2014 was an amazing year for me race-wise. From November of 2013 through March of 2014, I went through my longest stretch without doing a race in at least the last 5 years, but I was able to use that time to focus on strength training and speed work so that once I was ready to start racing again, I had built up a nice foundation for myself and I felt really strong while I was running throughout the entire rest of the year. And I did some awesome races throughout the year too: I got to run past monuments and historical sites in Washington, DC and Philadelphia, past the Oklahoma City Memorial (a trip which also included a visit to Fort Worth Texas and a crazy drive southbound on I-35 to make it back to the airport on time), through the Alaskan Wilderness, and along the oceanfront at Virginia Beach, along with several races throughout the various neighborhoods in Chicago mixed in.... So while I had been looking forward to the Outer Banks Half Marathon in North Carolina for several months, I was fully expecting the experience to be bittersweet since it was also the last race I had planned for the year....

For anyone that's never been to the Outer Banks before, here's a little background on the area: There's no one city or town called "The Outer Banks", the term is actually used to describe a series of barrier islands along the coast of North Carolina. To the East of the islands is the Atlantic Ocean and to the West are a set of sounds (Currituck, Albemarle, Roanoke, and Pamlico). And then to the West of the sounds is mainland North Carolina. There are a number of towns on these islands like Kitty Hawk, Nags Head and Manteo and in a lot of places, the islands are so narrow that a walking from the ocean on one side to the sound on the other side would only take a matter of minutes.

The Outer Banks are also full of beautiful beaches along with a number of lighthouses, spots to camp or stop and look at wildlife and a host of other maritime related attractions (not to mention some amazing seafood). The town of Kitty Hawk is also known for being where the Wright Brothers took their first flight (the specific spot where it happened is now known as Kill Devil Hills, but at the time it was part of Kitty Hawk) and there's a memorial at the spot where they took off from. There's a lot to see and do here, particularly in the summer, so if you're thinking about doing this race and you don't live in the area, make sure you plan to stay for a few days.

Another reason that you'll probably need to plan for a slightly longer trip is that if you're planning on flying in, there really aren't any direct flights into any of the Outer Banks towns. There's a small airport near the Wright Brothers memorial in Kill Devil Hills but the only planes that fly in and out of it are propeller planes that make local trips to the surrounding areas, so your best bet is probably to fly into Norfolk, VA, rent a car and drive about 2 hours or so down the coast. I've done a few races where I've flown in on Saturday morning, picked up my race number in the afternoon, done the race on Sunday morning and then flown back home right after the race. Because of where the Outer Banks are located, it would be a stretch to be able to do something like this, but honestly there's so much to see and do there that you really wouldn't want to do something like that anyway.

The other piece of advice that I'll give anyone that's planning on doing this race is this: before you book a hotel, check out some of the houses in the area that are available to rent for the weekend. I paid about $300 to stay at a hotel on the beach (which wasn't bad for four days especially considering that I could literally walk out the back door of the hotel and be standing on the sand - no complaints there at all), but while I was there, I also met some people who said that they rented a house with six bedrooms and a hot tub for the same length of time for $400 and it was less than 5 minutes away from where I was staying. Houses like that are a lot more expensive during the summer months but since the race is in November during the off season, everything is ridiculously cheap.

So onto the race itself - the Outer Banks Marathon is part of a series of athletic events that are held throughout the year at different locations around the islands. This particular event offers a marathon, a half marathon, and a 6 mile run on Sunday morning and also a 5K, a 10K, and a family fun run on Saturday. I did the half marathon and I was a little bit bummed that I didn't realize that there were races on Saturday too or I probably would have signed up for one of them (especially since I got in Friday evening), but after I did find out about the Saturday races, I looked through some of my old emails and at the race website and noticed that they were mentioned all over the place, so I'll have to blame myself for not paying closer attention.... I'm planning on going back and doing this one again at some point (or maybe doing the Flying Pirate Marathon that's held in May) so next time I'll know better.

