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| - A part of me wanted to give this event 4 stars for effort. However, I just can't.
When I found out last year that they were moving the event ot a night start time, I was probably the only person in the universe going "NOOOOOOO!!!" since I knew that I'd be spending the entire day in anxiety for the race and probably wearing myself out. I'm the kind of person who likes to get the race over with and not have to sit around all day for it to start, so this definitely wasn't what I wanted to hear.
In hindsight, that wasn't even the problem - the problem this year was the 44,000 mass of humanity that descended upon the race. From the get-go, there was a pretty lengthy delay due to the 40 corrals that were slated to begin (yet I didn't notice any enforcement of where people started, which kind of bugged me). Things only got worse when I had to weave my way through throngs of slower walkers (I'm not a strong runner by any means, but yikes, it was irritating when people kept clustering together and then stopping without warning in front of me). I think the icing on the cake was at the finish line, when I was completely unable to sprint the last 0.2 miles as I ran smack dab into a wall of people who were posing for the finish line.
In addition, I tripped 3 times on discarded cups, water bottles, garbage bags (?!) and clothes that people had thrown on the floor. Can't blame the volunteers for not cleaning up as that's something that can only be done once the race is over, but yikes, it was a hazard all the same. I nearly face-planted each time...
As such, I exhausted myself unnecessarily moving east and west between people, as opposed to north-south as I normally do. I know that my time was affected because of this, but meh. I'm just happy I finished the race, although knowing that this was the very race that I set my PR in 2010 does kind of sting a little. :/
If the attendance estimate is really projected to hit 60,000 next year, I may have to sit this event out...
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