Vincent Bartning's Staging Area

This is a nice marina and historical site. You can charge your car for free here, but you have to park in the right lot, going through the gate with the security guard. It’s also a nice part of Richmond. I was pleasantly surprised with the marina, and it has some venues, historical sites, etc.

Brazen puts on a great show as usual, music, food, vendors, parking directions, and the swag was the best, especially if you also do the equally flat Bay Breeze Run beforehand. If you do both races, you get a third medal a B2V center one, and they’re all big and bling y :). I’ve posted a pic of this year’s.

This is a flat run along the marina, over various terrain, including wood. You get to see the bay too, and it’s better than the Bay Breeze Run for the 5K as far as views and cleanliness go, but both go along the water. The boats are nice too.

It’s a fun race. The medal’s nice. They even provide video of your finish as a perk. The tailgate party they provided for the Super Bowl and runners looked great, but I couldn’t stay for it.

There was a SNAFU though. My actual time should be faster, around 39:46 rather than 40:11. After the race, I checked my time in the Results tent, and it was slower than the app and my Fitbit Ionic’s data. The Results tent told me to go back to the Finish tent in the stadium and talk to them.

Anyway, it turned out they only had the gun start time, not my chip’s time. Somehow they had not obtained the data as I actually passed the start line. They got the finish-line scan though. Moreover, I was in the 12-15 minutes/mile marker area for the start, a good walk before we began behind those who were closer to the start line.

To make a long story short, there’s no way my time was accurate. The Finish tent did take 34 seconds off, but that wasn’t enough according to my data. My chip-start time would have likely been a minute after the gun-start time. It’s not a big deal though, probably another 25 seconds would have done it, and it’s a good show!

This must have been the first year of this event because all but the organizer ended up backing out because of too few runners participating. Moreover, the organizer, Irun4ever, decided to run the event itself with what ended up being about 25 runners total. They even closed registration because of the low participation on December 14, 2019.

I don’t know if Richard Burke did all the race setup and running work himself, but the course markings were excellent, and he was the only one there manning the start/finish and its swag and stuff. They want to have it next year, and if this year’s an indication, it has an excellent potential, and I plan on participating next year and want to see it go on too! He did do a one man show at the finish/start line, but there was even an unmanned aid station with supplies besides the great markings.

I’ve run a similar course before with the original sponsors that had adequate participation, the 2019 Lagoon Valley Trail Run back in September, and this one had much better course markings, and I liked this course @ the same venue better. There was a lot of mud, and there are inclines. It was a difficult race for me, one of my most difficult, and I even walked part of one mountain, and this venue’s the only one I’ve ever walked at all, but mud alone made it necessary.

I’d like to see this race managed with more than one person, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt this year.

There are a lot of runners in this race! It had the most participants of the 5 or so races I’ve done this year, probably close to 10K! I did the 5K portion of it, and you don’t get to run on the bridge, but you get a view of it from Marina Blvd. More water availability would have been nice, before the race for me. Plus the ding you if you pick up your packet the same day. Parking was available on the street as well BTW. It wasn’t an easy run, but it wasn’t hard, just work, and I felt good after! The finish is a pleasant surprise BTW!

I liked the beer and ambiance after. It was my first race, and I live in Vallejo. You’re running on the old base so that you could encounter some minor obstacles, and, for the 2019 run, it’s pretty much completely paved. This was my first race in probably 20 years, and I just began running about 10 months before this.