Freedom's Run Marathon was in (mostly) ideal conditions. Beautiful, but cold, day. Started at 30 degrees and never got much above 50, which worked out since I could wear my jacket the whole time. Ran this race accompanied by both my SO and my mother. It was the SO's 1st marathon ever (a tough one to start with!), and my mom's 3rd.
Spent Thursday night driving up through the night, as it was a 10 hour drive from Atlanta. Yuck. I only got about 2 hours of sleep in the car (as did everybody else), so it was a testament to how nice the town was that we managed to enjoy it on Friday anyways. The hotel we stayed in was very accomodating in that they allowed us to check in as soon as we arrived (around 10AM!), so they get 5 stars from me.
Enjoyed checking out the little town. It was a cute little college town with a lot of nice restaurants and boutique type stores. My mom found some great vintage consignment clothes and I found a lovely yarn store (I enjoy knitting). The food was pricier than I expected, but I suppose that's because of the college type of atmosphere and the fact that, although a tiny little place, apparently Shepherdstown, WV is considered a touristy place!
The race expo was mostly just a packet pick-up. There were a couple of vendors, but nothing too exciting, which was fine since we were pretty exhausted at that point.
Race itself was a point-to-point marathon that started quite a ways from Shepherdstown (ending in Shepherdstown), so there were shuttle buses (school buses!) to the start, leaving at 5:30 AM. Early wake-up call, but that's typical and wasn't a downside to me.
The marathon and half marathon are on entirely different courses, so we started the race at 7AM, just with other marathon racers, which was great. No start corrals or anything, as this was a small(ish) race.
Now, the race itself. GORGEOUS. My favorite race in terms of scenery, bar none, including all the smaller races I've ever done. Ran through 4 (or 5, we got different amounts from different people) state/federal parks. Ran really far downhill within the first few miles, which I greatly enjoyed - I fly down the hills, no braking for me, unlike most of the other runners. Went over a beautiful bridge, then spent a good 10 miles running along the C&O canal over dirt roads, and then ran along the roads to Antietem. I loved running through Antietem, with all of the history there. The killer hills were there, though. More like mini-mountains, really. It was almost impossible to run most of them, so I tried to make up time by flying down the backside of them. Hills just kept on coming until around mile 24 (monster ones stopped around mile 21, but there were still rolling ones after that). Then there were a few miles through a town, which I considered the worst - the scenery of the town was cute, but the course had us on a little side of the road - no lane shut down or anything - which wasn't fun. Gave me extra incentive to speed up, though! The race finish was inside the Shepherdstown football stadium, which was a cute touch. No cheering crowds to be found, though, so make sure you can be your own cheerleader.
I finished in 4:36:58. I was 15/31 in my age group (F20-29) and 230/371 overall.
The race swag was pretty good - long sleeve technical shirt, which I really like (I'll try to post a picture later). The medal is sort of odd and nothing neat looking like I'm used to, but fine. The race itself makes up for anything lacking in the actual medal.
If this race were not so far away, I would Definitely put this on my yearly schedule. I hope to do it again someday anyways!
Overall: 5/5
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