Kristjana Cook's Staging Area

Organization and communication by the race director and staff was great! Volunteers were great! After-party was a little over-hyped. Walk from the finish line to after party to shuttles was a little longer than most races. Lines at afterparty were ridiculous… though I finished as one of the faster marathoners, I finished at the same time as all the really slow half-marathoners who were bound and determined to get as much of their free food and beer as humanly possible… I ended up skipping the afterparty once I realized that standing in line would take me as long as running another 5k.. which it felt like it was back to the shuttle bus area! Course was disappointing. We did have a couple miles through the “nice” part of Charleston, but the rest was access roads by a highway, over train tracks (a train even stopped a group of about 30 runners in front of me!), through a housing project, an icky industrial part of town and then through a really boring neighborhood with no spectators or anything around to confirm that you were on course… I ran an entire mile without seeing any other people! I was even worried I’d fallen off course… I DID PR, so maybe the boredom factor worked? Again, the volunteers were FANTASTIC. And the Race itself was well-organized. It would be a GREAT race if the course were better!