The race was pretty well organized - there was a fitness expo that was a little bit bigger than I was expecting for a race this size (about 2500 participants for the half marathon) and runners got goody bags that contained t-shirts, OBX Marathon Cups and a few other things (sunblock, etc..). I should also mention that the race organizers really went out of the way to make sure that they had everyone's transportation needs covered too. Most of the point-to-point races I've done in the past have always required runners to either park near the start line and take a shuttle bus back after finishing the race or park near the finish line at the beginning and take a shuttle to the start, and it's usually one or the other, not both.... but this race had shuttles going back and forth all morning, so you could pretty much park anywhere that was convenient and hop on the next available shuttle to get to wherever you needed to go from there. There were also special shuttle buses for spectators who wanted to watch their friends and family at both the start and finish lines. So the process of getting to where you needed to go on race day was definitely one of the easiest I've ever seen.

The half marathon course was beautiful. It was point-to-point and started in Nags Head and went up along the coast and finished in Manteo. The full marathon course was similar and it just started further back in Kitty Hawk, and the 6 mile course started closer to the finish line. The course offered some really nice views of the coastline, sand dunes, and the sounds and it also seemed to have the perfect mixture of hills and flats along with one huge hill around mile 10 where the course crosses over the Washington Baum Bridge to get to Roanoke Island. I think that the last time I ran up an incline that steep to cross over a bridge during a race was when I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge in the San Francisco marathon... honestly though, it wasn't as bad as it sounds and it was totally worth it because the view of Roanoke Island and Roanoke Sound from the top of the bridge is breathtaking. There were volunteers on either side of the bridge - at the beginning, people were welcoming runners to it and on the other side there was a water table.... and there was also a photographer at the top taking peoples' pictures once they made it all the way up. It made for a great experience. After crossing over the bridge, the rest of the course goes pretty fast - the last couple miles are nice and flat and the finish line is in Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo.

The race medals are really nice - this year's medal had a picture of the Bodie Island Lighthouse on it... and the post race party was good too: great food, beer (of course) and some really good music. The setting for the post race party on downtown Roanoke Island was perfect too. The only real complaint that I had about this race (and this is pretty minor) is that some of the mile markers were off..... not all of them, but the ones that were off were off by almost half a mile in some cases (like for example, when I passed the marker for mile 11, my GPS said 10.6.... but the marker for mile 12 was exactly where it was supposed to be so anyone who ran the race without a GPS probably thought that mile 11 was the longest mile they ever ran in their lives). So hopefully that will get straightened out at some point but like I said, this is a small detail compared to how great everything else was with this race so the only thing I'll really say about it is that if you ever run this one, pay closer attention to what your GPS says than what the mile markers say since it's probably more accurate.

In the end, finishing the race was somewhat of a bittersweet experience like I was expecting because other than a few local 5Ks, I don't have any other big races planned until next March, but I also don't think I could have picked a better race to be my the grand finale for an amazing 2014.

Englewood is a neighborhood on the south side of Chicago that has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous, violent neighborhoods in the city.... So it's probably not the first place that comes to mind when people think about where they would want to run a 5K.... but when a friend of mine told me that the inaugural Englewood 5K was going to be held on November 2nd, I jumped at the chance to sign up for it.

There are a number of reasons for this:

