Sunburst Marathon

I've run the full or half at Sunburst in 11 of the past 13 years. In short, I've seen the attention to detail in this race decline over the years. What I saw this year was some misattention to the full details of course marking. I almost missed a turn and saw another runner miss one altogether...though a volunteer ran and helped him turn around. I did learn on race day there was a major course mixup for some marathon and half marathon leaders which ended up adding nearly a mile to their course. And then the final ranking was juggled on the claim of one runner, vaulting him over other runners who crossed the finish line ahead of him. This just shouldn't be. This race could be a magnificent regional fixture but the details are leaking. I honestly wonder if the organizers would feel better by dropping the marathon altogether and just have a half/10K/5K extravaganza. Only 300 of us started the marathon and fewer finished. I wish the organizers the best. They have some work to do, though, IMHO.

I came from out of town and went to the expo the day before. Nice sized for a marathon with less than 300 finishers. I got to the start line a little later than I wanted, but the bathroom line went quick, because there were plenty of porta-potties for the size of the event at the 6:30 start. The course had A LOT of turns, and a few short out and backs that really sucked momentum and made focusing on tangents a priority. The good thing is each turn was well marked or had a volunteer giving directions. Plenty of water stops for the hot day as well. Some timely hills in the last seven miles were pretty big challenges as well. The unforgivable sin of the event was the 5K shared the same final 1.5 miles of the course. By the time I got there it was full of walkers. They covered the entire road, and I lost a lot of speed and gained distance weaving through them. Any Marathoner from 3:00-3:35 probably had to contend with 5K walkers at the end. The chute was well stocked until at least the 4:00 marathoners/half marathoners finished; It looked like enough stuff for the rest of marathoners coming through over the next two hours. At first I was annoyed by the ~2000 5K finishers, but I just cut the 'line' and grabbed food off the table. It wasn't supposed to be a line anyway; you take what you want from the table and leave.

So I was in the lead pack and wasn't directed to turn on a road was no sign and a cop was there but wasn't telling runners to turn and the group and I ended up running down a little more than a half mile before a volunteer at an intersection said we went the wrong way. Then we went back to the road to make the correct turn. It added 1.17 miles. When we got back to that road a sunburst race volunteer was then at the spot directing people. I had to bust tail to catch up to the other marathon people who got directed the correct way. I ended up crossing the finish line 3rd. Well one of the runners who got misdirected with me complained to race director about the 1.17 mile issue and they gave him 2nd place dropping another guy down to 3rd and me to 4th. They also gave him a bogus 2:45 because he said he had that time on his watch at 26.2. Mind you I passed this guy at mile 20.5 too! Moral of the story don't do Sunburst they always have had mistakes in the last 5 years.