Oakland Running Festival

I ran the Oakland Marathon last Sunday and I had a few notes:

  • What a great event!  A challenging "warts and all" route through Oakland — from City Hall to Rockridge to Montclair to the Mormon Temple to International Boulevard to Jack London Square to West Oakland to Lake Merritt and back to City Hall.
  • Great crowd throughout the whole course.  Very "homey/welcome" feeling, not like running the San Francisco marathon.
  • There was no rain despite the threat of rain, it was pretty good running conditions.  Hoping next year will be the same.
  • I used the day as a "training day" if that makes any sense.  I was strong through 20 miles, slowed down a little bit for the next two, and then put it into recovery mode.  Starting a marathon on tired legs is definitely an interesting feeling.
  • A marathon is still a marathon.  I was hoping it was going to be easy but I was getting antsy around mile 17.
  • The event was well run, some areas could be improved but not bad for their second time around.
  • The Expo the day before was a little meager.  Could use some more vendors but the ones that were there were pretty good.
  • The medal is nice.
  • The shirt, long sleeve again, could've been better.  Needed a better graphic design and maybe a slightly higher quality shirt.
  • The massage tent could have been managed better.

I'm hoping to get more people signed up for the race.  I'll likely going to do it again next year.  It was definitely a lot of fun and it's great to have a running event like this in Oakland.