My thoughts on the Lansing Half/Full Marathon

Today I ran at the Lansing Half Marathon. I am not one who usually would write about the event itself usually I write about my experience, but I guess this will be a little of both.

My Garmin time, but not official time.....

I ran this event to be with the crew that I run with, plus it was less then 10miles from my house! I went into this run as a training run, Flying Pig marathon is 2 weeks away! So I went into calm and not on a mission to PR. I also was going to try and help a couple others run a sub-2. All and all is was a fun event, but that was more because of the people I was with and little to do with the actual event itself. 

Little fun before the run

So here are my Pro's and Con's of the race.....

Pros:

• Location, close to home
• Time of start, 8am! I got to wake while in 6am hour not earlier!
• The people I ran with!!
• Ease of packet pick up, (even though many would say this was a con due to some issues with pick up and running out of shirts!)
• The medal (again was an issue with some runners as they ran out of half marathon medals)
• Volunteers, there were a lot of them and did a great job
• post race food
• Course (except one area, to be discussed) I liked being on the road, I think the crowd support would had been less if we were on the River Trail. 
• Seeing so many of my friends get there first Sub-2 half and/or set PRs!!
• Seeing my friend and (Team RR team mate) Crush her Half marathon PR

PR For Chlesea!!

Cons:

• Race shirt....would had been nice to gender specific shirt. Not seeing myself wear this shirt on any runs as the co-ed small is like a large.
• Hydration choices on course- water which is fine. but the electrolyte drink was something I had never heard of. It was called Shaklee, I did not try it and after hearing from others I am so glad I didn't! If you are putting on a race, have a beverage that most runners have drank before, such as Gatorade or Powerade! Rule number 1 of racing, don't try anything new on race day....
• Start of the race.....No Pacers or any type of corral system. It really is not fun to start a race running and right in front of you are walkers. If your not going to have pacers at least have signs that say pace/per mile. 
• Post race atmosphere...or the lack of it! No post race party. So instead of being around all the runners who finished you are off to go 'discover' Lansing. Which is a nice idea but not much is open prior to 11am. & runners like beer and that was not available until noon. The other downside of no post race is that everyone is gone that could had been around on the race course at the end to help cheer on the others. 
• No Gu on the course. I know that this should not be a given, and most runners supply their own type, but Most Full Marathons do provide some thing at the higher mileages. Not here! and the reason I read on their Facebook page was because it was a "green" race and wanted to limit the waste.....
• The Train!!! Yes....we got stuck behind a train for 3 minutes! If I was trying for a PR and got stopped I would had been 1 pissed off runner! Living in the area there are ways around the tracks!! I didn't even know that getting stuck by a train could had been a possibility...

Really a Train!?!? Had to have fun with the issue!

• Double loop. No I did not run the full and finding out they made it a double loop I am so glad I didn't! The worst part of the double loop was they made the full runners run past the finish line in starting their 2nd loop. Maybe that was there were only 400 full runners of the 2,100+ total runners??!

  

  another shot of finish

  

  start 2nd loop... but don't go to finish!

These are just my thoughts on the event. I do hope they can make some improvements, as this was only there 2nd year. But next year, I will set up my own little cheer station and have fun cheering on my friends and other runners. And yes I will have beer to hand out to runners and other important runner fuel such as oranges, pretzels, Coke, all the things us runners crave at mile 18 or so!

Fun Group to Run with!!

I am still happy to have run it...but now its taper time and flying pig in 2 weeks! 

Did you run the Lansing full or half marathon? what did you like or not like?

Have you ever gone to event and felt a little let down from what they offered for what you paid?