Cambridge Half Marathon Review

Date: 3 November 2019
Location: Cambridge, MA

Cambridge Half Marathon

TLDR: This a beautiful course with some nice swag, but if you run in the back of the pack, skip this one.

Hanging out in the starting corral waiting for the blue wave to move forward.

This was a second half marathon in 2 weeks. My best friend had chosen this as her first half marathon and I didn't want her to run alone, so I registered to join her.

This is a hard review to write, I knew we were going to have some time challenges with this race. There were annoyances that day that could have been anticipated and there were a few things I was disappointed in. I dislike writing anything negative about a race, as I understand how much work goes into making them happen. Running in the back of the pack is not new to me and I'm not sure I would have chosen this race on my own due to the 3 hour cut off. While I'm starting to put in the work to make a 3 hour cut off something I don't concern myself with, I'm not sure I could have pulled that off this seasons twice 2 weeks apart. When reading this review, keep in mind I'm a back of the pack runner(right now) and if you run a half in 2 hrs or less, your experience and opinion of a race may be entirely different.

Harvard football field. 

The Good

• Easy Check In
• Nice swag shirts, I will definitely be wearing this in the future.
• Beautiful flat course.
• Parking pass for 4 more visits to the Galleria which just happens to be a 10 min walk from the Museum of Science.
• We ran the Harvard football field. That was fun. There were people running the stadium stairs and cheering us on.
• Race director good about responding to emails before race.

The Reasons I Won't Likely Return

• Expensive. Compared to other half marathons, this one is expensive. 
• No one checked in on us. We were sent to the side walk early on, and when we were in a complicated part of the course volunteers just walked off their posts rather than wait the 10-15 minutes for us to clear the area. No one came by to just say "hey the race is being packed up, you're welcome to continue, but the finish line and the med tent will be gone when you get there". I get it we were going slow, which is why I'm not upset that the water stops were gone after the first 4-5 miles. 
• I don't drink beer. A 3 beer after party is not an incentive to me. I want an uncut underripe banana and a bottle of water, maybe a bag of salty potato chips, but that's it.
• Race photos were not free. Official Photos Here.  I got a good jump shot so you'll need to go there to see them.
• With no rain that day, our experience could have been improved with some simple sidewalk chalk arrows on the path. 

The Weird

• The cups for the water stop we did use made the water taste minty. 

Garmin record of finish

This is my first DNF (did not finish). While we did walk/run all 13.1 miles plus some bonus distance as I'm sure we got a bit lost following the course map online, the lack of finishing mats means we are not in the final results. We did take a picture in front of the Best Buy sign to prove we made it!

Finished!

Now this it's several days later, I can laugh at the loss of all the water stops, using gu packets like bread crumbs to know if we were on the right route, and the disappearance of the mile markers around mile 10. We were in an area I knew well in the early 2000's and we said hello twice to a building I used to work in. It feels like a lifetime ago that I spent all my time there and knew all the streets and where to park a car. We went out on the bike path west more than I had ever explored when I was there, I may have driven through the area at times but never stopped long enough to acknowledge it.

I had a great time with my best friend and I'm super proud of her accomplishment. There is a different kind of toughness needed to power through 13.1 miles as we did. Once I have my racing schedule for next year, we can plan another half together.