John Doe's Staging Area

So I Initially I wanted to run the marathon, but the second half of it is by the shore of the river and there is nothing there. I ended up singing up for the half instead.

I love how organized the race was. Everything was very smooth. I went to pick up my bib on Friday in Tower Grove Park, which was later relocated to Forest Park visitor center due to Tornado watch. It went over lunchtime and had to go back to work, so it was a bit annoying to have to walk from on side of the expo to get the bib, to the other side to get the tshirts. Those tshirts are very ugly by the way. It’s a flashy green that was probably designed so that construction workers on the highway don’t get hit when there’s fog. I understand that you need flashy colors to see who are the volunteers/organizers, but I would encourage keeping the colors neutral for participants gear. Unless they’re making the shirts ugly on purpose so that we buy the official race gear.

I was expecting to receive an email or two maybe a week or two before the race to remind me of the main information and build some excitement around it. All the race information is on their website, and everything is well explained so it wasn’t a big deal.

I’m a student in St. Louis and don’t have a car so I just biked to Forest Park in the morning and parked in front of the Visitor Center. The gear check went very smoothly and was extremely convenient since all your gear is brought back to the end of the race. It took 20 seconds to find mine at the end of the race.

The race being in St. Louis, you can’t have big expectations for the scenery and all. This being said I really enjoyed it. I started following the 1h50 pacer and then spent the race trying to catch up with the 1h45 pacer. I didn’t find it hilly. My watch says I climb 500 feet and went down 550 feet. In the last mile it goes downhill a lot by the arch, before a steep short climb right before the end. I liked that last surprise, then you’re exhausted when you arrive and feel like you gave it all. There was some face wind blowing at some point, and I can tell how it can be a whole different race when it does.

There’s certainly a part of the race say from mile 7-10 where there isn’t much going on and we run through impoverished Midtown neighborhoods. The water station were well positioned, I took some Gatorade twice, a gel and water. I’m always very grateful for all the volunteers who got up early in the cold to help organize the race and distribute water, so I don’t expect that they smile and encourage me profusely on top of that. They don’t get tips.

Support was sparse but fairly evenly distributed through the race I’d say until mile 10 at the St. Louis City stadium. Very nice support at mile 2 in Clayton, and mile 6-7 especially. Again I’m very grateful for all the people cheering on the side of the road, and usually throw a lot of thank you to them. Kids, cops, students, random people encouraging random strangers like me.

I haven’t done a lot of races so I can’t compare post-race parties. Like I said I got my gear back quickly. The thing is on a parking lot so it might have been nice to have some sort of seating at the arrival. I ended up eating my Goey butter cake on the concrete. It might have been nice to have some sort of changing rooms for privacy too, or maybe I missed them. I ended up changing on the side of a tent. There give you a great local beer upon arrival (Schlafly).

I took the Metrolink back from Laclede’s landing to Forest Park. There were some school bus shuttles to bring racers from the arrival back to Forest Park. Again it was very well organized in my opinion.