St. Jude Memphis Half-Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

A bit hillier than I remember Memphis being. Any steep hills were really just some short risers, so they didn't last that long. The entire course was rolling, for the most part. Long steady inclines followed by a long steady decline. I had trained in my neighborhood, which may be the flattest place on earth, so it was a challenging for me, but not unbearable by any means.

The route was great. The weather was perfect so running down Riverside Drive, you had a great view of the Mississippi River and the I-40 bridge. There were people everywhere downtown cheering for you, bands and other performers were all over the place (big thanks to the belly dancers at mile 11). We ran through some neighborhoods and it looked like some of the people had decided to set up their own entertainment for you in their front yards. It was pretty cool to run down Poplar, which is a very busy main road heading east out of downtown. We had two lanes to run in, so traffice was pretty much at a stand still, but most of the motorist were hanging out of their cars cheering you on. The only spot were there were really no spectators was a cut through road in Overton Park, and it was kind of nice having about a mile of quiet, tree lined path to sort of gather your thoughts for the final push.

A very enjoyable but challenging run for me.

The post race in Autozone was great. A little packed, but doable. The beer line was really long when I finally finished, so I grabbed two slices of pizza, a bagel, and some water. I had a friend with an apartment across the street, so I went and showered there.

To warm down, I pretty much just sorta walked around, did some stretching, ate a cheeseburger, and had two beers at Jillians. The best part about this race is that when you finish, you are in a fun downtown area.


I had a sinus infection during my week long taper, which couldn't have helped very much. I really haven't been concentrating on the run to much, and this was the first half-marathon of about 3 or 4 I plan on doing this winter to get a good running base for a Half Ironman.


They ran out of water at the mile 6 stop. It had me worried, but every other station had plenty. I'm not sure what happened there. Other than that, the entire day was very, very fun.