Asheville Marathon

Congested at start. Ran part of the course 3 times including 2 out and backs and one longer out and back on same running/bike trail. Lots of congestion on bike trail including people walking and biking. Some dirt trail with lots of roots. Good support but would not recommend this marathon and will not run it again. My Garmin read 27.4 miles for the course and others agreed it was long. Part of this may have been because it was too congested 1st 9 miles to run tangents.

First the good: Well organized and volunteer supported race. Good communication pre-race. Solid crowd support for the first 8ish miles in town, then a little more sparse based on road and bike path locations. The course is fairly up and down over that first 8 plus miles, but not too bad, especially if you have any hill training. Things I didn't care for: Very congested start, road was wider than starting arch so it bottlenecked pretty bad as you crossed the start mat. Also a bit of a bottle neck when going from the street to the bike path around 1.7. Miles 8.5ish through 15.5ish were decent though you run with vehicle traffic in the bike lane when you're not on the sidewalk/bike path. Then back to the bike path shared with the half runners. Which wasn't bad until around mile 18 when you enter the somewhat demoralizing double loop just after passing the finish area. The worst parts in my opinion were the two way runner traffic both as you approach the half turn around, two way runner traffic on what felt like a narrow bike path with that many runners doing their marathon loops, and then the narrow, rutted, rooty dirt path around the baseball field as you come back to run with the half marathoners again. Considering the rain the day before the race, this stretch could have been worse, but the conditions were still not great if you needed to pass. Then you do it a second time. There were also other park activities going on which increased the non-race vehicle and people traffic which made for more frustration than necessary (credit to the volunteer that held car traffic clearly wanting to get into the parking lot regardless of race participants crossing the driveway). Post race food was eh, except for the biscuits and cupcakes which were awesome. All in all, if you're a 50 stater, I'd probably try to find a different race for North Carolina.

I want to start by saying that I felt the event was well organized and the volunteers were all very kind and helpful. However, I do feel that the half marathon is treated as the main event and the marathon is kind of secondary. The race had a mass start for the half and full, and the course was really fun with a lot of crowd support up until the time the full split from the half. The full then had to do a fairly dull out-and-back on a street open to traffic, then another out-and-back on a greenway being used by the general public. There was not as much crowd support, as the half marathon had many more runners than the full. The full finished up by heading in the direction of the finish line, where the half marathoners had been 2 hours previous. Most of the half runners were finished and there were a lot of people hanging around in the park and on the trails where the full marathoners still needed to do two out-and-back loops. Part of the course was off-road which was a challenge. The multiple out-and-backs were mentally difficult for me and caused some congestion. I would definitely go back and do the half marathon, but I don't believe I would do the full again. The medal was beautiful and I really enjoyed visiting the city.