Winter Warrior Half, Quarter & Half Marathon Relay
Rochester, NY
- Half Marathon, Half Marathon Relay, Quarter Marathon
- Road (Paved)
- Official race website
Join this winter adventure and get that coveted Winter Warrior Hat! The Winter Warrior Half Marathon is a race that each year has a story to tell and many accolades for athletes that conquer this winter event. The event is hosted at Monroe Community College starting by the gymnasium area. … MORE
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Don't Expect Good Weather
This is a race located at Monroe Community College which is about a 5 minute drive from my house and is produced by Yellow Jacket Racing. The course consists of … MORE
This is a race located at Monroe Community College which is about a 5 minute drive from my house and is produced by Yellow Jacket Racing. The course consists of loops that are 1/8 marathon distance. There are 2 distance options. Either a quarter marathon which is 2 loops or half marathon which is 4 loops. There is also a 4 participant relay where each participant runs one loop. This race takes place in January so the weather could potentially be terrible. I know I am not at my usual speed and took most of December easy to recover from my marathon and did not want to spend 3+ hours in miserable weather so I initial signed up for the quarter marathon. However the weather actually looked decent this weekend so I decided to transfer up to the half about a week and a half ago. Packet pick-up is offered either at the store Friday or race morning. I got it at the store and it was easy. Packet included bib and a nice winter hat. While it is not a shirt the hat is a nice design and almost all the runners worse their hat which was fun. Race morning was very easy and it was clear where parking was. There were a couple porta potties and a nice start/finish arch. The course starts at 10am. The beginning of the race had very nice weather for January in the mid to high 30s but quite grey. It was a mass start but the course is mostly through half closed streets and parking lots on the community college campus so there is lots of room to spread out. Even though there were constant passing of people running different paces there was no issues with course crowding. Course was very well marked and easy to follow. There were a lot of very cheerful and encouraging volunteers everywhere that could be tricky though none of the course would be tricky to navigate. It was great to have them as cheerleaders since there are little spectators as I think the school is still on winter break. The course is kind of boring and repetitive with four loops but it wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant course. This is not the race you want to run if you want a running tour of Rochester. But I understand with potential of snow and ice doing a shorter course with loops to keep runners safe. There is one aid station you pass each loop. It just had water. That’s my only complaint about production is I would have liked electrolytes or gel but it was communicated in the race packet so I didn’t dock a production sneaker. The course is pretty flat. No hills but some inclines and declines. It is net uphill the first half of the loop and net downhill the second half so it is set up well. I was aiming for about a 3 hour finish time. I was on track the first 2 loops but the third loop started to have some weather. There was about 10 minutes of freezing rain which slowed my pace a bit and also caused the course to be wet. I unfortunately got a blister on the last lap since I was wearing wool socks and not my usual half socks. I still finish not too much over 3 hours and was nowhere near the time cutoff of 3:30 (the timecutoff is technically you need to start the third lap by 2:30). I was very surprised I was last since while I wasn’t fast I wasn’t that slow and the race other than the last loop being a bit lonely was very back of the pack friendly. All the volunteers were so cheerful and I didn’t see anything getting packed up that I assumed people were behind me. My guess is back of the packers all did the shorter quarter marathon given the potential of bad weather like I initially signed up for. But as long as you can finish in 3:30 there were no issues being in the back. At the finish line I got cheered on and received my medal. The medal is really nice. They also had pizza and coke inside the gym. There was plenty of cheese pizza even for me at the end. Obviously this is not the most exciting race in the world and would not be my first choice for 50 staters but it is as good a race as possible that is just 4 laps around a community college. I would recommend it for sure to local runners and any half fanatics in driving distance given there are limited races in the northeast in the winter. Just be forewarned the weather could be terrible. This was one of the best weather the race has had and it still wasn’t great weather.