OFFICIAL - What Did You Think of the Philadelphia Marathon??

1st of all, who were the bigger nerds, the sci-fi people or the runners?

All I know about the Philly Marathon is that Mike McKeeman is the biggest badass to ever hit the roads.

IMHO the race was decent. This was my first Philly marathon so I can't compare it to previous years.

The Good: Water stop volunteers were great; course was nice and not too crowded despite the size of the race (I started in the 6 min pace area).

The Bad: REALLY poor organization at the expo (Saturday 2pm) - it was a madhouse. Also, they ran out of safety pins, which is no big deal, but made me worried that they might run out of something more important...say water; mile markers screwed up and also confusing when the half rejoined the full.

Overall, 7 out of 10 for me. My wheels fell off so maybe I'm being harsh. I'd go back though.

I thought the race was terrible, especially in the first half. I ran this race in 2004, and the experience was much better then. I don't generally gripe about a poorly organized expo or not getting a space blanket at the finish, although both happened here.

The real problem was the confusion in the first 14 miles. I ran with the 3:10 pace group, which was pretty big for obvious reasons, although it must have been smaller than the groups trying to run between 3:30 and 4:00. I felt like the water stops (until after the Art Museum at mile 14) were woefully undermanned and located irregularly, and I had to grab water off the table a couple of times. The third mile marker was long, and I never did find another marker or clock for 5 more miles.

The half marathoners cut off the course at 10 miles, but rejoined the course on a downhill and it felt like we almost ran over people at that point. Finally, as I mentioned on another thread, I almost killed the megaphone guy at the half marathon finish. Although my memory is fuzzy, I don't remember any signs or flags. There was just this dude in front of a barrier who seemed to materialize out of the middle of the pack I was running in.

I went to Philadelphia because, two years ago, this was a very good, no frills urban marathon. I don't care about a big expo, bands on the course, scenery, or fancy medals. However, without decent aid stations and accurate course marking, it was a very disappointing experience.

1. Pre-race Organization: It was nice to see the marathon with a title sponsor again. However, the website had few updates, not the best navigation, and even today they do not have a recap of the race (this is the kindest I will be)
2. Elites (pre-race organization cont'd): In the summer the elite athlete coordinator was listed as Janis Pierce (also the overall director). She could not handle this easy duty (despite listing elite guidelines as the same as last year) and sub-contracted this bit of work to Larry Barthlow. Barthlow, who more than a few times in articles in Philly papers was quick to note he is a recruiter of top athletes, preceded to lack essential communication skills for a man in his position. He did not get back to people quickly (if at all ). They eliminated any possible housing, and did not have elite water tables (note: they sucked in the past at Philly).
3. The 1/2M: Philly has a great half in PDR, two months before Philly. No need for a second one, especially with the confusion it added. Bibs- The color difference was very suttle between the two bibs; peach, a light color, for the 1/2, very light blue/white for the full. Spend some money on a very dark red dye for your bibs and eliminate any possible confusion for spectators. To eliminate confusion for those racing, make sure that the 1/2 people wear a bib on their back so that people aren't chasing after someone who is going to suddenly stop mid-race. I did not get to see the finish of the half but heard that it was a disaster, and everyone knew it was going to be so based on the course map. Having people come to a dead stop, turn around, and come back is dangerous. The "lanes" to differentiate between 3 different races were not marked, or noted, and also lended to the confusion. There was also talk of the last few mile markers in the 1/2, and the middle Marathon markers, being hard to tell between. I had biked out to the 12 mile mark but didn't know of which race. Apparently the red markers were for the half. How did you know? Again, spend some of that new money on a bigger sign that says. When in the middle of a race, this can be confusing.
4.Pre-race publicity: non-exsistent and contradictory. There was one article in the local papers and it was buried in the back of the sports pages. Headlines: "Phila. Marathon making run for the big time." In the article Pierce and Barthlow basically disagree. "Philadelphia is trying to break out of the pack"-Barthlow. "A lot of people don't want us to grow"- Pierce. She said that people didn't want a crowded race, THEN WHY ADD A HALF-MARATHON!?!?! Also, tell your dumbass press secretary to avoid bashing your own marathon; ""It can be boring for 26.2 [miles] and for as scenic as Philadelphia is, there are gaps... It motivates them when they hear people cheering for them," Giancaterino said.
5.EXPO: The expo has always been held on Eakins Oval and for very good reasons. They need the tent for post-race, plus for this week's Thanksgiving Day Parade which is held in front of the museum. However, if you are going to expand your race, even though you apparently don't want to, then you need to expand your expo space. It was packed at 2PM on Saturday, traffic was a mess, and the tent had too small aisles to walk around in. It was so crowded that when you first walked in they had a volunteer wave people to head to the back of the tent to pick-up their number. She was standing right in front of the marathon merchandise area. She waved people away from buying their own product!! They then, or was it the fire marshall, stoped people at the door and made them form a line. One that took an hour and half, outside, in November. Good call! Inside, they did not have signs high up indicating where anything was. You had to walk up to the back tables, past line that were forming, and check and see if that line was your bib number. These lines were only seperated by the numbers hand written on the front of the boxes. Profesionalism people. Plus the area to grab numbers was too small for lines, and the boards containing what number you would get were all jammed in the corner! They also ran out of pins. 4*12,000 runners is 48,000 pins. Go out and buy 50,000, just in case! Or, have the pins in the bags to eliminated people taking to many. (a company could make alot of money buy promising to sell pins packed together in groups of 4).
6. Race-day: The start was moved up from where it usually is, and what was indicated on the map, was it short? Mile splits were all off and so were the clocks. The lead vehicles clock read 3:26:23 at the 17 mile mark!!! How hard is it to reach down and press a button? What the f***? The half people almost plowed into the full people at the rejoin, and apparently a fat man with a megaphone in the middle of the road was the turn off for the 1/2 finish.

