I first heard about this race sometime in late July…. because my training plan started the week of Aug 8….
I started training…. but didn’t actually sign up until late Sept or early Oct. Training was going well…
And then around the beginning of November RamRacing (the company that was putting on the race) started sending emails stating that due to the large number of participants… they were introducing a parking plan. Um what? The plan…. you had to sign up to park at one of 3 locations – 1) National Harbor… but you had to carpool with another runner; 2)Park at Rosecroft RaceTrack – and shuttle bus to NH (this required a 2nd runner in your car also) 3)Shuttle from Crystal City.
Obviously I wanted to park at National Harbor since I am located in PG County about 20 minutes from National Harbor… the problem… I run slow….. like slower than my friend….. and I didn’t want her to have to wait around an extra 30 minutes for me to finish. No way in hell was I Metroing to Crystal City to pick up a shuttle… So I was ready to bail and demand a refund from RamRacing… because they didn’t disclose this parking situation up front… however my friend said she didn’t mind waiting for me… so OK.
Next hurdle packet pick-up… this went pretty smoothly in the grand scheme of things… (Unlike the last race I ran at National Harbor… where the only packet pick-ups were located in Columbia, MD and Fairfax VA). The only thing that didn’t live up to the hype – the Race Swag was described as a wind resistant running jacket… um… not really … its like tissue paper thin. And we all paid boku-bucks for the privilege of receiving this thing………
And now… Day of race… Carpooling with 2 other runners… we left Cheverly around 6:30am… got down to National Harbor… and sat in a major backup at the 295 off-ramp… that was slowly crawling along…..the 5K was supposed to start at 7:30 and the 15K at 8am…. we were able to park around 7:20 I think… so about 40 minutes to kill….not too bad…. until its announced the 5K Start was delayed*…uh-oh. I have no idea what time the 5K actually started…. but we lined up close to 8am for the 15K….8:15… no gun….8:30… no gun…. 8:45… no gun and my toes are pretty much frozen… by this time people in the corrals start yelling “Let’s Go!… Let’s Go!” and Booing…. I was pretty sure my feet were gonna cramp up pretty terrible during this race…… Finally around 9am… the gun goes off… and off we go.
Other people really disliked that the course put us on Indian Head Highway… I didn’t really have a problem with it… I just stayed away from the one lane of traffic that was allowed to get by (and which was traveling well under posted speed limit). The 5k split was posted on the wrong side of the road… but I didn’t really care about that…. Near the end of the course… some of the water stations were not well stocked… but whatever… I finished the race… and was pretty happy.
Official Time 1:50:43…… Under two hours, which I guess was my goal since I have never run a 15k before….. and avg pace of 11:53….. This was a personal best for me….. Usually I am around 12:10.
Needless to say … I am happy I ran it …. but I was not happy with the hour delay. or the parking/traffic situation. I will NEVER run another race at National Harbor. And I have serious doubts about whether I will run another race with RamRacing.
*NOTE – RamRacing has indicated the start times were delayed due to an accident on some highway…. however … no one that I have seen complaning on the FB page or talked to in person reports seeing said accident. 15 minute delay… OK… I’ll even give you 30 minutes… but an hour is unacceptable… between dressing for 8am race weather and eating/drinking/stretching for an 8am start time… RAMRacing is lucky there weren’t more injuries….
It was a chip-timed race… so it doesn’t really matter when you start….your start time is when you cross the timing pad…. they should have allowed the people that were waiting around to start by 8:30am at the latest.
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