Jenn Mark's Staging Area

It’s not supposed to be an easy race but when I pay premium $ I expect:
– clear directions on the course
– reply to my emails
– marshals on the course for everyone
– decent roads for the bike leg

This was my first IM but definitely not the first triathlon. I have trained properly for it and being the first attempt at the full distance I picked an IM branded event, being confident that everything will go smooth. The roads on the bike were awful but the big disappointments were the run course and the lack of customer service. At the end of the day, I’m your customer! The race was in May, we’re almost in August and nobody from IM Santa Rosa or IM had the decency to get back to me. I ended up being DQ-ed because on the second loop of the run I took a wrong turn and run less. I realized that something was wrong during the third lap so after crossing the finish line I went straight to the official tent. Where there were no Officials available! And the race was still ongoing. Following day I spoke with the Race Director who obviously couldn’t help and pointed that it’s athlete’s responsibility to know the course and since I managed to follow the signs during the 1st and 3rd lap it was my fault for turning at a wrong spot. Since there were no marshals on the course how do you guarantee that nobody tripped on your A-board and moved it in such a way so the arrow would point at the wrong direction? How can you leave a run course unsupervised? How fair is for all the participants to only have marshals on the course for the first 3 hours of the run only? (stated by one of the race officials the following day) I’ve done smaller local races were the race directors have done a way better job than IM brand. Smaller races where marshals were on the bike course. Smaller races where directions were clearly given or put in place. I would not recommend this location to anyone or any other races organized by this race director