For Christmas, my parents gave me some gift cards for flights and I used one to come out to Maine for the Old Port Half Marathon in order to check main off my list of races. For a race that calls itself the premier half marathon of Maine, it could certainly use some work.

The Expo: at the Cross Insurance Arena, which I think was a change this year. Also new was them assigning bibs as you checked in. It was downright horrible. Pick up was from. 2-8 on Friday afternoon and I got in line at 315. It took 45 minutes to get inside, get my bib and my shirt. The line was out the door and it looked like stayed like that most of the day. Only 4-5 people assigning numbers if that. Not much in terms of vendors, only a race, lululemon, life is good and a handful of other places if that.

The race: starts in the Old Port District. Be ready for some hills as they’re scattered. Throughout the course. The first 5 miles or so are downtown and afterwards, you get taken around the Cove. There’s a good stretch around the cove where you have a mix of gravel/sand path and not a whole lot of room to pass. A good 1/10 of a mile towards the end run on cobblestone and made everyone worried they were going to turn an ankle. Aid stations were scattered throughout the course, but no real rhyme to the distance between them, which seemed odd.

Post race: food/beer garden were together. Didn’t even see any ice cream and the pizza line was so long it wasn’t worth waiting for. Water/medals available in the finish shoot, though people were standing around blocking the finish after finishing themselves

Volunteers: my parents are in Portland this weekend and my mom volunteered at the finish. THe volunteer coordinator didn’t show up and there was no one to give any sort of direction. Most of what got set up was done by the volunteers, but only because some of them had prior race volunteer experience. Didn’t seem like the race had any clue what was going on

Overall, decent course, but packet pick up needs a major redo, more organization is needed at the finish and there needs to be more water stations at the minimum