Go! St. Louis Marathon 2011

Well, I just signed up for the 2011 Go! St. Louis Marathon for what will be my third time in a row. I had toyed with the idea of skipping the race to take pictures of all my friends and instead running a marathon a few weeks later in Illinois. However, the fact that the latter race would conflict with the Berkshire Hathaway meeting and I would incur additional costs for the Illinois trip versus staying in St. louis to run I bit the bullet and went with the local race.



It is kind of surprising too in the sense that I was extremely upset with one facet of the race last year and vowed not to sign up again due to what I viewed as poor race planning. The race organizers had set up an extremely narrow corridor to shuttle the runners through with food and drink tables once you finished. I grabbed a water bottle and one or two smaller food items and figured I could come back later and get more. Wrong! Once you exited this narrow strip you were cut off from food and drink except for a free beer ticket that I ended up giving away to a friend.



In addition, they had erected fencing on the site of the finish area and you basically had to walk around an entire block to get to the other side. Normally walking an entire block would be no big deal but after running a marathon I was in no mood to be without access to food and water plus having to walk much further than necessary to get to my car or back to the area near the finish to look for my friends, some of whom had yet to finish after running 26.2 miles.



Incidentally, I had been to other races that had the same type of set up of cordoning off the runners from spectators but the difference with the St. Louis race was that the corridor was so narrow that you couldn't find a spot to sit down and linger to ingest your food and drink and go back for more like you can at other races. Plus, there were no signs to advise you of that fact that once you leave that area you can't get any more drink or food compared to signs apprising everyone of this fact I had seen at Rock & Roll half and full marathon events for example. Or, if there were such signs I never saw them. Other than those two aspects I thought it was a very well managed race. Still, those factors irked me for quite some time after the event but after eight months the annoyance has abated and now I know what to expect in 2011.



The course itself is kind of hilly and not really conducive to running a fast P.R. Nevertheless, I ran my marathon P.R. last year at Go! running 3:50. Ironically, I had estimated my fitness months before the race as being in about 350 shape by the mid April race date and so set a goal of running sub 350. Of course, I just missed going under the goal by something like 20 seconds! but still ran about an eight minute personal record. Not a bad estimation though considering the race is 26.2 miles long.