Blantant trend chaser. Poorly managed, and more about being "a woman" than running. Frankly, I found my experience, and the continued marketing of this event to be a bit offensive.

I'll preface this by saying that I am not a fan of women's only races, and that, in fact, I think they are not an effective way of promoting women in running (or in sport, for that matter). I ran this race in order to make sure I wasn't acting ignorantly biased. I gave this event more than a fair shake, and it was just terrible. The t-shirts were rather nice, everything else was disappointing.

Being a Chicago Lakefront trail style race there was great potential for it to be a wonderful opportunity for a PR race. In fact, I targeted it as such.

The course was poorly marked and virtually unsupported, I only saw one or two bonafide course marshals. Myself and the majority of other runners who weren't in a large pack (and even some of them) mis-navigated the course to varying degrees. I ended up with over an extra half mile in the end.

To her credit, the race director was hugely apologetic and offered comp'ed entries to any other Zooma event of their choice to everyone who went off-course. I declined. I appreciate the gesture but also recognize that it is business and customer service 101. Look, I understand that in any sort of business, and more specifically events/parties/sporting events, things are going to go wrong. That's a guarantee, but this event actually frustrates me a great deal because it seems like they invest a huge amount of money and effort in the marketing, but very little in actual event execution.

This is a pricey event (I guess most half marathons are now), but I think even their target audience (which, based on their marketing are women who will only run if provided with a shopping opportunity and champagne, oh! and jewelry, at the finish) would like to see more effort on race day. The much promoted after-race festivities were really sparse and the vibe was not very happy.