My Event Ratings

Overall score		60%
Would you do it again?		Maybe
Details:
Scenery		60%
PB potential		80%
Atmosphere		80%
Organisation		60%
Value		60%
Beginner-friendliness		80%

In short: The course was well organised and enjoyable, despite the weather, but the start and finish were somewhat chaotic
In full: Course could be appealing if a monsoon wasn't raging. It was well stewarded and water stations were frequent. However, the lack of toilets in the stadium was poor (how can there be too few in a stadium?) and there were too long queues to reclaim baggage at a time people needed to get into dry clothes immediately.

Date of review: May 9, 2012

Report this rating to the moderator

Overall score		100%
Would you do it again?		Yes
Details:
Scenery		80%
PB potential		80%
Atmosphere		100%
Organisation		100%
Value		100%
Beginner-friendliness		100%

In short: Superbly organised. Highly recommended
Date of review: June 13, 2010

Report this rating to the moderator

Overall score		20%
Would you do it again?		No
Details:
Scenery		60%
Atmosphere		20%
Organisation		20%
Value		20%

In short: Utterly shambolic. Very few marshals or signs. Everyone - and I mean everyone - lost the routee
In full: This event was an absolute shambles of the highest order.

I should have sensed there was something amateurish about the event when it became apparent that no one knew what time the race started. The website gave no firm start time and not even the marshals could tell me. People got unchanged too soon then became needlessly cold because of a lack of information.

When the race was finally about to start, one of the athletes had to ask an official where we were supposed to go. They hadn't even bothered to place a marshal beside a turn at the start of the course so no one would have known we were supposed to "turn left at the bin".

No roads were closed and there were very few signposts directing us along the pavements.

Most of the leading bunch of runners lost the route soon after the two mile mark. We must have missed a turn where there was no marshal and no sign in place. When we did encounter marshals, having mistakenly arrived maybe at the ten mile point of the run, even though we'd been running for only five miles, the marshals actually told us to go in the wrong direction.

One runner collapsed (I believe we were not on the designated route at this point, although it was impossible to know this) and I heard from other runners that they had difficulty getting anyone to summon an ambulance.

I continued with a group of runners equally bewildered by the route. We were occasionally shouted instructions by a marshal from his car although these sometimes turned out to be wrong and most people couldn't hear them anyway. No one knew if we'd end up running eight miles or twenty miles so it was impossible to pace oneself.

Even late on when we finally found the correct route, there were still turns with no marshal on duty and no sign.

This was a totally meaningless race. Everyone ran different distances. One runner, guided by GPS, said he had run 17 miles.

I paid £30 for this and have asked for my money back but could not be told if this would happen.

This is a truly amateurish and shambolic event. Do not do it.

Date of review: March 28, 2010

Report this rating to the moderator