2012 The New Forest Festival of Running Half Marathon
 | | Overall score | | 40% | | Would you do it again? | | No | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 80% | | PB potential | | 40% | | Atmosphere | | 40% | | Organisation | | 20% | | Value | | 40% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 40% |
In short: Beautiful scenery but terrible organisation. Wouldn't do another race organised by them.
In full: I originally signed up for a 10k in October which was cancelled. I was offered an upgrade to the half marathon for this weekend, with onsite parking and a free t-shirt, which I accepted.
I hadn't had any information about the race, and despite emailing I couldn't find anything on their site about water stations, distance markers or the route, so had to go by the scanty info they did provide, and turned up on the day.
They had no record of my agreed t-shirt at registration (despite an earlier email saying it was all sorted) but did give one to me - although I'm very pleased I didn't actually pay for one since I don't think I'll ever wear it.
The start was a farce, with a 15 minute walk along the road - disrupting traffic, and with no one making sure that the 20 mile runners who were coming through could actually pass - once we realised this was happening we tried to stay out of their way!
The course itself was beautiful - courtesy of the new forest! - but the marshals were the most bored and unmotivated bunch I've ever come across, with the exception of one young lad at a gate near the end of the lap, who I think was the only one who spoke! The water situation has already been written about, but I can't believe they knew about it from earlier and hadn't bothered to do anything about it.
At the finish there was one little cup of water given out, and the implication seemed to be that you should then buy drinks from one of the vendors, as I was given a look for going back to refill my cup.
Finally, the run in to the finish came through the entrance road to the pub, and when we were trying to leave to get home there were still runners trying to finish, with no one directing the traffic to allow them to get down the road - hopeless!
My husband came along to watch with our two small children, but because the start was delayed, and the course was longer than advertised they had a much longer wait than we had bargained for - oh, and no one knew that the two-lap course was going right past the entrance to the campsite so they didn't know to come out and cheer us on as we passed through.
I know this is a long review, but I have done some fantastic races, and this just wasn't one of them. It seemed as though they had no idea of how to organise events, and would have been more suited to sticking with maybe a 5 and 10k and leaving the longer distances to someone more experienced.
Date of review: March 12, 2012
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