Nothing is ever as bad as it's portrayed by the media. Englewood does have its share of problems, but so do a lot of other places, and pretending like the area between 75th Street and Garfield on the south side is some type of hotbed of criminal activity that must always be avoided at all costs lest something terrible happens to you does a big disservice to the thousands of good hard working people who live there and are doing their best to make an honest living.
I can't claim to have the same experiences as some of the residents in Englewood, but I did grow up on the south side and I spent a fair bit of my childhood living in poverty or near poverty. My mom was a single parent who spent a number of sleepless nights trying to figure out how she would make ends meet for us financially, and when I was in high school, I knew a lot of people who went off to join gangs and sell drugs. I learned a lot from those experiences and even though my life is a lot different now than it was then (thanks to a combination of hard work and luck), I'll still always be more than happy to do what I can to help inspire residents of any south side community to live healthier lifestyles and take pride in their neighborhoods.
When races or other events like this do well, it shows the residents of neighborhoods like Englewood that people from around the city and surrounding areas care about them and their neighborhood and want to do their part to be supportive. Being proud of where you live and knowing that you're part of a bigger community with friends everywhere who care about you and will come out of the woodwork to support you will help you to feel empowered to improve not only your own life but the lives of others around you as well.
Now onto the race itself. The Englewood 5K was organized by Forever Fitness Chicago, LLC which is an organization that embraces nutrition and fitness, while educating individuals on the importance of a healthy lifestyle. The theme of this year's race was "Ditch the Weight & Guns" and its purpose is to promote nutrition, fitness, and nonviolence throughout Chicago (with a specific focus on the Greater Englewood community). The idea being that poor health choices throughout a community ultimately contribute to social disorganization and that through events like this one, community members can learn about the benefits of making healthier choices and be inspired to live healthier lifestyles, which will ultimately improve the community as a whole. It makes a lot of sense.

Like I said, this was the inaugural year for the Englewood 5K..... but you wouldn't know that from the way the race was organized. The course, along with the pre and post race activities, volunteers, goodie bags, etc... were all really well thought out.

The course started and ended at Ogden Park, which is a nice open area with wooded edges that's centrally located in Englewood. Packet pickup was available on race day only but it started at 8am and the race itself didn't start until 10 so there was plenty of time for everyone to arrive and get their packets. It was a little after 9 when I got there and the race organizers had just run out of t-shirts, but I was able to write down my contact information and within two days I exchanged a couple emails with Ariana Taylor from Forever Fitness who let me know that she would be mailing my shirt to me. Believe it or not but the fact that the race organizers ran out of t-shirts is actually good news. Close to 1000 people came out for the race which was a lot bigger of a turnout than I think anyone expected.

There was a fun atmosphere leading up to the start of the race and about 20 minutes before it started, there were a few announcements and a prayer, and then at a couple minutes before 10, all of the runners made their way over to the start line.

The course was flat and fast and for the most part was shaped like a giant rectangle - it headed south down Racine, for about a mile, before heading west for a few blocks and then north on Loomis past the other side of Ogden Park... Then it turned east onto 64th street and headed down another half mile or so before turning south again and heading back towards the the Ogden Park entrance at 65th and Racine. There was a small water tables at the one mile marker and a bigger one at the two mile marker and both had plenty of volunteers on hand to make sure that all of the runners were taken care of.... There was also plenty of crowd support - cheerleaders and football players from the local high schools along with some volunteers were standing at various points along the course cheering the runners on and offering high fives and there were also plenty of local residents who stood along the course or looked out their front windows to say good morning and wave to the runners. I heard more than a few people who were watching the race make comments about how they wanted to come out and run it next year.

A big crowd of volunteers and runners stood at the finish line congratulating people and welcoming them. There were also medals for the first 350 finishers (which was pretty cool since finishers medals are not always common in neighborhood 5Ks) and goody bags handed out at the finish line that contained sports drinks, Kind bars, ads for some of the local businesses.

To give a good understanding of how important this race was, not just to Englewood but to the city of Chicago as a whole, Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago also came out to run it. Before the race, he said hello to all of the participants and volunteers and took pictures with anyone who wanted one and then after he crossed the finish line, he hung out and gave high fives to everyone who finished after he did.

Overall, I thought this was a great race. I'm not sure if Forever Fitness plans to make this an annual event or not but I'm hoping that they do because I would love to come out and run it again next year.

