Trying to think of one positive thing from today’s race & I honestly can’t think of one single thing outside of: Well I didn’t have to travel that far for it.
This is like a James Beard restaurant, cool once but you’ll never go again bc it was no nowhere near worth the money.
The entire event just seemed like it was one or two people who works for Pettit & are like “organizing a marathon can’t be that hard” but the sad thing is this wasn’t their first year.
From the start it just seemed awful. Communication before the race was maybe half correct.
They told us not to show up until 30min before the race & just told us to throw our bags anywhere in the building bc “Safety First” isn’t accurate.
Starting line was just a mess. They gave you 2min to walk from the one door to the starting line on the other side of the track. They didn’t even wait for the previous race to end. There was maybe a 5sec sound off on when to go. Just seemed like it was organized more as a fun run than a paid race.
Then quickly you realized your smart watch wouldn’t work on the track due to no GPS.
They did at least have your lap time each time you finished bc of the tag on your ankle, which was good. However, it would have been nice to add on the screen the distance you have completed instead of only lap #
Which brings me to another point where it was obvious this was organized by just a couple people who know the Pettit really well, nowhere did they post a single sign anywhere before or during the race that the laps are NOT 400meters like a normal track but 450 meters.
I asked one of the people passing out water if they could announce how many laps were equivalent to a 5K, 10K, 15K but they did not. Then when she told me how much it was, her answer was “I don’t know, maybe” & it was wrong bc she thought a half marathon (13.1miles was just two 10Ks (12.4miles).
The music they had over the speaker was obviously selected by only a bunch of middle age adults
Water aid stations were awful. Yes, the volunteers were nice but you could tell among the 6 that none of them were runners with experience in running races. I asked for a water at the 10K point & it took 4 laps for me to get a water. Then later I had to get the water myself. That was a first in a race. There are volunteers but I have to stop & fill up my own water bottle just to get water. Wow!
They had a leaderboard that did nothing but show who crossed the lap mark at a certain time. You’d see someone with 10 more laps finished below another person.
The food they had for after the race was a banana, warm water, & a Quaker Oats bar. Great, if you paid $20 for a race, not $100
The medal & shirt look like they realized last week that they forgot about them & had to rush to make them. Shirt is from low budget company & the medal was wood with a generic ribbon you can find at a dollar store. While the wood seemed cool when you saw it, once you put it on you realized it is ALL wood.

This was a race that seemed like it was put together like a $20 5K fun run, not a 3-day event that cost anywhere from $90 to $120.

I honestly don’t see how anyone would ever consider running this race a 2nd time. Just not worth the money. I have ran in $40 half marathon races where everything was organized much better & they have dramatically more overhead to organize it.

This should be one of the least expensive races since the organization needed for it is so bare minimum yet they ran it so poorly.