Race Review: Santa Hustle Half Marathon

I love Christmas.  I love races.  So a race that's called the Santa Hustle where they give you a Santa hat & beard, cookies and M&M's on the course and play Christmas music at the water stops is my kind of deal.  But, I was scheduled to work.  Bummer.  But wait!  The running gods heard my plight and due to some craziness at work, I was unexpectedly allowed the day (partially) off, which meant I could do the race with a friend of mine!!!!

I got up a stupid o'clock and headed over the state line to meet her.

It was super cold when we got there to register, but it was a fun atmosphere.  And, what Christmas themed race would be complete without Reindeer???

My friend and I ran this race together and overall I enjoyed it.  The course was a bit boring, with stretches of nothing at all.  The last mile of the race was completely around the outside of the mall.  That was pretty odd.  I would call this course moderately hilly.  If you could see how I'm walking today, you'd realize that I did not train on hills.  At.All.  My butt is killing me today. 

It was certainly not my best time, but it was pain free.  While I am not quite where I want to be, I am happy to be running.

So, my review of the race:

Pros:
Swag is awesome
Start/Finish Line area was awesome
Food/Water stops were adequate and still had supplies for us back of the pack runners
Medal was HUGE (and the snowflake spins!)

Cons:
Course was boring
Some areas were not well marked
Cars on the course were an issue in some spots

This race has so much potential:  Local organizations could have a competition of Christmas Cheer stations, the mall could get in on the act and have stuff set up around the outside, hot (warm, not hot) cocoa would have been nice to wash down the cookies which should have been a bit earlier in the race.  Overall, I would do this race again as long as I was running with friends.