"I can't remember the last time I felt this strong this far into a race.... This is awesome!" was my exact thought when I saw the 8 mile marker of the Rock n Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon. Maybe it was because the course was nice and flat.... maybe it was because the weather was nice (slightly humid, but nothing like the Rock n Roll Virginia Beach Half Marathon had been a few weeks earlier, and it was also slightly overcast the entire time which kept the sun from beating down on everyone during the race).... maybe it was because I knew that I was running in the same race as some of the best runners in the world.... maybe it was because the course was amazingly scenic and went through one of the most beautiful, historic cities in the United States... maybe I was inspired by all of my friends that I got to see at the start line that morning.... or maybe it was a little bit of all of those things, but whatever it was, this was the best half marathon I've done in a very, very long time.

I think I mentioned in another review that I spent a few years dealing with some personal issues that caused some of my finishing times to slip when I stopped eating and training the right way for a while and how the second half of this year has been a bit of a comeback for me, starting with the Rock n Roll Chicago Half in July, but in another year or so, when I'm ready to look back and pinpoint a specific time when I really started to feel good about running again, it's going to be this race. I felt great right from the beginning - the race organizers could not have picked a better location to start this race - crossing the start line and running up Ben Franklin Parkway towards the Philadelphia City Hall while looking up at the flags of the countries in the United Nations that line both sides of the street is an amazing experience. About 3/4 of a mile into the race, the course turns and heads into downtown Philadelphia and right around the time I was getting ready to take that first turn, I saw the elite runners coming the other way (a group that included Kara Goucher and Deena Kastor), and watching everyone cheer for them inspired me to push myself even harder than I already was. By the time I got to the first mile marker, I actually had to slow down a little bit because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to maintain the pace I was running at for another 12.1 miles without running out of gas. I still felt great though so I only eased up a little bit and continued to enjoy the rest of the course. The second and third miles go past various historical sites in Philadelphia (the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, etc...) and then around mile 4, the course heads back down Ben Franklin Parkway and towards the Schuylkill River Trail.

Mile 5 goes past boathouse row, which is another scenic, historical area along the river and by the time I got to mile 6, I remembered something that I hadn't thought about in a long time- there used to be a time when one of my goals in a half marathon was to see the sixth mile marker within the first 50 minutes of the race, and my reasoning for that was because I knew that if I could run almost the first half of the race in 50 minutes or less, it meant that as long as I could maintain that pace (or at least fairly close to it) for the second half, I would finish in under 2 hours. I hadn't had that goal for myself in so long that I had completely forgotten about it. I hit mile 6 at just over an hour this time so I knew that a sub 2 hour half wasn't going to happen for me.... but that's fine because it was still the fastest six miles I had run in at least four years and I didn't feel like I needed to slow down at all.... Of course this made me want to push myself even harder, which lead to the whole realization around mile 8 that I couldn't remember the last time I felt as good as I did eight miles into a race.

Right at the end of mile 8, the course goes across a bridge over the river and heads back towards downtown Philadelphia. This area is slightly more hilly than the rest of the course, but the hills are still barely noticeable. I think Philly might even be flatter than Chicago. The part of the course that runs along the river from about mile 6 through mile 11 is also surrounded by trees which would have provided a lot of shade if the sun had come out - it made for a nice pleasant run.

One of the things that made the last mile and a half nice was the fact that I had also done a 5K the day before. I wrote a separate review of the 5K, but basically the two races were part of a series of weekend long running festivals that Competitor Group has been hosting in a select number of cities this year that involve a shorter race on Saturday followed by a longer run on Sunday (and an extra bonus medal for doing both of them... also known as a Remix Challenge). Both races started and ended in roughly the same place and the last mile and a half of the half marathon was identical to the 5K. So like I mentioned in my other post, when I hit mile 11.5, I knew exactly what to expect for the remainder of the race because I had just finished running in exactly the same spot the day before. This part of the course heads back up the river, around the back of the Art Museum and up one final steep hill (the steepest hill in the entire course but it also isn't very long and as soon as you get to the top, the finish line is right there).

