Thursday, October 4, 2012

Blues N Brews 10 Miler Official Race Photos & More

I never properly talked about the Blues N Brews 10 miler race as an organized event as I normally do as my excitement for the results overplayed the craptastic things that happened:

The Good
  • Great shirt and sweet medal.  It doubles as a bottle opener!!
  • Great course and I love going through the 18th and Vine district.  
  • Parking was surprisingly OK considering the start location but I think that's an indicator of the number of participants.
  • Great post-race concert headliner band; however, I did not stay for the Blues Traveler because I really wanted to get some food in me that I didn't have to pay for (oops, a little early... see below).  The Marching Cobras and the opening act were great.
The Bad and the VERY Ugly
  • Speaking of Blues Traveler concert.  It was free for participants but others had to pay $20 to get in.  There was NO policing of the entrance/exit.  For one thing, the concert should be free for EVERYONE (although I understand the desire to keep out random people from getting in) but to charge people and not police it?  Bad ju-ju.
  • The map indicated 6 bands on the course.  There were NONE.  Maybe a boom box but definitely no bands.
  • The start line was just a timing mat.  There was no banner or structure.  For an event planning for 8,000 participants (4,000 10 milers, 2,000 5K runners, and 1,000 teams at 2 runners each) you'd think they'd have plans for one.
  • Other than a bottle of Gatorade, NO post-race food.  Even small races will have some sort of fruit waiting for you but they had NOTHING.  Seriously?  Thank goodness they didn't have the 8,000 runners or else they might have a riot on their hands.  Ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration but this MUST be fixed for next year.  Luckily I had cash easily available or I would been having some issues. I was starting to get shaky when I finally gave in and paid $5.50 for an egg sandwich.

    NOTE: I heard on the Twitter that they ran out of Gatorade.
  • The race website said: "The party starts at 7:00 a.m., and kegs of cold, refreshing beer will help you celebrate crossing the finish line."  Provided you bring $$$ to pay for it.  Much of the site is misleading like this.
The cheapest price for this race was $40 and I got in at that rate.  Had I paid $80 for it I would have been extremely frustrated.  I've paid $20 - $25 for races that had more amenities than this race.

I get that they may have had a budget issue because there were only 1,200 finishers (so maybe 1,300 - 1,400 registered participants?) but that's not an excuse to not having post-race food.  I wonder if Grinders put some pressure on them to not have food, but that's even worse.  I sure hope that's not the case because I do enjoy going to Grinders and don't want to ruin that experience.

Would I run this race again?  Not next year.  Only in 2014 when I see how they've adjusted based on feedback.  Apparently they are deleting people's feedback on Facebook, so they already have  PR headache ahead of them.  [Note: I wrote this post Sunday afternoon.  On Sunday evening they shut down their Facebook page. Yikes.]

United Multisport... shame on you!

So... the Official Race photos...  Well, it's been 5 days and they still have not posted them.  Based on the previous record, I'm not holding out much longer.

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