A heads up before I begin the rest of my review: when you register, you'll be asked whether you have a yellow timing chip, or want to rent one. I was very confused by this as I had selected "rent one," but didn't receive one at packet pickup, and panicked when I saw a sea of people with yellow chips on their shoes. Apparently people buy these chips, and they no longer need to get the chip on their bibs, saving them some money (so it's worth it if you race often). Don't panic if you don't get a yellow chip, as long as you have a chip on your bib.

Here's what I thought about the race:

Expo - the expo was very small for a race of this size (almost 20,000 registrants). There weren't a ton of vendors, and it was really just race information and packet pickup.

Course - the race was through the streets of Barcelona, though we didn't really see many iconic sites, other than the Arc de Triomf (we started and finished near there). The race was very flat (a women's world record was broken at this race in 2014), though there were some small inclines.

Weather - the weather was in the 70s (Fahrenheit) and just the right amount of sunny. I actually found this a little too warm for my tastes, having trained in much colder weather.

Fuel - there were aid stations ever 5km or so, and they did have water and energy drinks, but no gu. I don't remember any solid foods, but maybe there were some.

Swag - the v-neck tech t-shirt was super nice (Saucony brand), but the medal was very meh for such a large race.

Management - I normally wouldn't have this section here, but I had a lot of trouble with my registration. I never got the confirmation email, and had to reach out multiple times over a couple weeks over multiple platforms (FB, call, email) to finally get one. It never went through to my Gmail, but ultimately did to my Outlook account. The management was super difficult to reach and took a long time to respond. They also don't speak a ton of English, so be aware of that.

Overall, this is a fun race in an iconic city, but be aware that you may experience registration problems and not get the best customer service. Weather could also be warmer than you're used to in February, so be prepared. I probably wouldn't do this race again if I were in the area, but it was a cool experience (this was actually my first "destination" race).

For more race details, check out my blog post: https://www.imperfectidealist.com/2019/02/race-review-barcelona-half-marathon-2019.html

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