The finish line is right next to the "Rocky Steps", which were made famous in the legendary movie. Anyone who wants to run up these steps after the race to do a re-enactment of the scene from the movie can do that, but I saw a lot more people doing it after the 5K the day before than after the half marathon (for obvious reasons).

Competitor Group always provides good entertainment along the course (there were some really good local bands playing at various spots) and they also tend to put together some really good post race concerts and this one was no different. Rusted Root played for runners who wanted to stick around after the race for a bit to reunite with their friends and families, have a beer and pick up their Heavy Medals (the "bonus" medals that are given out to people who do multiple races. I got one for doing both the half and the 5K and another one for doing half marathons in both Virginia Beach and Philadelphia within about a month of each other).

I only have one small complaint about this course - when I crossed the finish line, my GPS said that I had run 13.58 miles.... and normally I would just shrug this off because GPS devices aren't always accurate and they also don't account for some of the back and forth weaving that runners do in the beginning of a race when everyone is settling into their pace groups..... but this time several other people with different types of GPS devices said the same thing - the course appeared to be almost a half mile longer than it should have been and based on the number of people who seemed to have noticed this, it was a little bit too much to be just an anomaly. I honestly didn't care myself because I enjoyed the race so much that I didn't mind stretching it out a little further... but I also know that there were people who might have missed PRs because of the extra distance so I'm hoping that at some point the race organizers will double check the course and make any adjustments to be sure that it really is 13.1 miles and not 13.5. Other than that though, I really can't complain. I had a great time running this race and a great time in Philadelphia too. My next half marathon is in Outer Banks, North Carolina in November. I'm hoping it'll be just as good as this one.....

Besides running marathons and half marathons, I like to look for different kinds of workouts and races to do from time to time to mix things up a little bit and challenge myself in different ways. So when a friend told me about Storm the Stadium, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give it a shot.

Storm the Stadium is a stair climb... but it's a little different from the stair climbs that are held inside of skyscrapers in big cities (like Hustle up the Hancock, etc...). Instead of going up to the top of a building, climbers go up and down all of the stairs in the stands of a sports stadium. This year it was 6000 steps inside of US Cellular Field in Chicago and in previous years it was held at Soldier Field.

Here's roughly how everything works:

Everyone who signs up for the climb gets an exact start time that goes all the way down to the second (mine was 8:26:45am). Climbers get to the stadium a little bit before their designated start time and line up in a single file line and start the climb 15 seconds apart (this is for safety reasons since you can't have too many people on the stairs at the same time).

I'm not sure if it was the same at Soldier Field, but for this particular one, the climb started at one end of the upper deck... climbers went up a set of stairs then down the same set (there's a railing that runs down the middle to separate the climbers who are going up from the ones who are going down), and then out into the concourse, back in through the doors to the next section and then up and down the next set of stairs, etc.... all the way around the entire stadium. Then when a climber finishes the last staircase in the upper deck, they run down the ramp to the lower deck and do the same thing in reverse and the finish line is right below the start line.

I really love the concept of this and once everyone actually got going, it was an awesome race. The weather was perfect and even though my thighs and calf muscles were burning from all the stairs, looking out onto the stadium and watching all of the other climbers was an awesome sight. Plus because of the way everything was laid out with climbers covering the upper deck first, followed by the lower deck, things worked out pretty nicely because the staircases in the lower deck aren't as steep, which means that the toughest part of the race was all covered in the first half and everyone's legs got a little bit of a rest in the second half. It took me a little over 45 minutes to finish.

