This was my first time running a race outside of the U.S. and I was extremely excited to run my first fall half of the season in Montreal! Unfortunately, we had some unseasonably warm weather for race weekend, so much so that the full marathon had to be canceled, so many runners dropped down to the half.

The Expo was on Friday and Saturday and I attended on Friday. There was plenty of swag to buy and a decent variety of vendors. They also offered a free STM day pass for the day you ran your race, but since it was a separate process, I completely forgot to get in line and grab mine.

Getting to the race via subway was easy, but there was a long walk to get to the race start. Fortunately, there were plenty of porta-potties available and the view of the city from the Jacques-Cartier Bridge was stunning!

The course itself, honestly, was a letdown for me overall. Most of the time is spent running down parkways, through parking lots, or over/under highway bridges. You even run through an amusement park! Montreal is a pretty city but you don't get to actually run through it until about the last 4 miles, and when you do, it's really nice. That's also when you get the best crowd support. Because the heat and humidity were so high, the lack of scenery was even more apparent as I tried to find ways to distract myself, lol!

Also, this is a very crowded race. While on the bridge at the start you can see that there are tens of thousands of runners rearing to go. It's awesome to see, but if you're trying to PR (thank goodness I wasn't!), it would be really tough to avoid bobbing and weaving around people.

But with all that said, RNR did a great job organizing the race. The bands were great, the water stations were pretty well stocked (though they could have had more stops), mile/km markers were accurate, and there were plenty of post-race snacks plus beer.

I think that if the temperature was in the 50-70 degree range versus 70+ with 100% humidity, I would have really loved this race!