The Eau Claire Half Marathon on Sunday, May 3, 2009, Eau Claire, WI
Review by Jane Kline, 2009

Race Website: www.eauclairemarathon.org

Chip-timed
Nice Tech tshirt, goodie bag, packet picket Friday and Saturday, pasta feed Saturday evening, both at the YMCA.

Beautiful scenery and lots and lots of hills!

The race started at Carson Park with music playing, and then ran through part of the city and on many trails, ending back at Carson Park. Most of the time, you can see water, either on the side of the trails or when crossing the rivers. There was road and trail construction around the 6ish/7ish mile so the trail was not good there, just laid out with fresh loose gravel. Nice weather conditions! I died around mile 10 though - ran out of steam. My heart beat kept going too high and I was way too hot, otherwise I could have run 3-5 minutes faster. Never wear black long-sleeved top on a sunny day, no matter how comfortable it feels! It was about 45 degrees when everyone was arriving, and was probably over 60 by the time the race was over. There were plenty of water stops, most had Gatorade, one GU stop, some with porta potties. I just ran with a hand water bottle and GU in my waist packet - no problems. But not the best run when you have a cold. Along the route, there were several places where people cheered us on, lots of cow bells (well, it is Wisconsin after all), and many of the paths had encouraging phrases written in chalk. Some music around the Eau Claire river section of the route too. On the last mile, I dreaded going up the Carson Park hill (I had run up this hill many times as a college student), and sure enough, had to walk most of it because I was wiped out. Nice finish area – we were presented with medals and could get warming blankets, music was playing, and the massage area looked busy. The food at the finish included ham sandwiches, bananas, and oranges. I kept going back for the oranges – they were cool and refreshing, never had this at a post race finish before. One of the local restaurants was also selling nice sandwiches at reasonable prices.

I did not know about all the new trails around Eau Claire - they are wonderful. Most weren’t there when I went to UWEC, or I just didn’t know about them.

As it was an inaugural event, there were a few things that they did not do so well, like not having enough porta potties (that was really bad), and little things I missed like not showing the water stops on the web site prior to the race, nor the elevation for the half (just for the full). Everyone lined up by pace groups at the start (that was smart). They had many more half runners than full. I found this information on-line: 1,100 for the half-marathon, 240 for the full marathon, and 300 for the 2-mile run. I think they need to work on advertising more, sending out emails to participants, more web updates, etc. The results didn’t come out right away on the web site either. The YMCA hosted the expo and the pasta feed. The expo was tiny, but the pasta feed was good (pasta, Italian salad, veggie tray, green beans and some kind of dessert, all you can eat), although not well attended when I went around 5:30.

Check out the organization’s web site to see the photo gallery for scenery.

Highly recommend this race. The price was reasonable and the course with all the scenery was nice. All the volunteers were so friendly. I can only think that next year’s race will be better and hopefully there won’t be any road construction, and they’ll have more porta potties! I also chose to stay at a hotel Saturday night because I didn’t want to get up at 4am to drive 100 miles, and I wanted to pick up my packet early and not be rushed, and do the pasta feed Saturday evening (race was on a Sunday morning).