SOLUTIONS
1. Fire Pierce (whose apparent qualifications is she ran 5:12 two years ago, never heard of this woman before this!
2. Either eliminate the half, or have it on a different course, or if you keep it and have it split off, when it rejoins, make sure it is then sepereated by the full by coned off lanes and bib numbers. And for the finish, when you come back up the hill to the art museum, make a right, go around Eakins Oval and slide into the finish like you were merging into traffic.
3. The city loves to tout it's Convention Center, and the citizens of the city spent a ton on it. USE it for the expo!
4. Fire Larry Barthlow, never heard a nice word spoken about him anyway.
5. And finally, if you really want to expand you must change the date. You are going head to head with NYC and Chicago. Also if you want that marathon tourism dollars, you can't have the race 3 days before the busiest travel day of the year. Move it to the early spring, mid/late March.
I am sure there is more, but I am tired.

The 8k was a mess. The runners were sent off, on a quick out and back, around Logan cirle. When the leaders were coming back towards the start, there was a City worker truck just sitting in the way. But wait it gets worse. Just past that the lead cop car had to turn off the course b/c not one, but two huge sweeper trucks were blocking the way. The cop was on the loud speaker saying something like, " What do we even do here." Everyone got through okay, but there was no reason for this to occur. It just added to the notion that Philly had too much going on to handle. They should stick to the 8k and the marathon and dump the 1/2. Silly silly race director.

I stepped off the course at mile 21. My bib number doesn't bring back any records since I was a DNF, but would still like to see my splits. Do they still mail you your splits if you didn't finish?

I'm just glad that I'm not the only one who didn't think this race was well run. All I'm waiting for now is to hear that the race wasn't an exact 26.2.

This is all very disappointing to hear. I ran the race in 2005 and thought it was run very well.

- Mile markers were definitely off. 3 was way long and 4 was way short. I stopped paying attention to them after that.

- The start was a mess. I was 40 yards from the start line and could hear anything. Was there even a gun or horn?

- Agreed on the water tables - they seemed understaffed at 6:15 pace, can't imagine what they were like for 3:10+ crowd.

- I didn't think the split was too bad for the half, but the multiple clocks on West River really messed with my head. I couldn't tell which was which. The 12M mary clock was 200 yds before the 11M hm clock. *head spins*

-I can't believe who came up with that turnaround for the HM finish.

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fool wrote:
The 12M mary clock was 200 yds before the 11M hm clock. *head spins*

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fool wrote:I can't believe who came up with that turnaround for the HM finish.

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I ran the marathon and was disappointed with the organization of the race. In addition to what others have noted:

1. Pre-race information was poor. The official race website was the only source, and it was updated only a few times.

2. The expo was a madhouse on Satuday at 3 p.m. The chip pick-up was arranged by bib number, rather than by last name. If you didn't know your bib number beforehand, then you had to find it on bulletin boards nearby, which added to the confusion and congestion.

3. I didn't get a plastic tie with my chip, which I didn't discover until Sunday morning. I'll have to start checking from now on at future races.

4. As someone else mentioned, the water stops were not where either the website or the photocopied informational sheet (available at number pick-up) said they'd be.

5. The finish area was poorly staffed. I poured myself water, and then Gatorade, and then grabbed a finisher's medal for myself off the table. Afterwards, I wandered around in the staging area trying to figure out if there was any post-race food available, and if so, where.

Overall, I was not impressed by this race.

Anyone else have trouble figuring out the bag drop? I never did find it and ended up just leaving a bag by the tent and picking it up later. The expo mess, yeah, why the tent at all? And I heard people who had paid for pasta tix and didn't get them and all they had were volunteers standing around shrugging their shoulders. What else? The blankets and medals, they were still unloading boxes and opening them, resulting in a big backup in the finish area.

I've been covering this race for many years, and have been one of its biggest fans, so let me try to respond to a few of the previous posts. (And I'm not an apologist, paid or otherwise, for the race, lest you ask - I just know a bit more about some behind the scenes stuff than some others).

1. Janis Pierce works for the city handling numerous functions, of which the marathon is just one. Today she is busy w/ the Thanksgiving Day parade, and right after that it's on to Christmas stuff. So she is not a full-time RD. I'm not sure if they have one, or even a technical director - it used to be Chris Tatreu, but I heard he was replaced this year.

