Latest Ratings
| 1 to 7 of 7 ratings | Page: 1 |
2009 Bath Half-Marathon
 | | Overall score | | 60% | | Would you do it again? | | Maybe | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 60% | | PB potential | | 80% | | Atmosphere | | 80% | | Organisation | | 40% | | Value | | 40% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 60% |
In short: Better than last year but more to learn
In full: Won't repeat the same comments as everyone else but a couple of things spring to mind. Firstly, for £32 was it really too much to expect a t shirt that fits? Guess what, not everyone is a size large. How hard is it to get that bit right. I organise a race and if you do a big t shirt order it means you can get the things for literally a couple of pounds each, maybe even less if you oder 15,000. Ok so not everyone will take the correct size but over order a few and the problem is solved. More penny piching from the organisers unfortunately. Also, drinking stations are needed on both sides of the road on the second lap. As a faster runner I simply couldn't even get to them on the long drag back to the centre as there was a wall 10 thick of slower runners still on their first lap. Not exactly hard to predict this! Of course it is easy to criticise and at least it was better organised than last year (which was shambolic) but they must do better. If it wasn't held in one of the UK's most beautiful cities and relied on it being a good well organised race then frankly no one would run it.
Date of review: March 15, 2009
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2009 PROVISIONAL Combe St Nicholas 10k
| | Overall score | | 80% | | Would you do it again? | | Yes | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 80% | | PB potential | | 40% | | Atmosphere | | 80% | | Organisation | | 80% | | Value | | 80% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 80% |
In short: A nice friendly well organised race
In full: First time doing this one today and thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice scenery and friendly. The course is quite tough, definately not a pb course. First 5 k is actually quite fast so you get a false impression of your likely finish time. After 5k there are quite a lot of hills, one quite long and steep (say 200 metres of 1 in 6) and another long one of maybe 800m about 1 in 12. I took over 2 mins longer to do the second half. There was a good generous array of trohpies plus refreshments at the end (bacon baps, coffees etc). Only criticism would be them not printing out any results on the day. I waited an hour for the prize giving to find out I'd missed out by one place! Apart from that can't really think of anything negative. Well done to the organisers.
Date of review: March 1, 2009
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2008 Full Monty 'Cute'
| | Overall score | | 80% | | Would you do it again? | | Yes | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 100% | | PB potential | | 20% | | Atmosphere | | 80% | | Organisation | | 60% | | Value | | 80% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 80% |
In short: Hard but great event in spectacular scenery
In full: Really enjoyed the race today. First two hills very tough but the rest were just about runable if you were determined enough. Great mix of conditions with rock hard ice one minute and thick mud the next! Really needed to use the rope on hill two, my off road shoes had no chance! Nice atmosphere at the start and finish, names called out at the finish etc made for an uplifting experience. Only gripes would be: a few marshalls who stood there without actually telling you which direction you had to go in! Also although it was great to see so many spot prizes the actual race prizes were a bit mean - third place overall and only a bottle of wine to show for your efforts (a nice trophy would have not cost a lot more and would at least be a memento you can keep). Overall though an excellent race and will definately be back again next year!
Date of review: December 7, 2008
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2008 The H30 Pro Castle Combe 10K
| | Overall score | | 80% | | Would you do it again? | | Maybe | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 60% | | PB potential | | 80% | | Atmosphere | | 80% | | Organisation | | 80% | | Value | | 100% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 60% |
In short: Well organised race, shame about the wind!
In full: Hats off to DB Max for a great race. Well organised and good facilities at the venue. Good PB potential but very exposed to the wind and with 3 laps that meant running into a gale for 3/4 of a mile three times which took the spring out of the legs! Not totally flat but given the right conditions (ie not a gale) potentially very fast. Shame the hot tubs didn't turn up, I bought my trunks specially!!
