christy alfertig's Staging Area

I first ran this marathon in 2018 and was super disappointed in the race. I decided to give them another chance this year since they’ve had time to fix rookie problems (this was their 10th year.) While some things have improved, I would still not recommend the full marathon to anyone. I’ll start with the positives:
-they started on time
-there was still food and beer available after my slow finish
-parking seemed to be smoother
-the medal was nice
-there was a participant shirt and a nice finisher shirt (although they ran out of correct sizes for the finisher shirts)

Here’s where they went wrong:
1. There was no Gatorade on course until almost the halfway point. And then it was hit and miss (mostly miss) as to which stops would have any. When they did, it was so watered down as to be worthless. Each stop appeared to have gotten only one small canister of powder, so of course they ran out almost immediately. On the other hand, each stop had cases upon cases of pickle juice! I had to run off course, back to my car in the parking garage at mile 13.1 to grab some of my own Gatorade powder I had stashed! I’ve done almost 80 marathons and I have never had almost zero Gatorade available from the very first mile!
2. The water was in bottles, not cups. Mostly small bottles, but some had full size bottles. Not only is this not “green” (all that plastic!), but it’s hard to open them while running and carrying your own hydration. And with the small bottles I needed two or more bottles per station to get enough fluid on this 80 degree day. So much time was lost having to juggle two bottles, open lids, hold both. Cups are way easier! Also, they had bananas and granola bars at most of the stops until they ran out. But focus on the water and Gatorade! It just goes to show that non-runners must be making the decisions because the majority of full marathoners are not going to want a granola bar during a race. Save these for the finish line.
3. The course really sucks for a full. It’s the half course run twice and you literally have to cross the start line twice. The previous course was 2 loops also, but at least it had a long section run on the city’s trail system for variety. The current course has a 4 mile loop around the canals with tight turns, narrow paths where one person bumping you could shove you into the water, uneven brick and parking lots. After that it was an out and back on city streets with 2 lanes open to traffic. So marathoners are seeing the same scenery 4 times. It’s so incredibly boring. Bring back the old course.
5. They ran out of t-shirt sizes for the finisher’s shirts so my choice was either too big or too small.
6. The finish line food bag contained a fruit cup and a package of 2 saltine crackers (and a foreign brand, at that!) WTH?! Again, 80 marathons here and I’ve never seen that. How about some pretzels or yogurt? This is also where the granola bars could have been given out. It just goes to show that the organizer/committee does not have a marathoner on staff or does not try to get opinions from runners, because this is Marathons 101.
7. Portapotties at the start were located where no one could find them, a block away from the start behind a row of buildings. And there were only 12 available for 3800 runners. I just happened to stumble upon them. Put them on the street where the corrals were supposed to line up or have signage. And have a lot more!

I really want to like this race. The DFW area needs more local spring marathons, but the course and the water stops need a lot of work before I could recommend this race to anyone other than 5k or 10k runners.

Once again, a race that calls itself a marathon, yet puts all effort into the shorter races. Two loops of the half course, which is tough mentally. Finishers got 1 apple, 1 orange, tiny bag of pretzels and a green banana at finish. No beer, no yogurt, no treats. Extremely disappointing. Finish area deserted when marathoners came in. The worst though was all the water/gatorade at aid stations was in tiny Dixie cups filled 1/2 full! Maybe 1 oz of fluid per cup. Major Fail for a marathon. I would have PR’d except I lost at least 10 min at all the water stops trying to get enough fluid combining multiple cups. If the weather would have been hot and humid as expected in springtime Texas, they would have had huge problems! Shirt was blah. Said “Irving” in giant letters, and “marathon” in letters so tiny below you could hardly see it. Same with the medal. For the good: Las Colinas is a beautiful city and the combo of urban streets and wooded trails was nice. Volunteers were great. Hills were few. I would love for this race to be better because N Texas needs more spring marathons and with some tweaks it could be: bigger cups!, more and better food and beverages at finish for full, better shirt, start on time.