Okay. I’m sorry. I know it has been forever since I’ve written anything here. Allow me to re-introduce myself. I am Big Daddy. I run marathons.

I recently ran in the Healthy Huntington Marathon at Marshall University. It’s a small race in West Virginia. Surprisingly, it is not hilly. It is near the Ohio River, and that keeps the elevation change to a minimum. Did I mention it is small? There were just over 500 runners in the marathon, a few more than that in the half marathon, and about that many involved in the marathon relay and a five-mile walk. The size was great for me. I didn’t have to fight any crowds to get to the start. Good thing, too. A GPS mishap turned a 20 minute drive from the hotel into a 55 minute drive. We arrived with only 20 minutes to use the port-o-potty and find the starting line. It was a cool morning, about 29 degrees, and perfect for running. I found a place near the front, and we were quickly off.

There were several things to recommend this marathon. As I mentioned earlier, it is a fast, flat course. It’s not crowded. You get to finish in the football stadium, and they even provide a football for runners to carry the last 100 yards. Despite these positives, I found myself telling my wonderful curb crew that I wouldn’t suggest this race to others. One of my wonderful supporters asked, “Why not?”

For me, a well-organized race can outweigh a lot of negatives. I felt like this race was weak in several areas.

An expo or packet pick-up is the first thing a racer experiences on the big weekend. This one was housed in a very nice building on Marshall’s campus. Unfortunately, there was hardly any way to know where it was. The buiding’s name was not easy to find on the exterior, and there were very few signs to indicate anything special was happening. Once inside, there was very little information regarding the race. We did find a small map (more on that later) with our bib number, but not much else was included in the packet.

On race day, we made our way to the start and had to ask someone where the starting line was. They pointed vaguely toward an intersection and said it was under the stop light. It was pretty easy to find, I guess, but there was no actual starting line. Not even a bit of chalk on the ground. The race was chip timed, so I told my brother-in-law, Uncle Ink, that it didn’t matter where he lined up. It wouldn’t have mattered if there had been a timing mat at the start: there wasn’t. How can a Boston Qualifying race not have starting mat?

It was cold, but I was dressed properly, so I was pretty comfortable. After the national anthem, I ditched my disposable clothes. Oops. The race director decided to give speech. It may have been interesting. He was too far away from the race start for us to hear him. I caught a few snippets of a memorial for someone, but I couldn’t make out much of it. Also, runners were now yelling about the cold. Probably not the memorial they had intended. Finally, ten minutes late, the race started.

I did see my curb crew at mile four. I may have seen them more often, but the maps included in our race pack were pretty useless. The maps were not detailed enough to include most of the street names, and they were so small that they lacked useful information. Also, the fast course made it more difficult for my curb crew to see me and Uncle Ink because we were rarely in the same location on the course.

One problem with a flat, fast course is that it is often not that scenic. This was a flat, fast course by which I mean to say that much of it was ugly. I’m sure there are beautiful areas of Huntington, WV. I just didn’t see many of them during this race. There was one beautiful park the race circed twice. Some of my fellow runners circled it more than twice because a turn was poorly marked. I would have missed the turn like the guy in front of me, but a police woman came running over to re-direct me.

Now, I’ve highlighted a lot of the negatives of this race. Please don’t think everything was negative. Like I said, it is flat and fast. I ran a PR (by six minutes) and even managed to negative split the race. The finish line in the stadium is cool. The prizes for age group winners were beautiful glass bowls from a local glass company. If you need a race in West Virginia and you want to go fast with few distractions, check it out. A few organization improvements could make it great.