The course was great and the volunteers were awesome. There was plenty of water/PowerAde/porta-potties. BUT I'm not sure if I would recommend this race to anyone for several reason:

1) They ran out of chips at the expo. You had to go to the info booth on RACE morning to get your chip. How is that possible??? If you have a race open to 4,000 people, how do you only have 2,000 chips??

2) They ran out of small-size shirts. It's not fair to those that registered in September for this race to get to the expo and not get the right-size shirt! Plus the quality of the shirt was terrible. My shirt had some weird black specks on the back, which I didn't notice until I got home. The seams of the shirt look like they're about to open and the fit of the shirt is horrible... the armpits and sleeves are huge.

3) This is the BIGGIE: They ran out of medals at the finish! If you ran slower than 2:13 for the half, you were out of luck for a medal. They gave you an order form to send away for your medal! Again, even though they had a LOT of late registrants, if the race was open to 4,000, then they should've had 4,000 medals. There were a lot of extremely upset runners and walkers crossing the finish line to find out there weren't any medals. I'm not sure if I will suggest this race to anyone for 2007!

The course was beautiful. You can't beat Ft. Lauderdale! Billy Bones was awesome! The other entertainers were great too. The Road Runners Club water station lifted my spirits. The tech t-shirts are nice. The volunteers did a good job. The BSO's and the Ft. Lauderdale Police were everywhere taking care of the traffic - they did a great job.

But I was bummed at the finish line. After 26.2 miles imagine not getting a medal but a yellow slip of paper that read: "Due to a surprising number of last-minute registrations, we have temporarily run out..." Now I realize that this marathon had to be postponed because of the hurricane, but today there were 329 people in the full marathon and 1730 in the half, so just how many medals did they have? It's always better to have too many medals than not enough. I feel bad for the first-timers that didn't get a medal.

Anyway, in spite of that, I am happy I did this one!

A problem that I encountered was at the VIP parking lot. The buses to the start were not adequate; a school bus would probably be the way to go. Also, I heard the people who finished at the end of the 1/2 did not get medals, because they ran out. NOT GOOD AT ALL! Otherwise, all went very well... AWESOME inaugural race. I will be back.

This marathon was originally scheduled for last fall but was cancelled due to Hurricane Wilma. February is the really the best time of year to run in South Florida and the weather for the Inaugural A1A Marathon was perfect - mild ocean breeze, clear sky, mid-60s. For this first marathon the spectators were sparse compared with other marathons I've seen, but the ones that were there were enthusiastic. To be fair, there are a lot of other activities in South Florida this weekend and the marathon started at 6:30 a.m. Starting later would have gotten more people but it would have been too hot to run. There was one group of spectators passing out cups of beer to the runners - I passed. Overall it was very enjoyable - I'm ready to do it again next year.