Rachel D's Staging Area

I have done many half marathons . This was one of my least favorites. The race begins at 7am and there are 3 different assigned parking areas. At each parking area you are picked up by a school bus that then brings you to the start line. This was about 15 min ride from the campground parking. After of course having to wait to actually get on a bus. At the start there were then very few porta potty’s and there was no clear signage for gear check etc. The race did start relatively on time. HOWEVER they had us go through this big arch BUT the arch wasn’t actually the start of the race…. The start was about 0.3/.4 mile walk from the arch. This caused a ton of confusion some people were running and getting mad some people were walking it was confusing for a lot of first timers I think they didn’t realize you need to go over the timing chip. Mile 1 was EXTREMELY bottle necked. I ran a whole 2 and a half minutes slower than my next slowest mile… I did well on this course (2 min off my pr especially considering I ran Boston marathon 2 weeks ago) but this course was simply not great. It was short of the 13.1 miles…. Everyone I talked to had the last mile only be 0.9. So most people including my own watch was reading 13.04. I kept running through the medal area to get to 13.1. This is not a race I would recommend for PR attempts. The parts of this course actually near the water were great. The course also does get a bit of elevation on the back end. I think Mike 8, 10 and 11 had some hills. But several miles run on one lane of a super busy road… so cars are zipping by you and it’s really boring you pass like some random stores and it’s nothing to write home about. Water stations were really great tho had no problem getting water or gatorade when I needed. I heard there were gu gels on the course but didn’t see any personally. Crowd levels were actually solid too for a smaller race which was nice. Now to some positives. The medals were gorgeous I loved them. The post race was probably one of the more fun ones I’ve been to. A great selections of drinks and ice cream and honestly good food trucks. You got an ice cream and 2 beer tickets with your bib. They also gave a zip up like fuzzy sweater thing as the merch when you signed up which wasn’t my favorite but it was unique and different which I appreciated. There was cute merch too for sale after the race. However like usual all the smaller sizes sold out quickly. So most things only were available in a large. After the race there were busses back to the parking lots. These took like 20/30 min wait in line to get on a bus. That was to be expected tbh. Overall this race is really mid. A lot of logistical issues that I think they could work through, but the course isn’t anything to write home about tbh. If you are looking for a New England race on the water I would recommend the Newport half in April instead.