Loved this Marathon! It is a gem and will be back next year!
(+'s)
Course is beautiful - mostly flat with some rolling hills - loved the downhill finish.
Easy getting to start and parking is so easy.
Great shirt and medal!

(-'s)
Very little support on the course. The aid stations are very small - 1 or 2 people giving water/gatorade. They serve well water which is nasty when you need refreshing water.
I finished exactly at 4 hrs and there was no food left for marathoners. All the subs were served to the half marathoners. They had a variety of potato chips left for the marathoners. I was so dishearten to find the lack of food or drink for marathoner finishers. Not even a sports drink and if you failed to grab water at the finish than you were sol as they weren't giving it away by the food. Very sad to have a beautiful event when you couldn't enjoy your accomplishment.

After running many large (think 10,000-30,000 people) races in California, Charlevoix was a breath of fresh air. Literally. Never did I have to dodge hundreds of runners at a time or get crammed into a starting corral. The course itself is on a pancake-flat bike path along a highway and Lake Michigan, which made it pretty enough. The aid stations were amazing!! Not only did they hand out Gatorade, GU, licorice and other treats, but they cheered and sprayed people with squirt guns too. The spectators, although not very numerous, were great also, frequently going to multiple places along the course to cheer. The finish line area was a little congested, but other than that we had no issues getting on the highway from our parking spot on a side street. Overall, a great race and one I would definitely recommend for people looking to PR, BQ, or just enjoy a little breathing room in gorgeous northern Michigan.

Plan ahead if you want to stay local, as accommodations are sold out early. Charlevoix is a congested lakeside town in the early summer. The Lodge Motel was very convenient right at the start and finish line and you are also in walking distance to town and the beach.

I'm not a big fan of the out-and-back (especially when it describes paralleling a highway), but admittedly it wasn't too bad. The course heads first north out of town through a quiet residential area and then follows a bike trail along the highway. This bike trail portion often winds away from the road, visits the shoreline and dodges in and out of the woods. Good variety of refreshments at the aid stations. Nice, heavy, finisher medal bling.

I found the finish line area very "abrupt" ending into a congested intersection. You had to walk down the street, across the bridge to the actual finisher area in the park.

Nevertheless, still a recommended event and weekend getaway.

I've run this marathon all four years. Yes, I'm the only one that can make that claim. There were only 41 of us in 2007, with over 300 this year. The race has grown as well as improve every year. The first two years it was a double out-and-back, which can be brutal. I like the single out-and-back much better. It allows for more views of Lake Michigan. The shirt has gone from cotton (2007, 2008) to technical (2009, 2010). Not crazy about black for a t-shirt color, but it's wearable. The finisher medals for the first three years were so-so. The medal for finishers in 2010 was top-class. It is the nicest medal I've received at a race. This race will continue to grow.

I offer some suggestions:

1. More porta-potties on the course.

2. I just ran 26.2 miles - please place the medal around my neck. Yeah, it took me almost five hours but I still want to feel like an Olympian.

3. After I finish, don't hand me a bottle of warm water. Have you ever finished the Crim and had someone hand you an ice-cold, wet cloth? There's absolutely nothing like it.

4. The individual handing me the medal and the individual handing me the warm water didn't say a word to me. And no one told me how to get to the refreshments. I'm okay because I've been here before but others haven't.

5. The random prize/ losest bib number/trivia thing needs to be improved. I didn't stay for it this year, as prior years have turned me off. I've seen people win multiple prizes as well as non-runners winning prizes. I couldn't stomach watching this process one more time. None of these are deal-breakers for me.

Bottom line: I love running and it is "Charlevoix the Beautiful." I'll be back next year for my fifth Run Charlevoix Marathon. Maybe they'll give me bib number 5.

I completely enjoyed this event (my 7th different marathon course). It was well organized, and a beautiful course. The day was overcast and probably 10 degrees cooler than I feared it would be; all good.

The tee is very nice, smaller than expected (sizes aside), and the finisher's medal was outstanding. The Methodist church did a wonderful job with the spaghetti dinner.

I managed to finagle a late check-out at the hotel, but their policy was to deny those due to such an otherwise busy weekend (weddings and such). It would be nice to come up with an arrangement with the hotels to allow runners a little time back in the rooms for clean-up afterwards.

The aid station workers were great; I really appreciate that there was a station every mile and a half - especially with the humidity that day.

Kudos!

Saturday's 4th annual Charlevoix Marathon was enjoyable even if the 88% humidity was much more than I expected and/or hoped for. (No fault of the race staff.)

Here are my thoughts in a nutshell:

Pros:

1) Very nice medal
2) Nice tech T-shirt
3) Wonderful pre-race pasta dinner at the Methodist church!
4) Close accommodations, right across the street from the start/finish (The Lodge)
5) Very flat, out-and-back course, run almost completely on a paved nature trail near the lake
6) Races were started according to length (marathon first, then half, then 10K, then 5K). HEY FARGO, you need to take lessons here!
7) 6:00 a.m. early start for marathoners! Vital, due to #2 listed below in the "Cons" section of my recap.

