Travis Conklin's Staging Area

I ran the full marathon. It’s a good race. The expo is really small, but organized. The race started at 6:30 am. The buses drop runners off at the starting line about 5:00-5:30 am. It gets hot in Mesa, even in February. It would be nice to start the race 30 minutes earlier to avoid some of the sunshine during the later miles. There were plenty of restrooms at the drop off in 2022. There were restrooms and water stops at least every two miles beginning around mile 3. The race scenery is nice at the beginning and not as much in the last half of the race. There is quite a bit of downhill running the first half of the race and then it’s fairly flat the second half. This race doesn’t really run through neighborhoods so it can get pretty quiet out there. The timing system used for the 2022 race had glitches, both in the overall times for some runners and the tracking system. The finish line area is large and the race bibs come with a beer ticket. Water was handed to runners as soon as they cross the line, but couldn’t be found as soon as they moved through the corrals. Hopefully, the finish line area is better stocked throughout the area next time.