Meaghan Harmon's Staging Area

This race is so beautiful – however beautiful you’ve heard it is, it’s even more amazing. Genuinely a situation where I could almost forget I was running because I would get so focused on the scenery. I did Boston to Big Sur, and all of the extras for that were really great, and it sort of created a little community within the community at the race and throughout the weekend. Very well organized event with so many fun extras and just really cool, incomparable moments. Yes, the course is hard, but this is one to slow down and enjoy! Aside from the actual race, the Monterey area is just an awesome place to spend a weekend – and so much amazing food and wine to treat yourself with after your race! (Although, in my case, I didn’t wait until after the race for that!). One last note – communication before and after the race was great – felt very informed and it was easy to go back and review things I wasn’t sure about. Really in every way an exceptional race.

First, the good – much of it very good. Revel put on a very good race with lots of attention to making runners comfortable and also rewarding them for their effort. One of the best swag bags I’ve ever gotten, tons of extras. Very helpful and friendly race/bib pickup staff. Extremely comfortable bus ride (was surprised at coach buses!) and, in my opinion, good COVID protocols in place. Felt they did an excellent job keeping us safe as far as COVID, especially at the start – some of the most cautious start area precautions I’ve seen/heard about. The course, for me, was tough. I know the downhill for the first 20+ miles is great for lots of people – I would say it was good for me for awhile. But I live in an extremely flat area, and the combination of the downhill that flattens out in the last 5 miles or so, elevation I’m not used to at all, and the extreme temperature change from start to finish made the last few miles of this race really rough for me. Also, the recovery was significantly worse than normal – I typically do not have any noticeable leg soreness after a marathon and can resume running normally right away, but this time it was several days before I could even go up and down stairs normally. But all of that is just personal situation stuff – I know these types of courses are really great for lots of people and help them set big PR’s. Just not me. Okay, now the one negative I feel like I have to share. First let me say, I am very grateful to Revel for having this race, and for the great production of the event under the circumstances. But I felt like there were sections of this course that were genuinely unsafe. It bothered me that we didn’t find out some of the unsafe details of this race (not from a COVID perspective, from a getting-hit-by-cars perspective) until days before the race, after we had paid nonrefundable, expensive race entries, booked travel, etc. I did not know we would be running on the shoulder of the road, with active traffic going the same direction as we were, at 60 miles an hour, for the majority of the race. That made me nervous, but I made myself adjust to it and block it out. I didn’t know we were going to be crossing multiple intersections with live traffic and no police to direct traffic, in the last few miles, when our legs are tired and we’re a little out of it and don’t always have great body control. And I really didn’t know that in the last mile, we were going to be running on a relatively busy road, in the traffic lane because there was no shoulder, going the same direction as traffic. The last one was without a doubt the most unsafe conditions I have ever run in in any race, and I have run many marathons and ultras in a wide variety of conditions. I feel bad saying something negative about this race, because I really do appreciate how much effort they put into making this race happen, but I genuinely was scared during that section of the race and felt I had to make people aware a situation like that is something they should check on before registering for these races, if that’s something that would make them uncomfortable, too. It also seems like it should be a relatively easy fix – I can’t understand why they didn’t at least have us run the opposite direction as traffic. It’s still not great to be running a race in the traffic lane with live traffic, but at least if you can see it coming, that would have helped. Again, other than that, this was a very nice race, handled well in COVID, and with lots of great extras.

Cannot say enough positive things about this race! Handled the COVID situation extremely well, but also just really nice, helpful race staff, and a fun race overall. Interesting and somewhat challenging course with unique aspects like running parts of the race on a strip of land with water on both sides. Plenty of rocks, roots, trees, wooden staircases, etc, to make this a more challenging trail race than would typically be expected of central Indiana! Also very nice race shirts and GIANT medals, if that’s your thing!