I'm just writing this top let everyone know how much fun I had running my first full marathon. I was so excited about being able to do a full marathon, have completed 7 half marathons starting in 2008, and LA was my first full marathon. I loved the course it was like taking a trip and seeing all sorts of fun and neat places i've always seen on TV but never seen in person. Really looking forward to next year. Thanks to all the volunteers and race coordinators, see you in 2011!!!

The new course was definitely hillier than advertised. Expectations should be adjusted so that people are aware of the hills. The logistics seemed amateurish. Barely any signs, and clearly no training for the staff. Buses were late to the start. Parking at the finish was a scam. Paid for a reserved spot, yet required to pay an additional $10 that morning. In short, it seemed like a little marathon got big overnight. Internet info. and updates from organizers was very helpful.

Thank you LA for such a great race. The fan support was as good as Boston and NYC! I ran this race 3 years ago and returned when I heard about the new course.

The course was tough with many hills and was challenging. The fans were manic and deep throughout. The drums at mile 4, the colourful cheerers in West Hollywood, the Nike store green monsters?, the high school bands on Santa Monica Blvd (Wellesly loud), feeling the cool ocean breeze after the 405 and the incredible throngs of cheering crowds in Santa Monica were all highlights. ...and I think I spotted Elvis on a shuttle. :)

The volunteers at the water tables and at the intersections (including the police officers) did an amazing job! Thank you, thank you and thank you!!!

If LAM puts some effort into the logistics...MOVE the EXPO back to the convention centre and give the major brands (asics, adidas, NB) the space and encouragement to show up it will elevate the race. As it was, the race expo felt like a flea market. Way too crowded and narrow for 25,000 runners and their families to circulate.

Unfortunately, the start of the race was a fiasco. Race was a half hour late to start (I've never heard of this happening ever). There were traffic jams to the start and tons of runners had to hoof it up the hill under huge stress to get to start line and likely did not enough time to get to a porta-potty. Control to the 4 hour corral was lost as it flooded with runners without 4-hour wrist bands. This combined with a half hour delay made for an interesting start.

So there it is, the good the bad and the ugly. If LA truly wants a world class race, they have a beautiful course and incredible fans, now all they need is to solve their front end operational logistics.

Randy Newman's I LOVE LA was a great way to start the race. Made my blood boil!

RTYP

My first time going to an expo that was outdoors. What a great idea.

Wow, I love the new course, from start to finish.

Police officers and volunteers, you are the very best. Thank you.

Students Run LA, you ARE an inspiration to me!!!!!!

Plenty of food at the finish line.

Very poor organization from the expo, to the morning shuttles, to the timing, to the finish line and results. I'd stay away until they figure it out.

The run was nice, with challenging hills. Support from the volunteers and crowd was the best. Wish the air quality could improve, but then that wouldn't be LA. The only thing to consider is the traffic; it took two and a half hours to travel to the starting line, but LA with no traffic isn't LA. Expo needs help, but this will not stop 25,000 runners from returning to the 26th LA Marathon - at least not me.

Wow......I expected a lot out of this race due to the hype of the new course. However, I get the impression the Race Directors spent the entirety of their efforts in securing permits to make this a multi-city affair and did not pay attention to logistics.
I have done many marathons and triathlons. I have even done LA marathon two other times and I must say this was the worst race experience I have ever had. Is it true that the Race Directors are runners themselves b/c I do not think they have ever participated in an actual race? Otherwise, the massive organizational problems that occurred would not have happened.

I will say the actual course change was great. BRAVO!!!! The run went through a variety of different areas and people got to see a lot of the tourist attractions in Los Angeles. That is the only nice thing I can say about this race, however.

Otherwise:
1. Who was lucky enough to participate in the 110 N 5 K before the race b/c traffic was at a standstill? I live 25 minutes away from Dodger Stadium and left my home two hours before the event. There was no traffic at all until the last 4 miles before the Stadium. At that point, traffic just stopped. As a result, hundreds of passengers evacuated their cars and ran the freeway up into the Stadium. Not safe, but there were not any other options. How is it that a stadium that accommodates 56K people can't accommodate the traffic of 25K marathoners?

I felt particularly bad for the people who tried to play it safe by taking the shuttles in from Santa Monica. After my husband dropped me off on the 110 N, he saw at least 20 other shuttles with runners sitting at a standstill. I presume the shuttle driver would not allow them to participate in 110 N 5K for liability reasons. The passengers I saw looked like sad little puppies with their noses pushed up against the windows watching the rest of us run into the stadium. I was VERY thankful I did not try the shuttle service.

I am also assuming this is where the majority of the pacesetters where stuck, as spectators were complaining that they only saw two or three people holding pace signs, so they couldn't gauge their loved ones expected arrivals (apparently the website was crashing frequently, so tracking online was wishy-washy as well, even for those with internet access on their phones).

2. Okay, who was the bright person who only ordered about 40 porta potties? I sat in line for 40 minutes waiting to use one. Everyone else did too and that is why so many runners did not start the already-delayed race on time. This amount of porta potties may be appropriate for 10,000 runners, not 25,000 participants. But the real question is, who was the even brighter person who separated the porta potties from the start with the actual course? Classic!!!! I actually started laughing at first. Then I felt horrible for the wheelchair athletes b/c these potties were at a downhill area of the beginning of the course. Naturally, the wheelchair athletes were trying to fly down the hill to get the best possible times. Unfortunately, these men and women had to brake to allow runners to race back and forth between the porta potties and the starting line.

