Livermore Half is a smaller sized race with a great course.

Registration was available online right up to 2 days before race day. I registered in December for the March race and then didn’t hear anything for the longest time. That changed about a month before the race and then I received a minimum of 1 email a week leading up the race sometimes 2. This was helpful as they changed the start time of the half marathon to an hour earlier. The website was fairly user friendly but I could never get the half marathon course map to enlarge nor could I find an elevation profile for the course. I mentioned it at the expo and it was fixed that day.

The expo was in an outdoor plaza and fairly small. A few race booths, a merchandise booth and a couple other vendors. Bib pickup was organized by bib number and there was no wait when I was there. There was a snafu with the shirts. At registration, you were asked to pick gender specific sizing but the shirts were all men’s sizing and according to the volunteers helping me they all ran very large. I was lucky and my volunteer let me switch shirt sizes. The shirt was cute though.

There was plenty of parking on race morning- some of it was free and some was pay- it just depended on what time you got there. I didn’t have to use the portapotties but I had seen them lined up the day before and it looked like they had enough for this size race. The race started about 5 minutes late but that’s not too bad.

The course starts out through town taking you through neighborhoods for the first 3 miles. The 5k starts after the half marathon and runs alongside the half for the first 1.5 miles. This didn’t bother me at all but it didn’t seem like the best idea for the 5K leaders as they were heading back into the crowd of people running the opposite direction.

A little before mile 4, the runners head into a park and run the next few miles on a paved path. The path is blacktop and there is nature on both sides of the path, so in my opinion this was awesome. The path was narrower than the road so you could get stuck behind other runners and had to dodge and weave sometimes. Just past mile 6 and we were back out of the park running on the road. Miles 8 and 9 had the only real climbs of the course, overall this is fairly flat course- my watch showed an overall elevation gain of 290 ft. Mile 8 took runners off the road and back into another park with paved paths. This one was lined with vineyards. This continues through mile 11 where the course started to take you back into town. Another mile on another path then the last mile was on city streets to the finish. The course was a loop so it brought you back where you started.

Once through the finish line, you were handed your medal by a volunteer. There were also volunteers handing out bananas, chocolate milk and kind bars. You received a stemless wine glass as part of your swag but there was no one there so I grabbed that by myself. There were large water dispensers so you could refill your water bottles.

On course aid- there were aid stations every 2ish miles. They offered water, electrolytes and bathrooms. I don’t know what the electrolytes were because every station said something different. I always carry my own and drink water at the stations but I feel like there could have been more stations. I feel like there was a long stretch with no aid and I remember thinking it but I can’t remember what stretch it was.

In keeping with the wine theme, the medal can double as a wine stopper for your bottle. There was also a wine tasting event for all finishers with 13 different wineries. I do not know how the tasting went though as I was sick so I did not end up staying long enough to partake.

Overall, this was a great course and a good size. It is a race that I would gladly run again.