All in all it was a great time. There are a few things I would like to see changed with this race as far as the overall organization goes though:

First, the start times were emailed out the day before the race. The problem with this is that a lot of people have other plans for the day besides just doing the stair climb so while my start time was early enough that it didn't really make any difference, I felt sorry for the people who thought they were going to be starting at 8am, only to find out that they weren't actually starting until 10. Other stair climbs stagger their start times like this (they have to for safety reasons) but in most cases, the start times are sent out weeks in advance so that people who are doing the race have plenty of time to plan their day around it.
When I got there and checked in, they mentioned that things were running a few minutes behind.... but there was no other explanation of what the actual issue was. It turned out to be a problem with the timing equipment, which is fine - sometimes things happen that nobody has any control over... the problem was the lack of communication. People were standing around wondering when the race was going to start, and as time went on, more and more people started to show up for their scheduled start times and there was no word from anyone about when they would get to start climbing. Once the race organizers finally did start letting people up into the upper deck to line up, it was hard to hear the instructions about who was supposed to go where because there was a speaker blaring classic rock music that never got turned down and the people making the announcements didn't have microphones. A group of about 100 or so people was taken up to the upper deck and then everyone else was left to still wonder what was going on.
Spacing out the start times by 15 seconds is a great idea and makes a lot of sense in a race like this.... but the problem is that climbers were put in the order they were in based on when they showed up to pick up their race packets as opposed to being grouped based on their pace.... so within the first several flights of stairs, there was a lot of passing going on and people having to stop climbing and move off to the side so other climbers could get by them. This all worked itself out eventually like it does in any other race, but it could have been a lot more efficient if the climbers had been grouped according to skill level. (And as a side note, I know that this is not really easy to do in a race like this since it's fairly unique and most people don't have finishing times in equivalent races to use to determine their estimated finishing times, etc.... but at least asking someone for their pace per mile as a runner or some other similar metric would be a start).
Lastly, the course itself wasn't clearly marked. The way that I described it above (up a staircase and then back down the same staircase and then through the concourse to the next one) was generally how things worked, but there were some sections where climbers were supposed to cut across the bottom row of seats to get to the next section instead of going out into the concourse and there wasn't really a clear indication of when to do what. There were some climbers who accidentally skipped sections altogether and others who zig-zagged through the different sections, going up one set of stairs and down the next.... so not everyone who did the race actually covered all 6000 steps, and in most cases, it wasn't their own fault as much as that they simply didn't know where they were supposed to be going. This could have been fixed very easily - print out some pictures of arrows, laminate them, and tape them to the railings at the end of each aisle (or every other aisle, etc....). There was yellow caution tape that was put up in some places that gave climbers a pretty good indication of where they were not supposed to go but this really wasn't enough. It wouldn't have taken much longer to provide some additional direction for everyone.
There was no finisher's medal. I'm not going to say too much about this because I do a lot of races that don't have finisher's medals and it's fine. The only reason I'm mentioning it here is because Storm the Stadium claims to be one of the largest consecutive stair challenges in the United States.... and there are plenty of smaller ones who DO offer finishers medals. So if the race organizers really want to make a claim like that and use it to get people to register for their race, they should also provide the participants with something that shows they completed it besides just a t-shirt.
All that being said though, like I mentioned earlier, I really liked this race and I like the concept behind it too. It could definitely stand to be organized a bit better, but once it is, I really don't see any reason why it can't be expanded into a whole series that includes other stadiums as well. I'm not sure why it was moved from Soldier Field to US. Cellular Field but if things can be worked out with the stadium owners themselves, it could really be held at both places at some point... and even at other stadiums too (i.e. Wrigley and the Cell in the spring to kick off baseball season, Soldier Field in the fall to kick off football season, and a winter one that's indoors at the United Center).... and if things go well, it can eventually be expanded to other cities - the nice thing about a climb like this is that you don't need a major skyscraper to do it. Any stadium for any sport could work - it can be professional, college, high school, etc... So while I think there were some problems with this race organizationally, it's still pretty early on in its existence so I definitely would not give up on it completely and I'd recommend that other people give it a shot too. I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves over the next few years.