I had signed up for the 5kfoam fest in January. I was so excited! The day comes for my race and I am pretty eager to do it. This is my first race in a really long time, and I’ve only been okayed by my doctor to run about 1 mile, so I was a little nervous.
For support, my man went but mostly to video tape me and my mishaps! He was walking around with his tripod and video camera I felt like I had paparazzi!
Let me say this was the worst race I have ever not done in my life.
I chose to DNS this race for several reasons.
Parking was not bad so I will give them that one, but it really depended on where you tried to park. I saw many cars parked about a block away.
The race was held at McDonald Ranch.*
McDonald Ranch is like a little western town. Great place, just not in the heat.
When we walked up, there was a line about 30 people long waiting to clean up with the trickle of water coming out of the hose. REASON NUMBER ONE!
Try a fire hose next time! Make it part of the fun!
I went and picked up my bib and I was already having second thoughts about this race, due to the heat, but the hose thing was the 1st thing that somewhat bothered me.
The Second Reason: I got my shirt and asked where the start was.
The lady did not know! Ummm
I rounded the corner and found the start. I found out that many people just hopped into whatever time they wanted.
Reason Number Three- Lack of organization. This was making me a little concerned. I mean what if there is no water out there.
This is the finish line. I was watching this to see how things were going. There was a line about 20 min long to get through this “event” because it was broken on one side. I mean really? Broken?
My friend came through and told me that there was tons of broken/closed obstacles, no water, and if there was any water it was HOT. She went on and told me for each obstacle you wanted to do the wait was 10-20 minutes. I also heard there was not any food or water for the people who finished the last start. That is just crazy!
MY Final reason for not running this “race”. NO WATER!
I would not even rate this race! All thumbs down! Hopefully they respond and stop taking the complaints off FB.
Disappointed yes, regrets I did not start..NO!
In the end, I decided I am not a mud race type of girl. I like to run, but I am not into running into mud on purpose. It’s really just not my thing.
Man that stinks about the race, but totally understand your decision! I hope everyone out there who did it was OK.
It looks like juice and breakfast made up for the disappointing race situation!
Lol. That race…haha it was so, so bad that I’m embarrassed to wear the tee shirt. You were smart to not run it. We walked half of it after determining running in that heat with no water wasn’t safe. Did you have to pay?
Ah the shirt. It is going to become my clean the garage shirt.:) might even end up on the table of stuff to sell at my yard sale
so so sad! I cant recall ever having a race I never began because it was just bad!
Thank you for all of the feedback on the 5k Foam Fest. Your reviews have helped us to improve our race and implement better policies for the future. We have been rapidly growing over the last year and in that growth we have learned. Running out of supplies such as foam and water is a thing of the past. We now come to each race stocked for multiple races so there is no fear of running low. Also, we are prepared with back up water supplies so that we never have to disappoint or put our racers in harm ever again. We understand that no one likes waiting in lines so we have made adjustments to compensate for that too! We now have more staffing at registration which means more people available to help and drastically shorter lines as well as staffing throughout the course. Staffing members throughout the course are equipped with radios and placed throughout the course to direct runners and help everything run smoothly and safe. We have also doubled up on our obstacles to do away with bottle necking and lines there also. So instead of one slip and slide there is now two! Our slides are also no longer tarp, they are inflatable slides covered with foam and water! We hope that you will join us again next year and allow us to show you the improvements we have made. Hope to see you in Foam!!!