With this race being one of the biggest races in the area, I definitely had to run this half marathon! Overall, I was really impressed with how well organized the race was for a smallish town of about 50,000. This is memorial race that has a lot of meaning to many of people from the area as it commemorates the F-5 tornado that came through Joplin on May 22, 2011.

Expo:
The expo had several booths, which included the local running store and a few other small businesses in town. I wish there had been a few other booth for other nearby races at the expo. It was easy and efficient to find my race bib and t-shirt.

T-Shirt: The t-shirts were very colorful, and each race had a different color shirt. The shirts were also gender specific, which was nice. The women's shirt was a tank top, which is appropriate for this time of year. However, I would still prefer a tech t-shirt as most tank tops like this one are a bit big on me.

The race:

Parking was very easy to find close to the start/finish of the race. Being in a small town means the commute is easy and no parking meters. Bathroom lines were also almost not existent. I live less than 2 miles from the start line and left my house about 30 minutes prior to the race, and still had a few minutes to spare before the race started. This is almost unheard of with larger races!

The weather was overcast with a slight amount of rain towards the end of the race. Considering the time of year, I don't think we could have asked for much better weather.

Joplin is naturally somewhat to very hilly depending on where you run so there are plenty of hills in this race. The half marathon was somewhat hilly, but not terribly so. I have heard from other runners that the marathon is quite hilly in the second half.

This race gives a cool tour of the city of Joplin, and we ran through areas of Joplin that I had yet to discover. The crowd support was good overall, with plenty of aid stations along the way. The best part is first/last mile of the race where there are 161 banners that represent each life lost in 2011 tornado.

The race event photos were free, which is always a huge plus for me. The food at the end of the race was great with one of the local pizza places serving small pizzas that were were made right there with a brick oven.

This was definitely a fun race for me, and I definitely plan to make it a yearly tradition considering it is in my new hometown! I would recommend to other runners as it is a small town race that will more and more popular each year.

On a side note, I will be running the Chicago Marathon on October 8th, 2017. If interested and able, I would greatly appreciate any support towards my fundraising goal of $1500 for World Vision. Here's the link!: https://www.teamworldvision.org/participant/sarabrewington