My Event Ratings

Overall score		80%
Would you do it again?		Yes
Details:
Scenery		60%
PB potential		40%
Atmosphere		60%
Organisation		80%
Value		80%
Beginner-friendliness		40%

In short: Home town half marathon
In full: Very windy as it's two laps of open fields.
Lovely atmosphere, perhaps as it's a home run for me and I was able to spot lots of friendly faces along the way.
The medal is worth having and the goody bag is the best I've seen in 8 half marathons - water, banana, energy drink, crisps, mars bar and I believe, a nutrigrain type bar as well.
Date of review: February 18, 2013

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Overall score		40%
Would you do it again?		No
Details:
Scenery		60%
PB potential		100%
Atmosphere		40%
Organisation		40%
Value		40%
Beginner-friendliness		80%

In short: Four laps of the lake
In full: Not the most scenic but certainly not the least - Race your pace half marathon takes runners around the Eton Dorney rowing lake four times, in an effort to 'race your pace'
It's advertised as having pacers from 6 minute miles to 12, which was probably true, but I only saw three (perhaps four) pacers for the whole field of a couple of thousand people. That's a big bus to join! The pacer closest to me, 1:58, was amazing and came in at 1:58 dead - truly brilliant.
There was a problem with the car park which was dealt with very well, but the start was delayed by fifteen minutes as it was under-estimated how long it would take everyone to get to the warm up area. We stayed at a hotel 3 miles away and it took us 45 minutes to get there (and around 40 minutes for the way back, as traffic was quite congested).
The vita coco coconut water was welcome at the finish, but there was nothing else besides a cup of water. No powerbar (as promised in the good luck e-mail), no banana, none of the usual goody bag fare. The medal was extremely mediocre as well, being about the size of half of a debit card and printed without a year on (in order to be used again, I'd imagine). This race wasn't cheap, at £27.
I would not recommend this race for anyone other than those wishing to use it as a training run for the upcoming Spring marathons. There are plenty of other, much more interesting race routes to try which have better facilities.
Date of review: February 18, 2013

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