ERIN EDMINISTER's Staging Area

Expo was nice but everything after that went downhill, you had 4 + hour marathoners lined up in front causing lots of congestion for faster runners, the race started 10 minutes late, awards were done off gun times verses chip times, the female lead cyclist missed a turn causing confusion for lead runners, the road wasn’t divided so you had runners making the turn for the last 4 miles trying to weave through runners who started later and still on their way out, aid stations were hard to get to due to congestion and volunteers weren’t knowledgable on where to stand, traffic to get to the race was nuts and way backed up, parking impossible- you could not drive to the race Uber or Lift was the only option. The worst part of all… the course was mis measured and half marathoners finished at 13.45-13.55 miles, the full marathoners were .4-.5 over too which made the already tough conditions even worse. Conditions were hot and rainy. For athletes who checked gear bags, they weren’t well sorted so it took some athletes 20 + minutes of standing in line to get their bags back after they finished. Overall I was disappointed with the production of the event, we traveled from Arkansas with a team of 16 and while conditions being less favorable wasn’t anyones fault, there were so many issues for runners to worry about from lack of planning from a production stand point. Probably a fine race for locals to use as a training run but would not recommend this race to people looking to travel as a destination race or looking for a PR.