I ran the inaugural USA Women’s Marathon and Half Marathon in Palm Desert California this past weekend, formerly known as the Nike Women’s Marathon. The Nike marathon was my first marathon back in 2006. I did it with Team N Training to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  It was the most amazing experience ever, leaving such an impression on me that  I went on to run it again in 2007 and the half in 2008. Naturally when I saw that they were bringing my favorite race back I wanted in. 

I recruited a couple friends to join me for a girls weekend in Palm Desert and once again I had another race-cation on the calendar. Lucky for us my friends’ MIL offered her condo for the weekend which helped minimize the already pricey weekend. When you run a race that is promoted as a luxury race you can expect to pay a luxury price. If my husband asks, you can’t remember what the fee was. 😉

What do you get for that luxury price tag? You get a tote bag and towel, pre-race pasta dinner, mimosas, breakfast buffet and massage at the finish as well as a Lululemon shirt and best of all a Tiffany finishers necklace.

Here’s how the weekend went down…

We dropped off our luggage at the condo (I packed as if I was going away for a week…the usual.) hung out for little while then drove to the expo. It was walking distance at .7 mi, but it was going to be dark soon and with no sidewalks along the way we didn’t want to risk being hit by a retired local before race day. 

Expo:

The first issue was the lack of signage. There were no signs announcing the upcoming race and no signs pointing us in the right direction for bib pick up. We parked and took the escalator down to what looked like bib pick up only to find out we needed to go back up and through Saks, out another door and low and behold, bib pick up. Not one sign. No big deal, we figured it. Got our super nice tote, beach towel, lip balm (one cannot ever have too many lip balms) and sunscreen.

There wasn’t much to see at the expo so we got in line for the free pre-race pasta dinner. It was 4:30 and the line was already wrapped around the shopping area. We weren’t very hungry so standing around chatting for a while didn’t seem so bad until 30 minutes turned into an hour then 1 1/2 hours! We would’ve bailed but had invested so much at this point we decided to stick it out. We did warn a few people though, before they went in search of the end of the line. Apparently the restaurant (Sammy’s) suppling the food hadn’t anticipated 8,000 runners actually taking them up on a free meal.

Dinner consisted of two types of pasta (red sauce and white sauce), two types of salad, a roll, dessert and water. I thought is was decent. Later we found out that they ran out of food. I would’ve been pissed.

Did I mentioned how pricey this race was? The food may have been donated (thanks Sammy’s) but I’m sure we paid for it somewhere along the way.

Race day

There was plenty of parking…Yay!…but again no signs to point us in the right direction. The weather was a chilly 49 degrees but perfect for running. We started on time, 0715, but without the Star Spangled Banner. Maybe they played it when the marathoners went out? Oh well. 🙁

The course was a big loop with plenty of room for those runners that like to run 3 and 4 across (eye roll), with palm trees and mountains as the backdrop.  The runners were all courteous except for one “lady” who spit in front of me. She would’ve gotten me if my pace was 2 strides quicker. Gross!

I went into this race knowing I was going to run slow, and run slow is what I did. I walked at every other water station (every 4 miles-ish) and felt good the whole race (and no DOMS either). My only negative about the course is the lack of spectators, but I attributed that to it being mostly a retirement community. No biggy, there were enough runners around to keep me company.

The finish line fiasco:

Okay, so I don’t know about you, but when I’m done running 13.1 miles I want my medal (in this case a necklace), water and maybe a snack, and call it a day. Well they had another plan for us tired runners. We stood in another long line to get our finishers necklace and shirt. Good grief! Are you effing kidding me? I didn’t even get a water at this point. People were not happy, especially after the pasta issue the night before. Some of us were tired and hungry.

Fortunately the line moved fairly quickly, and all was forgiven when a handsome young man in a tuxedo handed me my Tiffany necklace. I wanted to get a pic but they discouraged selfies in order to keep the line moving. I grabbed a water and moved on.   

Next in line…literally

After the 3 of us got our bling we went straight to the mimosas. The line here was short but was getting long fast as we left to go to the breakfast buffet. And yes you guessed it, another long ass line. The “buffet” was eh. Bagels and cream cheese, sour dough bread (for toast(?) but the toaster didn’t work), onion, tomatoes, guacamole, yogurt and fruit.  Better than a power bar and a banana. They had some trouble keeping the buffet stocked, I assume because they didn’t have enough volunteers. 

Let’s blow this popsicle stand!

We completely forgot about the free massage…apparently everyone else did too.  While in search of a visor for my friend we found the massage tent with about 4 people in line. Go figure. We passed on the massage and never found a visor. There wasn’t a whole lot of merchandise at the finish area. I didn’t want anything but I thought they probably had all the USA Women’s Marathon apparel at the Lululemon store because that’s what Nike had done in the past, but nope. Not one thing. Their loss. 

Party time!

After showering and resting we walked to Lululemon and Pottery Barn for some shopping, then dinner and margaritas.  We laughed, we danced and we laughed some more. Then we ubered back to the condo and went to bed happy, with another 13.1 miles to be proud of.

All in all we had a good time. I expected some bugs considering it was an inaugural race but will I do it again? I don’t know. I love the necklace so maybe…

Do you run inaugural races or wait until they work out the kinks? Have you ever had to wait in line for  medal?

Thanks for reading!

                           Denise