An inaugural half marathon is always an experience - sometimes bad, sometimes good. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with how this race was conducted! The 5K has been going on for years and the half used to be a 10K, but this year the Riverside Road Runners took it up to a half marathon. There's also a kids race option.

The course starts off near the Arlington Sports Park and wraps around the neighborhood. All these homes are ranch-like properties, ranch-style homes wrapped in orange groves. It smelled amazing, was so beautiful. The course alternated between roads and paved segments of the service dirt roads up and down the groves. It was kind of awesome. After the neighborhood we headed into the California Citrus State Historic Park that talks about the history of the area, how it came to be and the guy that preserved all the land (nearly 100,000 acres of orange groves!). It was neat running through the park (despite having to run straight up hill into mile 5) and seeing all the history signs. I'm going to have to come back to the park and check it out.

After the uphill into mile 5, we literally ran down this crazy super steep hill, through the groves, and back on to the road for some more winding through homes and groves. One of the prettiest courses I've seen, hands down.

All in all, for an inaugural race, this was an amazing experience. The course was gorgeous, though tough. The long sleeve tech shirts for half runners is probably one of my best-fitting tech shirts and pretty nice. Great volunteers and a wonderful race. I'd highly recommend this to anyone in the Southern California area!