Did the May version of the Myrtle Beach Marathon yesterday and, by the grace of God, managed to finish.
Reminded me of the unusually hot Disney Marathon day in 2020. Usually this one is early March, but they pushed it back to May 1 due to covid concerns. I also made the rookie mistake of not training for this one, (after my ultra in February, I decided to take 3-4 weeks off to rest the knees, which pretty much turned into 10-12, I don’t think I’d run 26 miles total in the last 2-2.5 months
).
But, all in all, it was a fun race and mercifully, fairly flat. Nice to have a sort of larger event coming back live.
The medals were huge! Got the finisher medal and a triple-spinner challenge medal for having also done the Charleston Marathon (which was back in January and turned virtual only).
For those curious about how they ran it (for comparison’s sake as live races are returning or if anyone is looking at any other upcoming events from Capstone Races): They skipped their expo this year and mailed bibs (or had a local location for pick up, but no race day pick up) and just handed out participant shirts, finisher shirts, and medals at well spaced tents after the finish line. They did corrals, which they haven’t done in the past. There were about 1000 runners in the marathon (about the same as last year), about 1500 for the half, and about 500 for the 5k all starting from the same general area in waves. I think last year there was closer to 4000-4500 between all the races, so I imagine a lot of the half and 5k regulars either decided to skip or went with the virtual option. Typically this race has a festival-type atmosphere after with food and beer vendors and bands and such (and encouragement for friends and families to come along with games and such for the kids), they skipped all that (no non-participants were allowed near the finish area) this year and encouraged people to grab their sack of food (just pretzels, a granola bar, and some sort of energy shake mix) and continue moving out of the finish area.
