This marathon was my 4th and I was 4 weeks into recovery from partial ligament tears in my ankle. It's safe to say my goal was just to finish with my ankle intact. However, it was such a well organized race from start to finish. They had the buses coming in and out as quickly as possible and although it was very cold in the morning, they had enough fires set up for everyone to enjoy. The sunrise was beautiful and the mountains and canyons was a great distraction from the thought of running 26.2 miles! The medals were unique and the expo was pretty solid but not as large as MCM or Twin Cities in my experience. The end of race food was the best I've had. They had so much to offer from the usual fruit and granola bars to bread and soda to ice cream and chips and bagels and much more. As soon as I finished, I immediately found the medical tent to get ice on my ankle and they were so accommodating! St. George was also a cute town and only 2 hours from Las Vegas, which is where we celebrated after!

This is the 2nd year in a row I’ve done this race (already signed up for 2018) and I love it! It’s a flat course with the first few miles along the beach. The crowd support isn’t like NYC or MCM but there’s definitely local support 95 percent of the time. It’s super easy for friends and family to find you along the way and there’s plenty of water and Gatorade. The medal is always awesome and fun and the after race food and drinks are great (NJ bagels!!!). The race cost is also very inexpensive in comparison to others and you can grab a good price early or even on Groupon closer to race month. LOVE LOVE LOVE

In all honesty, this race is boring, expensive, and not worth the drive or money. The humidity is rough for a race that doesn’t have any crowd support or music or livelihood. At the finish, there wasn’t water easily accessible and you had to pay for any food of wine (um it’s a wine race). Not even one free glass for finishing. The shirts were an ugly puke green color with random ducks on the back and the expo was not an expo. I felt terrible because I convinced a friend to run her first half with this race and it was awful. Luckily, we convinced her to stick with it. We honestly had so much fun after the race going to a great dinner and ubering to different wineries ourselves. There are plenty of other half races you can do for $100+ that give you a little more swag and support.

I'm not sure how my girlfriends and I stumbled upon this race but when we saw the low registration cost, chocolate theme, and a new state to check off the list we were in! It was honestly one of my favorite half marathons I've ever run and I've done about 15 of them. This race was held over MLK weekend which was a bonus because we all had off work that Monday. It was a beautiful day in San Antonio for a race and it was mostly flat and had some fun scenery along the way. The medal was HUGE and so pretty and the shirt was this bright neon pink long sleeve. The after race had a lot of chocolate themed food like chocolate chip pancakes and hot chocolate. It was such a nice atmosphere and everyone was so nice. The town of San Antonio is very cool to explore and obviously has the Alamo. We also rented a car and took a day trip to Austin which was a lot of fun. The expo was small and held outside and mainly consisted of your race packet pick up area and a couple clothing racks. In our race bag we received our shirt AND a coffee mug which was awesome. Overall, I'd recommend to everyone and anyone. Oh plus, it's an ALL WOMEN'S race!