Emily Karrick's Staging Area

This was my first half marathon. I was extremely nervous and trained for 5 months. Hard work paid off though. I grew up going to this race to watch my dad run and we finally got to run it together in 2025. Parked in fountain square garage easily and walked a couple blocks down to the start. They had plenty of bathrooms and there were a lot of volunteers to help people get in their correct corral. Luckily the rain held off until mile 10ish. I was extremely nervous about Gilbert hill around mile 5 but it was much more manageable than I anticipated. I did all of my long runs on rolling hill route and I did multiple days of hill repeats on Gilbert. If you’re local I’d recommend hill reps on Gilbert, makes running up it once for race day a breeze. I was shocked by the amount of runners as well as spectators. There really wasn’t many dead points for the crowd on the entire course. The sheer amount of people who come out to support the runners was incredible and made me cry tears of joy during the race. I think Cincinnati is beautiful so the course for me was super lovely. When you run back across the bridge from KY you get a nice view of the skyline. I wish they still gave out dry fit shirts for race swag. They used to but the past few years have been cotton t shirts instead. Which is eh, I just wish we got race shirts we can run in often, I don’t prefer cotton for running. I understand that beer companies sponsor the race, however I wished that the Mic Ultra after party offered vendors with non alcoholic beverages. I only saw beer and liquor tents. It would’ve been nice to have a nice bevvie after finishing, for I do not drink. They had ice cream but it was a bit chilly for me to want that. Overall I loved this race. Amazing crowd, well organized, high energy, fun course. 10/10 I will be running this race again. Train on hills in your training block and the Gilbert/ Eden park drive section will not seem as bad as you thought it would be. Oink oink!