2. The course was indeed accurate - check the certification map at USATF.org (to be truthful, I didn't check the start line layout against the map - maybe someone who's in town can do that). The 3 mi was definitely off, but every other one seemed pretty accurate (4 only seemed "short" b/c 3 was long). The course measurer, Bill Bellville, is one of the best in the country. If the course was short, it was due to layout issues (and it seemed that they had some of the trickier parts, like the sharp turn down Black Road just before 11, done right).

3. I wondered why they didn't have the "cheat mat" in Manyunk right at the 20 mile point rather than before it. That's closer to the turnaround, and it would have given the runners one more meaningful split time.

4. The expo was indeed poorly organized. Actually, I believe this is the first (possibly the second) year it's been at Eakins Oval; prior to that it's always been at Memorial Hall, but that building is being turned into a kid's museum.

5. The reason given for adding the half was to "fill the gap between the finishers in the 8K and the marathon." Obviously, there was a demand for it, even w/ PDR in Sept., as the 2,000 half slots were sold out, and people were even willing to pay the marathon fee just to run half the distance.

In the end, seems like it created more problems than it was worth, from the confusion over the 11/12 splits to the awkward finish. The course was only finalized the weekend before the race, and according to the measurer there was some reason for not following the original plan to run counterclockwise around Eakins to finish. Personally, I'd start the half marathoners 15-30 min after the full, have them do a loop around the Parkway then do the SECOND half of the marathon course out to Manyunk. It would mean closing Kelly Drive sooner but on a Sunday I don't think that would be that big a deal.

6. As to the date, I think it's fine. Philly has always used the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The weather is traditionally good, as it was yesterday. Also, Philly has long served as a "second chance" race for people who have bombed in Chicago, Marine Corps, Hartford, etc. I spoke w/ one couple who had run NYCM 2 weeks ago and knocked 15 min. off their time yesterday.

7. The start was not good. A second Chip system should be brought in so they could use both sides of the Parkway - this would halve the time it took to get everyone into the race.

8. I didn't experience it, but I heard baggage check was non-existent and there weren't enough PortAJohns. Also, the post-race food distribution was haphazard. I was looking for GatorAde and kept being told, "It's further along," but never found it.

9. Can't speak to the elite situation but from everything I've read on this board it wasn't good.

All in all I think Philly has the potential to be a good, mid-sized urban race - it's never going to be in the league w/ NY, Chi or MCM, but it could be in the tier below that, e.g. Flying Pig, Grandma's, etc. But they need to do their homework during the next year to correct the problems that obviously existed this year.

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hello all wrote:

2. Elites (pre-race organization cont'd): In the summer the elite athlete coordinator was listed as Janis Pierce (also the overall director). She could not handle this easy duty (despite listing elite guidelines as the same as last year) and sub-contracted this bit of work to Larry Barthlow. Barthlow, who more than a few times in articles in Philly papers was quick to note he is a recruiter of top athletes, preceded to lack essential communication skills for a man in his position. He did not get back to people quickly (if at all ). They eliminated any possible housing, and did not have elite water tables (note: they sucked in the past at Philly).
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The bag check DID exist--just not until 30 minutes before the start, and in an unmarked white tent that looked exactly like all the other white tents. I took one look at the line (it must have been several hundred people long), snuck around to the back of the tent and pitched my bag in.

The race info sheet said that there were 100 portojohns at the start/finish. If there were indeed 12,000 registered runners, then...well, you can do the math.

On the plus side, the heated tent with tables and chairs for pre-race stretching and relaxing was a nice touch.

JimG - very reasoned analysis. I agree with everything but your proposed half marathon course. That would cause a lot of the faster marathon runners to "catch up" to the slower half marathon runners. I think starting the half 15 minutes later and doing nearly the same course would be a better idea. The final split + the 1/2 turnaround could've been handled in a better way.

Also, to everyone else, don't blame the megaphone guy. Blame the organizer. It's ultimately up to each runner to be aware of what's going on and to anticipate stuff like this. Anyone who did homework knew to be observant at Mile 10+ and near the halfway mark. I've seen too many times where the runners are "in a zone" or listening to ipods and well-meaning volunteers wind up taking the blame.

There were some other miles where my time ranged as much as 30 seconds. Usually, i don't vary by 3 seconds. Once they screwed up Mile3/4 i lost trust in the markers. That's not good.

I'll add that the Expo was way too crowded. I paid for the race via AMEX so had the "VIP Amex" area that was well set up.

Scratch my 1/2 course. All the fast half people would catch the slow marathoners. Keep it the way it is but make it work better.

I agree about not blaming volunteers, and I realize that my earlier post sounds like I do. I suspect (although I don't know) that "megaphone guy" and the water stop volunteers were thrown out there with very little preparation. They certainly didn't seem prepared for the number of runners.

To JimG

In my opinion, what this race needs if it is really going to improve, is to find a race director who is going to stay on top of EVERY SINGLE DETAIL. Someone of the McGillvary (spelling?) caliber.

My family was watching the race today, and they said it was a HORROR SHOW at the finish line and afterwards. They don't even run and have no idea what other races are like.

This makes me appreciate other marathons such as Chicago, which has 4 times the runners and you'd never even notice.