Outer Banks Marathon

I did the Outer Banks Marathon in North Carolina on Sunday, November 12, 2006. It was my birthday. The weather was originally predicted to be nice; however, by Friday the prediction had changed drastically. It rained for about 18 miles of my 26.2 miles event, sometimes very hard with strong winds. This made some of the trail part of the course to have somewhat miserable footing. Fortunately the temperature was around 60 so I managed to stay reasonably warm.
For a first year event the race was well organized with plenty of volunteers. The community was very friendly and happy to have tourists in their off season. The marathon was a point to point course that had some problems with transportation of participants. There was no big parking area anywhere that could be used as a staging area causing much of the problem. I hope that this can be addressed well and that no increase in number of entries be allowed. Entries closed at 2000.
Overall I enjoyed the marathon and the visit to the Outer Banks. Saturday was a beautiful day to be a tourist and I took many pictures which will be posted separately. I even managed to place 16th out of 30 runners in my age group. Of course I race walked instead of running.