The parking enters the park, single file. This can cause some back up, so I recomend getting their early. At an hour early I was able to pull in pretty comfortable. When I was doing my warm up, 30 minutes before the race, the car line was backed up at least a mile. Once parked, the parking is all close. Great for the cold weather race. You do park in the grass, so it may be a good idea to bring extra sock or shoes and use the drop bag station. I got blisters the first year and was very glad I planned ahead the second time around.

There are adequate porta-potties, with the usual pre-race rush. Not terrible tough. You can choose to pay extra and enter the VIP area, which is warmed up and has special bathrooms.

The course starts off flat until the first mile and has some gentle rolling hills until mile 3. That is were you will find the king/queen of the mountain competition. This is basically a race within the race. There are timing mats at the bottom and top of the hill. The top 3 fastest for each gender gets and additional award. I think this adds a fun element to a tough spot in the course and makes you prioritize your race strategy. The long down hill after the king of the hill portion and turn into the flat campgrounds is a great opportunity to recover from the push effort. After camp grounds the course has a long straight stretch heading toward the dam. The dam is the most scenic part of the course and you will go out and back across it. The far side of the dam is another tough hill. After mile 10 the hills are all smaller gently rolling and the last mile is fairly flat. Entering in park you finish where you started.

This is a smaller race, so you shouldn't have too many issue with crowds. There are two water stations, that I remember along the course offering both water and Gatorade and each has a porta-potty. Being a cold weather half, I skip the water stations ,but they appeared well managed. There isn't a whole lot of crowd support along the course. Mostly, at the bottom of the kiing of the mountain hill, and at the top of mile 10 mile.

Medium size medals. Plaques for Overall winners were really cool this year. They included an individual picture of the winners finish. They also had plaques for the king/queen of the mountain and age groups. You can not double dip Overall, and age group awards, but you could recieve and an overall/age group award as well as a king/queen of the mountain plaque.

A very casual finish area with chocolate milk, bananas and chicken noodle soup. You could also get a massage after the race. Leaving the park is very easy, with no traffic. Probably because of the spread out finishers.

Link to this review