I'm a nice person and rarely write reviews for things unless they are either amazing, outstanding events (or restaurants, services, etc) or just terrible.

Chattanooga held their inaugural marathon this month. It's a cool town, good restaurants, and probably will be a great event down the road, so this review is only for this first race.

The course itself is fine. Not beautiful and scenic, but interesting and varied enough to be good. It's quite hilly, has some nice river views and bridge crossings, goes through some industrial areas and some residential ones, so again, quite varied. The expo was okay but the downside was it's at the start of the 5k and fun run the day before the marathon, so if you drive it's tricky to get to it first thing in the morning. The t-shirt was meh, smaller fit than normal but nice, soft material.

The race start went off without a hitch, and the first three miles or so (maybe more) were spot on, according to my GPS. Then things fell apart. Somewhere in there they had a cone set up for a turnaround but it was about a tenth of a mile too soon, meaning that the course was technically about a quarter mile or so short of an actual marathon. THIS is the major fail. It's your inaugural event, THE most important thing you can do is make sure that your Boston-qualifying certified course is correct, and yet they didn't do that.

For most people this probably doesn't bother them and they don't care; I think Boston will adjust your times and other clubs make exceptions when the race screws something up. For someone trying to run a marathon in all 50 states, however, it's a very expensive mistake that means we have to redo a state if we want a certified finish at the end of all 50. So, their .20 mile short race cost me a lot of money and time and wear and tear on my body. And there was no official acknowledgment for days after this happened, even when local news was picking it up as a major SNAFU. So, sure, this race might be dandy next year or the year after, but for me, it was a waste of time and even if they gave me free entry I wouldn't go back.