P.F. Chang's Rock and Roll Arizona 1/2 Marathon

Another running year here in Phoenix has officially started. The P.F. Chang’s Rock and Roll Arizona Marathon and ½ was today. I have only run this event once before and had just moved here for that one.
I was pleased that I didn’t wait for a bus for an hour this year. In fact my morning was quite pleasant up until a few minutes before race time. One thing that no race seems to have ever cured is the line at the Port-o-potties, so I guess I can’t complain about that….but I still will! I’ve been to races in the past that had adequate facilities but didn’t label and distribute them well, which will have the same effect. My personal belief on this is that five minutes in line is fine; ten minutes in line can get painful if you didn’t get in line soon enough; and a half an hour in line is just plain unacceptable. My two trips prior to the run fell in the later two categories. At least they had them at mile two for those of us who weren’t willing to tough out one more trip and miss the official start. Perhaps the normal people to potty ratios used to calculate how many to have don’t take into account that you have 30,000 people chugging water and sports drink so they don’t get dehydrated during their 13 or 26 mile adventure.
The race I ran in Las Vegas this past December was run by the same company, but it was their first year running that race. I believe P.F. Chang’s (as it is known here) is in its seventh year. Las Vegas had the starting area in corrals but they didn’t label and enforce them very well; Phoenix did a better job at labeling and even had some ropes in between them to help ensure everyone didn’t just GO. I still spent the majority of the race passing people but the number of blatant road blocking runners was fairly small for a race of such a size. I think the fact that the starting line was NOT near the gear check, but rather the gear check was at corral 26. This may have prevented people from getting too lost or just jumping in anywhere.
My only beef with the race organizers at all was the lack of signs at the starting area. I never saw a single one. The only reason I found the gear check was because the 27 UPS trucks are hard to miss! The Marathon and the ½ Marathon have separate starting areas and we had several Marathoners in our line…of course they were an hour late and I’m not sure how they didn’t notice that no one else’s number was yellow. Several people asked me if I knew where to go and I asked several more myself. I know we were provided a map of the start area on the internet, but I did get up at 5 am to do this and didn’t think I would need to bring the map with me. Nor did I study for this exam! I also, after the fact, realized that the booths labeled “Solutions” were in fact “Information” booths. I’m just not clever that early in the morning; perhaps ever.
I really liked that the starting area was a large runner’s “hang-out” area with food and beverages (including coffee!) and there was a band there as well. The first time I ran the race I got off the bus just in time for the start and basically sprinted from bus to gear check (luckily I changed on the bus) and hit the road. I was determined to not have that happen again. I left the house at 5:30 in the morning and was parked and on a bus by 6:15 for an 8:30 start. Since I had read about the runner’s camp at the start and the weather was pleasant I decided this was the way to go. I was right.
When I get off the bus I like to scope out the area and make my plan. I’m going to sip on sports drink and eat anyways, might as well do it on site instead of in the car. Now that I know they have coffee I might save two bucks in the future and not stop on my way in. This is where those signs that didn’t exist would have been helpful. I arrived with lots of time but not everyone does. There is a huge park in the middle of everything going on so finding somewhere to stretch was no problem at all. Figuring out where you were was.
I’m really starting to enjoy running again and this did nothing to hamper that. The course itself is nothing special but they’ve increased the number of water stations and bands to the point where there is something going on almost the whole time. There was also a great turn out of on lookers and several times I slapped hands with a huge series of children. No idea why, but I love doing that. There were also a large number of cheerleading teams and dance squads (or whatever they’re called) cheering us on. The chant of “run it out” seemed a bit odd, but hey, they were trying and I wasn’t going to complain. I just contemplated what else my choices would be for the next mile.
The miles were marked so well that I…as in ME…didn’t miss a single one. For the first time ever I have 14 splits on my watch (including that silly 0.1 mile at the end). I wish the course didn’t end with only hills on the course, but they’re not bad and it’s not like they can control that. I suppose they could run the race in reverse but they really are not anything to even train for. I think the net elevation change was something like 50 feet over thirteen miles, so really flat.
The medal was nice and VERY heavy. I’m not sure what they make them out of, but the Rock and Roll series definitely doesn’t cheap out them. I’m a sucker for a really nice finisher’s medal and I was attracted to running Phoenix again because of the tie in with Las Vegas they created. By finishing both races I’ll receive another medal in the mail approximately six weeks from now commemorating the “dual in the desert”. I’m running New Orleans, another rock and roll, next month and they have additional medals for every additional race of theirs that you run. Now I know this is a marketing ploy, but OHHHHH is it working, at least on me!
The T shirt was kind of blah, but if you run regularly like I do, you have so many of them that you just don’t really care much anymore. The purchasable merchandise was actually pretty nice and although I usually don’t give in to that, I did pick up a nice cotton long sleeve and a pint glass. Nothing cheers an accomplishment like a pint of Guinness in the race’s commemorative glass!
I think my overall grade for this race is a B+. Any of the aforementioned issues resolved could easily lead to an A-. I don’t think there is the potential for an A or A+ because the scenery is just so so. Although I live here, maybe the scenery is nice to the folks from out of town? I ran in Moab, Utah in October of last year and I’m not sure I’ll ever see better scenery than that. It is my gold standard for grading the views, but it also has a 2000 runner limit.
While running I usually dream up all sorts of oddities; this year I decided to create my own motto, semi stealing one from a famous shoe maker and general sports apparel giant. They claim “just do it” and I’ve decided that “just” doing it isn’t enough; I’m going to “Do it like I mean it”. I know corny, but anyone knows me knows that I don’t take myself too seriously and I’ll be saying it tongue in cheek. I’m still working on a clever sign off to running blogs, but as noted earlier, I’m not so clever at times. So go have some fun, and try to make running part of it.