Want to do a marathon.. Leaning towards Cowtown, Fort Worth (Read 529 times)

What negative things have you read about Cowtown? Just curious. I was planning on running the full marathon there in February as well. I did the half last February, and running for two miles on bricks towards the end of the race wasn't ideal, but I don't think the full marathon course does that.

Hmmm. The negative comments that I saw focused on six things: 1. It's hilly 2. The timing chips didn't work some years 3. They ran out of sports drink at some stops/not enough drink stations 4. It's on a Saturday, so there's more vehicle traffic than most marathons 5. There's more interest in the shorter races that go with the marathon 6. No crowd support Hills happen. Timing chips were fixed in 2007 - they went with a new timing vendor. Saturday is an advantage for me despite the traffic, since I'm usually busier on Sundays. Also, I hate crowds, so lack of spectators is a non-issue for me. You have to expect more interest in the shorter races when the purpose of the marathon is to raise money to increase kids' fitness. Kids aren't often (and arguably shouldn't be) running marathons. The sports drink shortage could be a problem. I thought I read somewhere that they had a new sponsor lined up to fix that issue this year, but I don't see anything to that effect on their (nicely redesigned) web site, so maybe I'm just imagining things. It doesn't worry me much, but maybe that's because I'm not experienced enough to know better. I'm running Cowtown instead of the other ones that you mentioned mostly because I live in Fort Worth, so it's convenient. If I were going to have to travel and had that list of 3 to choose from, I'd pick Austin, but maybe that's just because I like the place for some reason...

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'd probably prefer to skip the extra drive too. I had thought about doing that Mile run on the 3rd - I'm kind of curious how fast I could do one these days.