Margaret came to pick me up at 7.40am and we made the short journey to Crown Gate then a small walk to Copenhagen street at the fountains where we were told in the email instructions to collect our race numbers at least 30 minutes before the race start at 9am. I collected mine and realised it was an adhesive number, I have never had an adhesive number before and later on in the race I would find out why. I attached a safety pin to mine for good measure and had the Black Pear Joggers team photo whilst a stream of people were still lining up at 8.55 am to collect their numbers. The race it appeared was going to start late.
At 9.05am the race started and I must say I was pleased that day that I'm not a super fast runner as there were no signs / directions/ mile markers or anything so luckily I just followed everyone else. I can only imagine the front runners had memorized the route from the email info sent out. Along the whole 6.2 mile course I saw 1 marshall, still at least there were more marshalls than water stations. Baring in mind it was a two lap course I feel it would have been simple enough to have the registration tables and filled them with plastic cups already pre filled with water, if man power was a problem you don't need someone to hand the drinks out just leave them for the runners to take if they wish. More problems appeared as there were runners numbers on the floor all along the route, clearly adhesive numbers aren't used as they don't work. Putting all the moans to one side the route itself was very nice, I enjoyed the run but didn't want to push myself due to no water being available and it being a hot day, still I came in at 1 hour and 59 seconds which I was pleased with. The finish also left a lot to the imagination, as the route was open to the general public, i.e dog walkers, cyclists, families, walkers and the finish line was simply a white chalk line drawn on the floor where all of these members of the general public and other runners who had previously finished had congregated over so you couldn't see it. I finished by running into a wall of people. After a few minutes of looking around confused looking for water first, then my medal I was shown to a table with a pack of plastic cups and sparkling water!? that I had to pour myself. The medal I received had nothing on it, unlike some of the others with a nice picture of Worcester cathedral so I took it back and swapped it for another one. I then noticed some people milling around with bags.. what were these bags? They were the goody bags but it turned out they had ran out by the time I finished. Now I'm not what I would call a slow runner, I finished a 10k in 1 hour there were people finishing behind me. The race entries closed at least a week prior to the event and there were no entries on the day so how can they not accommodate enough medals/ goody bags for the number of entrants. I know I sound like moaning minnie but this really was a poor show on the organizers part but with a bit of tweaking and some honest feedback which I have given I am sure this could be a really good local event in the future.
