Barrie Waterfront Half-Marathon - Race Report

It's been a busy few days as we went from Kingston to Barrie to Ottawa and finally home today. I did mange to find a pair of shoes before we left Kingston and I got in a 10km run on Friday to break them in a bit before the race. The race itself took place on Sunday (the 14th) at the waterfront in Barrie and it was the city's first half-marathon. Unfortunately, it showed - the race was an organizational disaster. Like I said, it was the first one so I'll give them a pass this time, but here are some of the things that went wrong:

1) Race kit pick-up took FOREVER! There were only 4 people in line in front of me and it took more than 20 minutes.

2) No bag check. Most running-only races have a spot where you can check your stuff during the race (ie. a jacket, purse, etc), especially if you walked/got dropped off at the race and don't have a car to put it in.

3) Port-a-potties. 4 for 600 participants (plus a large number of volunteers) is not a good ratio. Especially when participants from the Caribfest down the way decided to hijack them the night before. One of the port-a-potties had crap on the seat so it became urinal-only. And there was no toilet paper to speak of.

4) Cup shortage. At the last water station (~18km), they ran out of cups; they had water, so if you had your own bottle, you were okay but if not, no water for you. I would have liked to have had some, but I figured I would wait until the end and save the precious seconds. But when I got to the finish area, they had no cups either. And trust me, after finishing a 21.1km race in mid-August, you need water - it's not a question of want. Chris' aunt managed to bum a used water bottle off someone in the parking lot, so I filled that up and that was enough to get me home.

5) The final stretch along the waterfront path was not kept clear for participants - you had to dodge pedestrians for the last 1/2km or so.

Aside from the frustrations caused by the above-mentioned issues, the race went quite well. I finished in 2:16:58 (chip time), which is a personal best (of 2 races, mind you). And I didn't finish last! The course was fairly flat and quite scenic, consisting of 2 out-and-back routes along the waterfront (first along the south shore, then the north). The volunteers and other participants were all very encouraging and it was definitely a fun race. Chris, his parents and his aunt were there at the finish line to cheer me on and they got some great pictures. Because it was the inaugural race, they gave out really fancy medals to all the finishers and the race T-shirt is nice too. Here's a picture of me crossing the finish line (the time on the clock is the gun time, not my actual chip time):