Luci Howard's Staging Area

I greatly appreciate the small size and easy packet pickup- even when attending shortly after the expo opened but before the kids run. However, not being able to exit the expo at doors close to the exit instead of having to walk all the way back through the expo and exit out the entrance was a minor inconvenience. The lack of a good, PDF or image style course map available with mile markers (not kilometers) was also something that bothered me.

On race day though, there were several problems. I appreciate the 10 portable restrooms being available at the start of the race- the line moved quickly enough that everyone who needed to go was able to before the race started. However, not having a plan for where the 5k runners needed to go to be out of the way of the other runners was problematic- especially given that we have a week’s worth of the exact same emails where no one thought to mention something about where they needed to go. Also, the minute or so delay while the street was cleared was fine- but the fact that people were still in the street was not cool- it created a very crowded first 100 feet or so of the race.

And speaking of crowding, the start line was very, very crowded. The fact that the pacers were strung out (the 4:00 marathon pacer was 15-20 feet behind the 2:00 half marathon pacer and at one point the pacers weren’t even in order at the start line) instead of right next to each other was confusing. And rather than having the pacers move apart a little bit (namely everyone move a good 10-15 feet farther apart, and therefore back), everyone was so packed in that you couldn’t get anywhere near the pacer that you wanted unless you happened to be in that spot before the pacers made their way through the crowd. And even if you were correctly positioned, runners poured in from the sidewalks in front of you, cutting you off and preventing you from getting anywhere close to the pacer that you wanted to be. Having a corral system, or calling runners up based on their estimated pacer per mile would have been very helpful for reducing the start line crowding.

The volunteers on the course were top notch- however despite the repeated emails about having water stops every 2 miles, there wasn’t a water stop until mile 4. This was plain unacceptable. On top of that, there were no mile markers for the half marathoners after they split from the marathoners. As someone who has run over 30 half marathons, I’ve never experienced such a thing where I had to do math based on the marathon mile markers to figure out where I was.

The traffic control was also questionable- as vehicles were crossing the street mid race. There were no police officers or volunteers there to stop them, which was a shock as I’ve never had the experience of having to worry about being hit by a car during a race before.

After the race was over, the finish line area was also a mess- the last thing you want to do after finishing a race is stand in one place and that was exactly what I had to do since there was a huge line for exiting the finish line due to the back up at the food tables. Why runners weren’t able to go down both sides of the food tables or skip these all together baffles me. The items could have also been pre-bagged and then just handed to the runners as they exited.

This is the worst managed race I have ever been to.