Surfers Point Marathon

Surfers Point Marathon was a small race with less than 100 full marathon runners. The event was very well organized. The gathering of runners before the race was accompanied by the beautiful sun rise above the Pacific Ocean, already full of surfers. There were two loops and the start/finish line was in the middle which made the course look like '8' or 'infinity'. There were some small hills along the north promenade section along the Ocean. The south part was mainly in a residential area with a single, distinct hill. The weather was sunny, warm and dry - excellent, especially for a visitor from the White North, like me. The race went smoothly from my point of view with maybe one area for improvement: the second loop was rather disappointing for marathoners because the aid stations were almost completely depleted from energy supplies by hungry half-marathoners and 10-km and 5-km runners. Thank you, Ventura for a nice race.

This was a nice, mostly flat, marathon. The event was well organized and plenty of aid stations. The scenery was beautiful most of the way. I will come back for this marathon next year. One draw back for me, as a back of the pack runner, was that the course support was discontinued while I was still running causing me to have to stop at traffic intersections at about mile 24 and mile 25. The last thing that I want to do at that point of the race is stop. The timing mat was also picked up well before the 7 hour cut off so the back of the pack finishers didn't get a chipped time and their results did not appear on the online results. This marathon was advertised as a 'weekend warrior' friendly event so everyone should have had support the entire race. That being said, I had an enjoyable time and look forward to the 2nd annual running.