Cons:

1) Post-race food was not located at the finish line. It was 2-3 blocks down the street in a park. I realize the park is the best place to have the food, but for very tired people who just ran 26.2 miles, those 2 blocks can be "killers." Can you not move the start/finish line farther down the street, across from the park?
2) No late checkout at "The Lodge." For those of us who had several hours to drive home (or were catching a flight), a post-race shower is vital. I saw one guy changing clothes on the street beside his car, with his wife holding a towel around him for modesty purposes.

If I ever start repeating races, this is one I would definitely consider. On a cool day, I could see me getting a PR here!

The Good:

1) Got all the important things right!
2) Pretty flat, out-and-back course with no serious hills - just a few long, slow inclines. But whatever you went up, you came back down again. It would be a good race to support someone from as a road parallels the bike path for maybe 20 of the 26 miles of the marathon. Mostly on bike paths, semi-closed roads and a nice long wooden bridge.
3) Plenty of well stocked aid stations with water, Gatorade, candy, pretzels and GU at (I think) every one. Excellently and enthusiastically manned.
4) Really nicely designed technical t-shirt. One of my favorites already!
5) Even better, large, well-produced finisher's medal.
6) We were lucky with the weather. I drove to Charlevoix at about 5:15 or so, and it was absolutely pouring down! It was very humid (97% at 6 a.m.), but at least the rain held off.
7) Limited crowd support, though what was there was very encouraging and enthusiastic. The "ice maidens" about mile 3 and 23 were angels; and for anyone who left their sprinklers on, thank you!
8) Nicely spaced out starts (I did the marathon) meant you didn't get mixed up too much with the half/10K people. A handful of the quickest half marathoners passed me, but otherwise I was oblivious to the other racers.
9) Lovely scenery (if you ignore the road that parallels the bike path for 10 miles or so).
10) Results on touch-screen computers a few minutes after you finished.
11) Total respect to the chap who walked the marathon with the American flag - a great inspiration. To those who missed him, it was no small flag!
12) I somehow managed a PB by nearly 30 minutes; I'm not quite sure how, as this was my 12th marathon!

The Not so Good:

1) There was the option of starting an hour early. As a slower runner, I wanted to do that and the instructions said to do that at the packet pick up on the Friday. I did that, only to be told that I should just tell the time-keeper in the morning. So I drove an extra 40 or 50 miles for no reason.
2) "No headsets of any type are permitted on the 5K, 10K or Half Marathon portion of the course." So I didn't bother with mine, but must have seen at least 50 people ignore this. There was no enforcement, of course, so why have these rules? Is it just to cover the organizers' backs?
3) "New for 2010 there will be 10 flags at the turns. You won't be able to miss them." I must have missed every one of them, as I didn't see anything of the sort. Whilst the course wasn't too hard to follow, had it been raining or windy, for example, the marks on the road might have been hard to see or the little cones blown away.
4) I finished in 5 hours and got a bottle of water and my medal at the end, but no post-race food that I saw, or I missed it somehow. Not a huge deal, as you finish a few yards from shops and cafes if you need something, but some offering would have been good.

Just a couple of pointers I've read in reviews. There were more toilets near the start line as well as the public toilets, just down a little road to the left (and easily missed). A sign by the public toilets, I think, would have saved a lot of hanging around for people. I saw the queue and thought I wouldn't bother, but 15 minutes before the start, there were two people in the porta-loo queue, so people didn't seem to be too aware of those. Met some really nice people and saw a lovely part of the world. This is a race that is well worth running if you have the chance!

Good snacks and drinks along the way: Cokes, Gatorade, and red licorice. Some views of Lake Michigan. Off-road course. Charlevoix was a congested city on that weekend, with a lot of rude drivers and horn-honkers.We got a nice, heavy medal with a wide ribbon, as well as a t-shirt. Pasta dinner was great the night before.

I participated in the half-marathon, but the both the full and the half share similar characteristics, especially since they follow the same out-and-back route. This was a wonderfully organized race, with easy registration pick-up, instant electronic result retrieval, and fun water stops throughout the course. I'm not the biggest fan of out-and-back courses, since you can expect/dread what's left. But the organizers have a limited area to place 13.1- and 26.2-mile courses, and they do well to lead you through the beautiful neighborhoods and along Lake Michigan. If you want a fun, small race with enthusiastic crowd support and great small-town touches (i.e. bottled water iced in a kiddie pool and post-race deli sandwiches from the local grocery store), this is for you.

I only ran the 1/2, but there was lots to like about it. The course is very pleasant - starts in town, then quickly goes to an asphalt bike/running trail. Very scenic, without too many runners, so it wasn't too crowded. It is an out-and-back course, which I wouldn't love for a full. Also, the first two, and thus last two, miles had a little more topography than the rest of the course. Not a lot of spectators, but they were enthusiastic. Good, small water stops - and pretty frequent too. Very nice medal. I was surprised to get the same medal for the half as they gave for the full.

Parking was not a problem; there was plenty of room on neighborhood streets. No porta-potties at start, but there is a public restroom near the organizer tents. Long line for the ladies, as always. A few porta-potties might have hurried it up, but it wasn't awful. Tech shirt is very nice, but it runs VERY small. Nice food table at the end, and a very cool set-up, with computers to get your results instantly. I would run this half again for sure.