekend said they had leg problems from being in the cars too long afterwards.

2. The elevation map was deceptive. Squeezing the first 7 miles into a fraction of that on the map made the course seem to have a rough beginning before easing up, rather than a while half of the race at an incline.

3. The trail running part was dangerous. It was too narrow and too rocky with far too many ups and downs. I’ve done and enjoyed trails, but this was hard to find a pace because of how much it bottlenecked and how dangerous the terrain was. I fell, as did many others.