Michaela Cotton's Staging Area

I read another review on here, and it said something like “this was the most disorganized race I have ever been to.” This isn’t the most disorganized race I have ever done, but I will say that it was disorganized and not well thought out. When I got there to the race, I was stressed out that I wouldn’t be able to get to my corral. The 5K and 8K had started before us, and it was someone’s brilliant idea to have us run through that ongoing race to get to the other side (and get to our corrals). It got worse when on the way back, when we looped back, the 5K/8K people who finished had to do the same thing to us–running in the gaps between runners to get to the other side (where the race party was). And I thought that was bad, but it got even WORSE. At the very end, there were WALKERS that were taking up the very narrow last mile of the course. I was yelling at people to move out of the way; I was pretty irritated by this. There were a lot of walkers, and it really pissed me off to have people in jeans, in front of me, wasting my time. I I will also say that I really liked the t-shirt they gave us this year, but the medal for the half marathon was really boring (it was just “13.1” and that was it) when the other medals for the other races were a cute little shamrock. I don’t know why they made the half marathon medal so boring. This course was also very hilly, and the race website said that the views were “worth the climb.” It did have good views around miles 6-9ish so that was nice, but I found this race harder than expected because there was about three miles of straight incline. However, I will say on the way back, we did get a good amount of downhill so that was really nice, and it helped me make up for lost time.

I am doing a half marathon in every state; I’ve done 9 so far, and this is by far my favorite one! It is a very nice, scenic course, and it’s easy. I would almost come back to do this one again–that’s how much I liked it. Also, they gave us two shirts, which I thought was cool.

Really great race!! The locals really showed up and cheered us all the way through. It was also a very easy race; so, it’s definitely a great race if you’re trying to PR.

I didn’t expect much out of this race, but I was pleasantly surprised! It was a nice, easy, and flat course, and it was really beautiful weather when I ran it last year. I also thought it was really cool that we started on the boardwalk at the beach, and then we ended up running through the majority of the half throughout a state park. I have never done that before, and it was such an awesome time! There was a bridge that we ran on, and even though we were on a trail for part of it, it was very flat and easy to run on (I wasn’t worried about tripping at all even though I am a road runner). The only reason I didn’t give this race 5 stars is because there was a problem with organization here. When we were running in the state park, random cyclists and walkers kept hopping on the course, and some of them were being rude and getting in the way of runners. Also, at the very end, right by the finish line on the board walk, I was running full speed and there were people walking in the course, causing problems for runners. I had two people decide to cut me off as I was trying to finish so that was super annoying. Most races have the very end of the course fenced off so it’s closed, but that was not the case here.

This course has some problems: (1) it is really narrow in some parts and sometimes I had to walk because there was no way I could get around people; (2) the course is, for the most part, really really boring because you spend 90% of it running in a street (between the parks). I really wish that we could have ran more so throughout the parks, but it didn’t feel long enough.