Patrick Gooley's Staging Area

I had relatively low expectations for the race- hot time of the year, I was running with my girlfriend at a comfortable pace for me. Unfortunately, the experience was utterly disappointing.

Parking was a nightmare. The race is simply too large to have hundreds of cars coming down a single lane road over a mile long to reach parking at the college. It took me 50 minutes to drive the final mile to park, and my girlfriend luckily just got out of the car to walk to the finish line. Across two races, I was mindblown that organizers thought this setup was adequate.

The area is beautiful. Tons of road with scenic views. With that setting, constructing a course with dozens of hairpin and right angle turns seemed like an intentional effort to cause jams in a large race, slow down runners, and overall limit the experience. Probably could construct a dozen courses without these turns in the future, hopefully organizers look into that.

Gravel/grass sections are really annoying. Dont bring your carbon racers unless you are ready for them to get ripped to shreds. Again, dozens of potential courses in the area that would avoid any grass or gravel.

Pictures were a wash. The photos that came out looked great, but they failed to capture everyone. I have run many many races that cost less than half of the price of this one. The formula is simple, stick a few photographers in set spots and take pictures of everyone until the last runners pass. How myself and my group of 4, 3 of which ran at different paces, all managed to go without a single race photo is pretty disappointing.

The food/production post race was definitely a highlight. Tons of good food/drinks/music. Perhaps some of the post production funding should have been reallocated to additional photographers.