urbanSTL

I agree with you bronte, there are definitely areas that need to be improved. I only run the half-marathon so I haven't experienced some of the issues you mentioned but I do remember when there was a 10-15 minute wait after the race for the bagels/fruit. And I agree, that's completely frustrating!



I wasn't being rhetorical though when I was asking what to do to improve community support. The logistics of the race and everything that goes with it - refreshments afterwards, goodies when registering, etc are things that can and will be improved but I'd honestly like to know what other cities do to really get the community involved. The fan turn out has increased each year as long with the runners - which is great, but like you said a lot more that can be done.

Here is info on Cincy Flying Pig Marathon.



"The Flying Pig Marathon held in Cincinnati, Ohio, with over 13000 participants and named one of the top 10 "Most Fun Runs" in the world by Runner's World "



http://www.theactivenetwork.com/story.c ... ageID=5201

Pretty cool virtual tour video of the race course.



(from a car perspective)



http://www.stltoday.com/mds/lifestyle/html/1293

I'm doing the 5k again this year. My goal is to do the half next year.

2009 St Louis Marathon is Sunday April 19th starting at 7 am. I'm not really that ready for it, but I'm in, (!!!) #613. Haven't done it the last couple years, but I've done it 4 times before.



http://www.gostlouis.org/general_info.html

I'll be running the half this year - let's hope for some nice weather!

it was interesting to see how the Post-Dispatch only reported the 2,000 number for the marathon and not the 15,000 half runners. is it me or do they always seem to UNDERreport the positives in the city...or did i overlook it?

JCity wrote:it was interesting to see how the Post-Dispatch only reported the 2,000 number for the marathon and not the 15,000 half runners. is it me or do they always seem to UNDERreport the positives in the city...or did i overlook it?

Kathleen Nelson had a piece about the entire event in the sports section. Like you though, I wasn't sure why the total number of participants wasn't mentioned in the front page article. It was a huge event, but the article made it seem small.

The Central Scrutinizer wrote:

JCity wrote:it was interesting to see how the Post-Dispatch only reported the 2,000 number for the marathon and not the 15,000 half runners. is it me or do they always seem to UNDERreport the positives in the city...or did i overlook it?

Yes, that is their latest plan to destroy the city - under report the number of joggers.

If their aim was to accurately report the number of runners in the event (which includes the half and full marathons), they failed.

12,500 ran the half this year; 3,000 ran the marathon. Another 500 four-member teams participated in the marathon relay, and 6,000 people participated in Saturday's events.

Alex Ihnen wrote:But I think it is common for an event to report the number of runners who participate in the (name your city) Marathon (events) and therefore it's often many times the number than those doing the full marathon. Not a big deal as long as it's clearly written - "X# ran the full marathon, while X# participated in the half and other events."

This year, the P-D broke it down, instead of just listing the marathon participants.

I participated in the marathon relay on Sunday. I was impressed with the entire event, from picking up the race packets at SLU on Saturday to the actual run on Sunday. I'll definitely be doing this again.

Has anyone ever suggested that St. Louis host a marathon that follows the orginal track of the first American Olympic Marathon in 1904? Here is the path in text form:

Start – Track, Francis Stadium, Washington University
Run five laps of the track clockwise
Exit the stadium east gate onto Olympian Way
Right on Olympian Way to Forsyth Boulevard
Right onto Forsyth to South Meramec
Left onto South Meramec to Sappington Drive (now Shaw Park Drive)
Angle from Sappington onto North and South Road (now South Brentwood Boulevard)
Continue on North and South Road to Manchester Road
Right onto Manchester to Ballas Road
Right onto Ballas to Clayton Road
Right onto Clayton to Denny Road (now Lindbergh Boulevard)
Left onto Denny to Olive Street Road (now Olive Boulevard)
Right onto Olive Street to North and South Road
Right onto North and South Road
North and South becomes North Meramec Avenue (now Meramec Avenue)
Continue on North Meramec to Forsyth Boulevard
Left onto Forsyth to Olympian Way
Left onto Olympian Way to east stadium gate
Left through the gate and onto stadium track
Continue one-quarter mile counterclockwise to finish alongside press box.

Below are two links with embedded picture maps of the route. They are embedded into formats that won't allow me to grab the image alone easily. It would be cool if someone took that text route and overlayed it onto a Google map.

Figure 3.2 on page 45 of the online book at this site:
http://www.humankinetics.com/ProductSea ... 0880119696

And page 32 at this .pdf file site:
http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLib ... Hv7n3j.pdf

I love bringing an old thread back from the dead!

Business group Greater St. Louis Inc. teams up with nonprofit to 'reimagine' annual St. Louis marathon

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... ml?ana=maz

Business group Greater St. Louis Inc. is teaming up with Go! St. Louis to elevate the fitness nonprofit’s annual marathon, announcing Thursday a new partnership focused on making it a “nationally significant race.”

The inaugural Greater St. Louis Marathon is scheduled for April 27, 2024. Go! St. Louis will continue to organize and operate the marathon event.
The Greater St. Louis Marathon will be held each year on the last weekend of April, a few weeks later than Go! St. Louis’ previous marathon.

The Greater St. Louis Marathon will stage a newly created event, the National Running Club Championships and Rally, describing it as a “giant tailgate and weekend-long party for running clubs.” Vespa said it will allow running clubs, both formal and informal groups, nationwide to compete against each other and meet up. St. Louis’ central location made it ideal for such an event, Vespa said.

“There is no reason why this shouldn’t be a 15,000 to 20,000 person event,” she said. "St. Louis is that size of city and we have that kind of event. Some of the key pieces and things that need to happen to get us there are why we brought all these partners in.”

10 year partnership.

The last couple years had a route that made it very boring to cheer along to, versus when it came through the neighborhoods. I know my partner hated running up and down the riverfront trail last year (even though he'd trained on it) and that final hill was the dumbest move. I made it to 3 spots on the race route to cheer him on but it was pretty much me looking like a weirdo all alone. I compare it to my time at the NYC marathon where I dropped in on a very residential route on a trip to cheer and everyone was on porches and on sidewalks and subways were overflowing with people coming to watch. Very different cities but there's no reason we can't expect more for this race. 

My partner immediately looked at when he should restart his marathon training plan given the start date shift, since previously he was training even before Christmas which definitely left me annoyed as we tried to fit in various obligations around the holidays. He skipped this year's race because the route was so bad once again but I've resigned myself to marking this date on my calendar and watching him once again. 

This year started in Forest Park, went west to Clayton, then Delmar through the Loop to Kingshighway, through CWE, Grand Center, by the soccer stadium, downtown. Made the hald pretty neat at least. 

I did the Half in the past two years and it was the same route that quincunx described, which I thought was cool: start in FP, go towards Downtown Clayton and then head back to Downtown via Clayton. The full marathon is a bit boring as then people would have to run North along the river from the Four Seasons and back.

My favorite route was the first year of the short lived St. Louis Rock n Roll Marathon, which started in Downtown, but made it way through a bunch of South St. Louis neighborhoods touching Tower Grove Park, Francis Park, Carondelet Park, Christy Park, Lafayette Park before heading back Downtown.  It was a great showcase for St. Louis neighborhoods, and a ton of out of town runners and even local runners were impressed with the neighborhoods they were seeing up close for the first time.

Unfortunately, so many people complained about not being able to get to church, they changed the route the next year to something pretty boring and generic.  Then they scrapped the marathon and made it half, and then it went away if I remember. Never ran it again after the first year.