I had run larger races of shorter distances, but for my first marathon, entering a race with a field of less than 500 people made a new intimidating distance of a race a lot less intimidating. This also made for easy, no-wait packet pick-up along side a very nice, free, pre-race dinner. Everyone, staff, runners, and spectators were truly Minnesota nice.

Organization was great, but so was communication. There is no extra junk-mail style communication you get from marquee races, and you don't end up on other mailing lists. All of the race communication is timely, and to-the-point. The race director is also very responsive to questions on their Facebook page.

This is a point-to-point race. That can lead to logistical problems for runners, but the organizers make it pretty easy. The finish line is in a small town (St. Joseph) near St. Cloud, and there are plenty of hotels nearby, while there are no hotels near Holdingford, where the race starts. So the organizers provide buses from the finish to the start, and when you are done with your race, your vehicle is there waiting for you.

Despite being a smaller race, the crowd was fantastic. Running a paved bike trail through rural Minnesota was just lovely and relaxing. I can't say a bad thing about it. This was definitely a race by runners, for runners.

In 2017, I ran the 21k (half marathon). It started 15-20 minutes late because they didn't have the barricades up yet. The weather is out of their control, but keeping people standing at the starting line for that long when it is 8 degrees Fahrenheit due to poor organization is no fun. As far as I can tell, the following waves for the 14k and 7k were not delayed, which meant towards the end of the half marathon the course was packed with walkers to weave your way through.

The aid stations were not even setup when I passed some of them, particularly the last one before the turn-around. This meant going almost half the distance of the race without an aid station for the half marathon.

To top it off, communication was very poor. The day of the race, the website was still promising vital information to be posted closer to the date of the race. Most of that information was emailed to participants close to midnight the night before the race, after I was already in bed so I could get up early and get to the race.