I've been running for a year and a half and have ran a half marathon, a 10K, a 5 miler and a ton of 5k's. Since I live in Davenport I felt like I should run the Bix at least once although the thought really didn't appeal to me. It's a huge race with a ton of runners and I thought that would annoy me; trust me it really didn't. I enjoyed the heck out of this race.

First I'll put this out there; if you're really super focused on your time you probably won't enjoy this race. There are so many people that unless you're an elite runner you're going to be slowed down by other runners and be forced to do quite a bit of bobbing and weaving during the race. If you can approach it as an EVENT and just enjoy the experience and atmosphere you'll have fun with it. Even though I'm pretty slow I'm still competitive with myself and quite time focused on most races. However, I'm currently training for another half marathon and just looked at this race as a fun training run and didn't really push the pace until the last mile. I still enjoyed the race immensely.

The sight at the start line is pretty spectacular, watching several thousand runners going up Brady St hill. It's a long steep hill to start and it gets a lot of the publicity but some of the hills later in the race are actually more difficult. So you're slowed down by the hill at the start plus the crush of runners around you. Just be patient; once you turn right onto Kirkwood about a mile in you can make better time as it's all flat or downhill for the next 1.5 miles or so. Once you turn left off Kirkwood you go up a very steep hill, even worse than Brady St, which takes you to McClellan. Then it's downhill to the turnaround then back up again. Once you get back on Kirkwood it's a fairly long albeit slower climb for awhile. Once you reach Bridge Ave. the last 2 miles or so are either flat or downhill so that's where you can really push the pace if you want to. The crowd of runners also thins out at that point to where you can pass people much more easily. It's as tough of a course as I've run.

The post race party is crowded but they have a ton of stuff to eat and drink, you'll have no problem finding something you like. I had a Whitey's popsicle, Fig Newtons, water and some Oreos. They also had beer, Chik Fil A sandwiches and ton of other stuff. No complaints here.

Overall, I really enjoyed this race and understand why some people run it every year. The crowd support is amazing and really helps you forget about the drudgery of covering those 7 miles. I will run it again next year. They also have the street fest going on downtown to coincide with the race which has a number of bands and food vendors deep into the night. It's a good time.