Milwaukee Marathon Makes a Come Back

Today is April 14th and it snowed all day. In fact, it was still snowing at 10pm when I went upstairs to read my book. Last weekend was the Milwaukee Marathon which started and began at The Bucks Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee. I couldn’t help but text the race production crew today, with a photo of all the snow. I’m feeling incredibly grateful that the race was last weekend given this sudden snowstorm.

This was the fourth year of the Milwaukee Marathon. It initially started with literally one person who had a dream to host the first race through the City. There was so much push back. People don’t like change. People don’t like detours. People who don’t run don’t understand the pull and don’t want to be inconvenienced. Churches don’t appreciate Sunday races. Others, like myself, got behind it 100% understanding that this is an amazing way to showcase our city.

My role for the marathon is relatively small albeit incredibly important and somewhat terrifying. I am in charge of business and residential notification. My job is to try to notify the entire City about the race and make sure that everyone has as much access to homes and businesses as possible while keeping the runners safe from traffic. I am not afraid to ask for help for this task so I ask everyone and anyone I know to help spread the word. This includes City communications teams, Aldermen, Business District Directors, Neighborhood Associations and anyone else who comes to mind!

The first year of the marathon went well except for some residential areas that got somewhat landlocked. The weather was perfect that year, sunny and 50 degrees. I decided to run the half marathon to discover what this “running high” was all about. I ran it, but I never got the high. Oh well, check that off the bucket list.

Year two came and the route was changed to make sure residents weren’t locked inside the route, but then someone threw some of the course cones into a ditch and suddenly people were running too far. We heard about it in command relatively quickly and were able to rectify the situation. The rest of the race went well. The churches were still upset with us for hosting the race on Sunday morning in November during All Saints Day which made it tough for parishioners to get to service.

The cost to produce this size of an event can be crazy, because of the man power needed from the police department, sheriff’s department, fire department, department of public works, and transit system to name a few – the permit alone costs over $75,000. Then add in course timing, production crews, logistics teams, barricades, medals, gear… with race registration costing runners anywhere between $50 and $100 for half and full marathons, depending on early bird pricing, you need an abundance of registrations and even more sponsors to simply break even. The race ended up being sold so this new team knew they had to get everything right after the previous year’s fiasco.

Packet pick-up came for the third year of our November race, and it was raining. I mean it literally poured for about 24 hours straight. Our staging area, which had changed locations, was a complete and total mud pit. We were trying to throw giant pieces of cardboard on the ground so as to not sink up to our ankles in mud. It was chilly, but the rain had finally stopped by the start of the race. The woman who sang the National Anthem forgot the words; I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. The runners started coming in from the half marathon and there was a buzz about PRs (personal records.) Many people were getting personal records! Normally this is awesome news, but we soon discovered that the course was too short this time. People’s Garmin and other mapping devices were definitely indicating that the course wasn’t right. I’m not sure about the logistics of course measurement and certification but I knew there wasn’t any way to fix it this time. I felt bad for the new company. They had tried their best but maybe this wasn’t their race.

The race was sold yet again, this time to a company out of Boston called Rugged Races. My immediate reaction was literally, wow, these guys are brave. We had two years in a row of incorrect mileage for this race but they came in and decided to crush it. The staging area was moved to The new Bucks Arena area and the Bucks soon agreed to sign on as presenting sponsors. The date was changed to a Saturday in Spring which made the churches extremely happy. The course route was changed yet again, and the marketing efforts were quadrupled.

In spite of starting from behind, this company knew they had to invest every tactic they could think of to turn this race around. That’s just what they did. The course measured perfectly, no residents were locked inside the course, and the pre and post-race festivities were top notch. They even doubled their registrations and weren’t afraid to tackle any of the hard questions and sarcasm tossed around on social media.

The weather was gray but dry and about 45 degrees. There are just so many moving parts to events and with the weather being the one thing we absolutely had no control over, I am so thankful that everything worked out. I’m sure the new production crew sighed a huge breath of relief. Today there is still so much snow on the ground that last week’s race seems like a dream. Truly though, I cannot wait until next year to do it again!