Fargo Marathon

I understand the course change due to the flooding, BUT the course description was totally off. LONG lines for the Expo. And hard ripe green bananas at the finish line? Ugh. Only other post-race food was pretzels and candy. Pretty lame.

This event had a lot to offer. I did the Go Far Challenge (5K Friday night, marathon Saturday). The 5K was a lot of fun with over 2,000 runners (not lined up according to pace) so you really had to dodge and weave around walkers and strollers. If you don't care about time, it is a fun event. Don't wait until Friday night to hit the expo/packet pick up. The line to get in was extremely long. It was a small venue. The marathon course has to be redirected due to potential flooding. There were about 2000 marathoners but even though the three events (full, half, and 10K) started 15 minutes apart, the courses ran together and even crossed paths in some areas, which made it fairly congested for quite a ways. The course was nearly completely flat but not very impressive. Mainly residential streets with lots of loops and out and backs. After the finish, there were green bananas, granola bars, and some type of gummy spaghetti-thing. BUT, the medals (3 in the Go Far Challenge) were awesome, the marathon jacket is awesome and the town was great! Spectators along most of the course, bands on the marathon route and 5K. I wouldn't call this a destination race but it was fun and the weather was absolutely perfect for June 1! Great race for 50-staters!

Pros: *Starting and ending in the Fargodome. This was AWESOME. Tons of bathrooms, no need to worry about standing around in cold or rainy starting weather (although it was not cold or rainy in 2023). Concessions were open if you wanted to grab a coffee. Easy gear check. Super comfortable for supporters to sit in the stands and hang out and watch the runners leaving and finishing on the jumbotron. They even had Elvis with a muscle car hanging out and taking pictures. *Spectators: Fargo really turns out for this race. Lots of enthusiatic fans cheering and music all along the course. *Expo: Not a huge expo given that this is a smaller race, but a nice one. *Medal/Swag: If you are into finisher medals, this was a really cool one. Enormous with a nice etching of Fargo downtown on one side. It was also nice to get a hoodie instead of yet another shirt - something a little unique. *Course: I gave the course 4 stars, but I don't think that the organizers could do better in selecting a course. It's super flat - the tiniest of hills in a little park, and a couple of underpasses, otherwise flat as a pancake. Personally, I prefer a little bit more roll, but if you like flat, this is it. I also appreciate that the 10K and half marathon runners were mostly separate from the full or running in the opposite direction - which really helped to mitigate 'runner traffic' problems. Most of the course went through neighborhoods, and as noted above, lots of spectators. There were also a few smaller parks and a bit through North Dakota State U and Concordia U campuses. Given how warm it was, unfortunately, there was very little shade. Cons: *Weather: Obviously not something the race directors could control, but it was too warm. Maybe upper 40s /lower 50s at the start, full sun nearly the whole way, ending in 60s or 70s depending on your time. *Finish food: Meh. There was chocolate milk (yay!), donuts and little cups of vanilla ice cream and not much else. *Race day party: In spite of lots of info about it on the race website and a beer tag on our race bibs, there was not actually a post-race party. About 30 minutes after it was supposed to start, someone made an announcement that the info on the website was from last year and the party had been cut this year due to budget constraints. OK, totally get that, but really, nobody noticed the link and page with info about this on the website? Weird. Overall, a great experience and super nice, well organized and supported smaller marathon. Definitely recommend this race, especially for the 50-staters. Too bad the weather wasn't a little more cooperative this year.