Amadeia Rector's Staging Area

-The event was a bit unorganized. Leading up to the event, there were a lot of promo emails on how to get swag, buy merch, but not much specifics on the bib pick up or having a friend pick up.
-The event planner, British site, that they used for registration charged me a foreign transaction fee on my credit card even though the race is local.
-On the week of the event, I received two emails assigning me different bib numbers with no clarification on which one is the right one.
-The event organizers accidentally sent an email to participants that their registration was cancelled and then sent out a follow up apology email for the accidental cancellation.
-The app they used for tracking runners was not great. It was confusing to use – annoying that you have to create an account to track others, and my significant other said it stopped tracking me around mile 10. Also, in the app I showed up as having two bibs even though I only picked up one (they still had the other bib number that was accidentally generated and emailed out earlier that week.)
-The beginning 3 miles of the race are not really scenic at all. It’s in west oakland so you are just running by run-down warehouses, abandoned lots, and homeless encampments. That, and you are running by somewhat busy roads. Once you make it towards the bay bridge, you are running on the sidewalk. They don’t close down any of the lanes on the bay bridge so it’s a bit crammed. And the thing that sucks is that for around 7 miles or so you have no cheering because no supporters can be on the bay bridge. Even with the nice view of the bay, it’s not super pleasant because you have all of the traffic and cars on the bay bridge given that all of the lanes are open.
-There could have been more bathrooms and water stations in my opinion. Also, would’ve been nice to have one station with gels or chews as San Francisco Marathon has done.
-At the end there was surprisingly a decent amount of freebies and the tacos were nice but to be honest I didn’t even know the tickets were for the tacos. I thought they were for the beer. That’s probably why I saw so many abandoned tickets.

Overall, I probably won’t do this run again since the track is not super pretty or inspiring and the lack of organization was a bit annoying.

This was my first time doing a marathon (or even a half marathon). I was lucky to have supportive friends and even knew a couple of people who had ran this marathon, which helped me prepare by running the course beforehand.

The most important thing is you need to prepare yourself to run some hills like around the presidio.

I felt like the race was well organized and produced. There were plenty of water stations and bathrooms and I liked that they even had nutrition stations. It also felt special that some spectators brought out pieces of fruit to give out.

There were lots of spectators that gave it a great feel and the after part of the race was fun too.

The only thing I found annoying was the repetitive loop inside golden gate park for like 7 miles. The best party was probably running on the Golden Gate Bridge.