This was a nice shakeout run before the Buffalo Marathon on Saturday morning. It's also a nice gesture to honor the original Buffalo Marathon race director who passed away a couple years ago.

The 5K course starts behind the Buffalo Convention Center and heads Southwest through some of the historic neighborhoods in Buffalo. Runners get to see some interesting architecture along the course, including some houses that were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and some old gothic style churches from the 1800s. The last mile of the race heads back into downtown Buffalo, past the William McKinley Memorial Monument and then to the finish line, which is in front of the convention center. The course is mostly flat with just a couple really small hills in the beginning.

For runners who sign up for both the 5K and the marathon, the course layout has another nice benefit that won't be apparent until Sunday: the last mile and a half of the 5K and Marathon courses are almost identical. I thought that knowing exactly where I was going at the end of the marathon because I had just run the same route the day before helped me stay focused at a time when my body was screaming out in pain.

The race finishes in front of the convention center and is immediately followed by the race expo, so runners who are signed up for the Marathon or Half marathon can go inside and pick up their bibs for Sunday morning after crossing the finish line on Saturday.

The medal is extremely nice too - it's well constructed in the shape of a buffalo and has the race name on the neck strap. It's probably one of the nicest 5K medals I've gotten.

There's only one thing that I would have changed about this course. My 11 year old daughter Sara and I ran it together and were expecting to see a water table around mile 1.5. The water table was actually right at the two mile marker which is a little later than most 5Ks. This normally wouldn't be a big deal but the unseasonably warm weather made it stand out a little bit (my guess would be that if we had done this race any other year, we wouldn't have even noticed it). So my only suggestion here would be to either move the water table back a little bit so that it's closer to the halfway point of the race or add another one at the one mile marker. This is pretty minor though - everything else about the course was great.

If you're local to the area and looking to do a 5K or planning on doing the marathon or half marathon and looking for a good way to do a shakeout run the day before, you should definitely give this race a look!