Date of review: November 23, 2008
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2008 Shepton Mallet 10K Fun Run
| | Overall score | | 60% | | Would you do it again? | | No | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 80% | | PB potential | | 80% | | Atmosphere | | 60% | | Organisation | | 20% | | Value | | 80% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 80% |
In short: A nice race spoilt by poor organisation
In full: This was the first time I had done this one and although I enjoyed the race and course it was such a shame about the organisation.I don't want to be too critical because Wells City Harriers usually put on excellent races and at the end of the day race organisers spend a lot of time for no financial gain organising events that we as runners can enjoy. I am writing this so that hopefully some lessons can be leanrt to improve the race for next year.
Firstly, ensure your facilities have enough toilets. I believe UKA recommends one toilet for every 50 runners. There was one male toilet and two urinals (one of which was blocked when we arrived an hour before the start). What was worse was that there wasn't even any toilet paper.
Secondly, some large and potentially very dangerous bollards were literally 50 metres from the mass start. Runners were told someone hadn't been able to get the key to lower them so 'don't go too quick at the start!'. To make matters worse we were told that they had had more runners than expected so to lessen the danger the 5k runners would start in front of the bollards (meaning their race wasn't even a proper 5k distance!
Then the main 10k field stood in a cold windy field for 20 minutes while we waited for the whacky relay to finish. This involved about 20 people running very slowly round a field. I'm absolutely not knocking this as an event idea and its great to get slower runners and juniors running but why not start the race after the 10k event! By this time quite a few runners were thinking the same thing and getting a bit pissed off at freezing.
Worst of all though was the absolutely shambolic team prize situation. Our club don't win many team races but we all set PBs and pushed really hard to be the first club home (3 to count). Unbelievably we were told that we hadn't in fact won the team prize because we hadn't stated on the entry form we were a team even though we had written on our affiliated club deatils!! This is an entry form with about five differnet events going on including team relay races etc. Clearly no one knew what was going on. In fact, Wells City Harriers (the club organisers) thought they had won the 5k team event only to be told by the race director that they hadn't!! In the end no one seemed to know what was going on and by the time they had looked through 150 forms to work out who the heck had ticked the team box most people had left leaving a few runners to go and colect their prize in an empty room.
Obviously I am being quite critical and the event has real promise. The course is nice, there was a friendly vibe and lots of juniors running which is great to see. Overall though a lot of lessons to be leant for next year.
Date of review: October 19, 2008
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2007 Bath Half-Marathon
| | Overall score | | 40% | | Would you do it again? | | No | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 60% | | PB potential | | 80% | | Atmosphere | | 60% | | Organisation | | 20% | | Value | | 40% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 60% |
In short: Badly orgainsed
In full: A response to some of the comments on here. Firstly, greedy people did not take extra goody bags/t shirts at the front depriving others. The reason they ran out was because the marshals handed out goody bags and then told people to get a t shirt. I only discovered hours later that the goody bag also had a t shirt in it! Secondly, the marquee for the first aid should obviously have been put up the day before. I organise a road race for my club. We only have a few hundred runners but we always set most of it up the day before. If you risk doing it a couple of hours before the race it is inevitable that at some point it will go wrong. These are basic mistakes from a supposedly professional organisation. I hope they have learnt for next time.
Date of review: March 20, 2008
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2008 Bath Half-Marathon
| | Overall score | | 40% | | Would you do it again? | | No | | | | Details: | | Scenery | | 60% | | PB potential | | 80% | | Atmosphere | | 60% | | Organisation | | 20% | | Value | | 40% | | Beginner-friendliness | | 60% |
In short: A big city marathon feel and atmosphere but very poor organisation
In full: The delay was appaling, the runners village resembled Glastonbury mud, the mile markers were all over the place (I was 30 secs down at mile 3 and miraculously on target at mile 4). I did get a pb which cheered me up and being fairly near the front avoided some of the long queues, got my goody bag etc. Overall though a lot needs to be learnt. The other problem was too many runners for road width at the start. Even though I started in penn A I couldn't run properly up to speed until at least 50 metres after the start line (not great if you are going for a pb). Someone else also mentioned distance and I also had the route as well over on my Garmin (13.28 miles). It was fairly flat but there were a few hills especially at Queen's Square. I would say there are other faster (and possibly shorter) courses out there.
Date of review: March 17, 2008
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