Good News: Dallas Marathon Gets New Title Sponsor Now BMW Dallas Marathon

I have never run the Dallas Marathon but it is a marathon that I would like to do.

It is late in the year though. For those training in the midwest and northern states it might not be the most convenient day of the year to enter a marathon.

Q: How can you tell the difference between a porcupine and a BMW?

A: With a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.

Dallas Marathon will still suck.

The course changes every year. Why? $$$!

They want to pay as little as possible to DPD so much of the historic course along White Rock Lake is gone. Now there's lots of crappy out and back sections.

The weather usually sucks too... not the race's fault but don't go there hoping to PR.

Quit running Dallas soon after they changed the name and cancelled at last minute due to ice without any refunds or discounts for the following year's race.

When they added the half it became a fiasco and for several years in a row the start and finish areas were horrible.

There are better races to blow over 100 bucks on.

I was the runner up in the Dallas Half last year and didn't have a great experience at all.

1. I was given the wrong colored Bib.

For some reason i was given a marathon colored bib instead of the half marathon color, Even though at packet pick up i got my bib at the half marathon area.

2. Elite Bibs are impossible to get, the race director never emails you back

3. When I was finishing (.25 miles from finish) the Cyclist I was following made opened a gate along with other officials and told me to switch sides of the road. I didn't know why until I was finishing. It was because they saw my marathon colored Bib and thought I was in the marathon ( i ran 1:08:56).. Which would be a descent marathon time i must say. As i finished the race announcer kept saying "Oh i dont know how he got on that side of the course" and "thats not right, well have to try to figure this out" and other things basically eluding that i had cut the course or something It was quite an embarrassing experience and I had not done anything wrong.

4. They tried to DQ me

After i finished, a race official came to me and said since i had a marathon Bib on I would not count in the results for the half marathon. I told them that doesn't make sense because the marathon is more expensive than the half and i paid the price for the half, the officials still said i might not count but would see what they could do.

All in all they got me in the results, which at that point i could have cared less. It wasn't a great experience and I love the Dallas Marathon/WR and hope things get better.

Being born in Dallas and now a Ft Worth resident, I understand the criticism, but I've got to defend my hometown and its marathon.

All the posts below were from the same poster above and have been removed. Clearly someone has a vendetta vs the marathon.

For the record the Dallas White Rock Marathon is a nonprofit organization (at least White Rock is still their official 501c name!)

And I went last year to cover it as media and was really impressed with the media setup. It helps the race is on local TV, but the entire media set up was the best I've seen outside of Boston, NY or Chicago. I couldn't believe how nice it was.

They had a media room in the Omni. I sort of chuckled when I left to drive home because living in Ft. Worth if something is super polished and nice in a good way, I say "that is so dallas" and the media room was "so dallas". Totally first class.

same poster:

and again:

big question: are they going to pay elite appearance fees? Will they have a prize purse big enough to attract an elite, or even subelite field?

kvothe wrote:

big question: are they going to pay elite appearance fees? Will they have a prize purse big enough to attract an elite, or even subelite field?

They already did that last year, they probably dumped all the money they had into appearance fees. They didn't even have prize money for the winners last year. I'm sure Meb, Puskedria, Ward, Abdi, and Chalenga weren't cheap, especially that close to the trials.

Having a multi-year title sponsor is a very good sign for this race. There was good growth from 2010 to 2012 with the marathon reaching 5k finishers. But things really dropped off after the cancellation. I have not heard any discussion about bringing back any money for elites. I think they previously just did prize money, but had no money for appearance fees. Top men's times have always been around 2:17-19.

There is no reason why Dallas shouldn't be able to build this race into a much better event. Houston went from 4k finishers and no prize money to almost 8k finishers and an elite field that is the second tier from Boston, Chicago and NY. Consistency with sponsorship made a big difference for Houston. Also having a quality group of managers who have stayed with the organization year after year also helped Houston a lot.

Precious Roy wrote:

There is no reason why Dallas shouldn't be able to build this race into a much better event.

A crappy course that constantly changes to save money and avoid pissing off high end neighborhoods, start/finish line changing every few years (AAC, Fair Park, now convention center, who knows where it will be next year), consistently crappy weather (always either too cold or too hot and windy), a crappy attitude towards runners after cancellation (telling them the money already went to charity so we can't give you a damn thing other than a small discount off next year and a medal for a race you didn't run) are reasons why it will never be a better event.

It's just another big city overpriced marathon without anything unique and many down sides. Locals will continue to run, but it will never become a destination marathon.