3. Where was all the signage? Not only was signage horrible at the Expo yesterday and the congestion getting bibs was insane, but spectators had no idea where to meet up with their runners. The LA Marathon website said there was a Family Reunion section with ABC signs so people could find a spot to meet up post race. The volunteers did not know where this meet up area was and neither did the police officers. Finally, a very nice policeman called someone who knew where it was. I eventually found it, but my hubby wasn't lucky enough to run into this nice cop, so we had a fun game of 'Where's Waldo?' post race.

First time marathoners, don't judge your marathon experience based on this one marathon. There are great local marathons (Like Surf City in Huntington Beach) and well-organized larger races like Boston and Rock N' Roll San Diego and Phoenix. I was sad to hear so many of the first time runners saying they never wanted to do another race after their experience at 2010 LA. They are heaps of fun when organized properly!

I commend Frank Mccourt for creating this new course. That was the lone piece of brilliance today. I would suggest, however, that he would have had better luck with logistics had he selected two random people at the Expo to organize Race Day. We all know that a race is only as good as the Race Directors' skills and Los Angeles Marathon 2010 again proved that Los Angeles has a long way to go before it can compete with some of the largest national marathons throughout the country.

The shuttle situation/car drop off situation to Dodger Stadium was a nightmare. It took well over an hour to travel from downtown to the start line via the marathon's organized shuttle service. People were jumping out of vehicles and walking on the freeway towards Dodger Stadium. It seemed like there were many logistical issues being figured out to the last minute as e-mails from race management were being sent less than 12 hours before the race.

The corrals were another nightmare. They were not clearly demarcated and none of the volunteers seemed to have a clear understanding of where to go. Everyone was packed like sardines in the sub 4 corral, and with the heat and humidity rising, the 22 minute late start affected me. Everyone pacing between a 3:00-3:59 were thrown together and there was no organization within the corral, which meant there were definitely 3:59 marathoners lined up at the front of the corral.

The spectators along the course were great. I think the course was inaccurately marketed as being a fast, downhill course. If you want to have fun out there and aren't stressed to hit a certain time, then this is the course for you.

A year after almost killing this marathon by moving the date not once but TWICE the LA Marathon organizers revitalized the race and made it better than ever. This marathon has always been one of my favorites, but after last years Memorial Day debacle I went into this race with a critical eye. It was obvious to me that a lot of thinking went into every detail of this race. It wasn't perfect by any means and there are some areas for improvement but those areas are few and quite fixable.

The good:
1. Reserved parking in Santa Monica - brilliant! No stress about finding parking.
2. Shuttle buses to Dodger stadium with reserved times! Again, brilliant. And if more people had used them, we would not have been delayed at the start for people getting dropped off at the stadium.
3. Opening Dodger stadium for the runners prior to the race was the smartest idea I've ever seen. I had envisoned sitting on cold asphalt for hours waiting for the start, but instead was sitting comfortably in the stands watching great marathon videos on the big screen! You could even go down onto the outfield grass to warm up, stretch or just hang out, awesome!
4. The spectators, as always, came out and made their presence known. They were GREAT.
5. The best entertainment of any marathon NOT called Rock-n-Roll.

Areas for improvement:
1. More starting corrals, please
2. Lose the water station at Mile 1. No marathon needs a water station that early, it only creates a bottleneck at a time when you're trying to get 25,000 runners on their way!
3. Congestion in Santa Monica, both people and cars. Not sure what you can do about the cars, but I'm also not sure why they made it so hard to get down to the beach party and the pier. If they had shortened the post-finish line runners corral by 20 feet, they wouldn't have blocked off the access to the pier for many of the spectators.

Overall great job and with a few tweaks this could become what they've always been trying to make it, a Teir I marathon!

This was my 67th marathon, and I've done some of the huge ones (NYC, Boston, Disney, Phoenix R&R) as well as many small ones. I know the larger marathons have challenges, but comparing LA to the other big ones I definitely saw some issues with the organization:

1. My biggest issue was rhe start time. First, there was a different start time depending on which website, e-mail, or other race document you read. They varied from 7:20 to 7:27. I could live with that. However, we didn't start moving to the starting line until 7:48. I understand there were some kind of traffic problems. Tough! Some of us headed the 'get there early' repeated warnings and were on a 4:00am shuttle bus and waited around at Dodger Stadium for over 3 hours. I had made post-race arrangements based on a start by 7:30. It is inexcusable, in my view, to start a race late. Poor organization.

2. When I got to the expo at 1:00pm on Saturday, the only shirts they had left were women's small (like a very small) and men's large. My registration showed clearly that I needed a women's medium. They just shrugged and said 'which size do you want from what we have left'. Again, very poor planning.

3. Do they not have any directional signs in LA? Getting to the expo, once you were in the Dodger stadium parking lot even, required asking other runners (carrying goody bags back to their cars) which way to go. Again, on race morning, arriving on the shuttle bus at Dodger Stadium, we wandered around in the dark trying to find the start and waiting areas.

4. Traffic in Santa Monica is absolutely horrible. Count on an hour (at least) to try to get through the lights to get about a mile to the freeway. I won't drag you through the logistics, but basically too many pedestrians, ineffective traffic control, and selfish drivers blocking intersections. A very poor way to end the experience.

Now, on the positive side, the Dodger Stadium open on race morning was cool! The race course itself was interesting, and did showcase many famous LA locations. The aid / water stations were plentiful and included some unique items (pain spray at mile 18, pain patches, ice, towels, etc.). The specatators were awesome and volunteers always rule in my book! The finisher's medal is good quality. I didn't get to finish the post race party, due to the late start and my travel logistics.

Overall, I'm glad I experienced this race once, but won't be back.