Judy Scavino's Staging Area

This race course was absolutely gorgeous! Most of the race was alongside a river with some waterfalls here and there, on a road closed to traffic, and tree-lined the whole way. It was a downhill course (my first), and while everyone says how much it will hurt your quads, I didn’t find it to be any problem. The packet pickup building was a bit hard to find using a GPS, but the vendors and photo ops were great. I wasn’t a fan of the tiny post-race food offerings, so pack your protein bars for after the race.

Vacation Races put this on and they had to change the course this year but we knew well in advance this was going to happen. The course had pavement, dirt hilly roads, and crushed gravel that I found sliding under my feet that made it challenging to keep pace. Don’t do this for a PR: do it for the BEAUTY! Much of the course was along a river and on the out and back portion, the runners you passed were so lovely and happy and cheerful! They had plenty of potties at the start and about 2 miles in they had a jacket drop so you could get your jacket back! I liked the gnarley a lot which I’d never had before. Loved at the end of the race they don’t rush you away from the finish line and they let you take pics, etc. Nice snack box at the end of the race. Lovely shirt. Fun signs at packet pick up for photo ops.

Beautiful scenery on this nearly flat course. Great expo with s’mores, gnarley to sample, fun photo ops in front of VR national park sign, 13.1 sign and place to sign your name. Shirts were very pretty and medals were great design. Announcer was fun. Free pics and free finish line video! Great treat box post race.

This is the second time I’ve done this race (first time I did the full). I like the expo because it is pretty big. Parking is very difficult: the convention center parking was full for the expo and the guards just shrugged and left you on your own to figure out street parking. It poured down rain but even with the rain, the cheer stations were still there and they were varied and fun.

Pretty course that starts and ends in downtown Jacksonville
Small but nice expo for packet pickup
There are several hotels in walking distance to the start that were reasonably priced

Nice spinner medal with dangling charm
Nice Tervis tumbler cup at the finish line
Pretty and very flat course
T-shirts ran very big, but they told you they ran small when you registered, so everyone upsized and then ended up with shirts that were too big.
Good mimosa’s at the end and nice free giveaways from local grocery store, but there wasn’t much post race food. It was Carraba’s and Outback: in the past at other races, we had lots of food from them, but this time you just got a tiny scoop of chicken marsala or steak. It was really good, but that was all the food they had, other than post race banana and apple.

I’m from flat Florida, so this had considerable rolling hills for a FL girl, but nice scenery on roads or through a park with a wide paved trail.
Packet pick up is just that–nothing but pick up your bib and shirt. However, take the time to go to the hot air balloon festival after you get your packet and they have fun give-aways at the festival. The balloons are 100% dependent on the weather, so if it is windy or rainy, they don’t inflate them. Lots of food trucks with food for purchase at the festival. Post race, they had scrambled eggs and bacon and muffins. While I appreciate the effort of the volunteers, they were the worst eggs I’ve ever had. :-0 I did manage to place in my age group and it was fun that they had “Miss Texas” on hand to present the awards. The guy who runs the race is very kind and let me defer my race from 2018 to 2019, as I had a broken bone in 2018. Nice looking shirts and medals.

Expo was great: lots of give-aways!
Course was flat and very few turns. Advertised as a downhill race but to me, it didn’t seem like much of a downhill.
LOTS of water stations and Offerpad had the funniest signs: I wish I had time to stop and take pics of them as they were great!
Post race party was AWESOME and again, lots of give-aways.

-This is a very popular race. I have done it twice and I live in the Tampa area.
-AWESOME race medal
-Various distances offered over the weekend so you can get extra medals and extra goodies. Beware–challenge jackets are usually horribly ugly!
-Expensive race compared to other races
-Lots of runners so expect to be in a bottleneck the first 2-3 miles.
-Flat course
-Lots of volunteers and crowds