I love Oktoberfest celebrations, and racing is pretty cool, so an Oktoberfest 5k on a weeknight seemed like a no-brainer to sign up for and race. The Lincoln Park location was fine, and while a 6:30 pm start time makes parking and access more difficult than normal, it's somewhat understandable due to the time of the year. Still, a 7 o'clock or later start would've likely been fine and allowed most racers to finish before the sun went down.

The course is standard small-to-mid-sized Lincoln Park 5k, running almost entirely on the inner lakefront path, which isn't too crowded with recreational runners but does crowd easily in the early part of the race, causing runners to weave excessively (wasting energy) or fall in line behind slower runners (wasting time). Even worse, after a little rainfall, it gets wet and puddle-y and somewhat difficult to navigate.

Cost was a little over $30 with fees and whatnot, so it didn't seem like too big of a risk. A nice hybrid cotton t-shirt was included in traditional Oktoberfest colors, but the race really went off-theme from there. Post-race party, rather than having German pretzels, brats and other Oktoberfest style foods, was held at an Italian restaurant. They did provide free pizza, but it was gone in a flash, well before anyone in our group could get to it, as the line for the one free post-race beer was mutli-purposed as the pizza line when the food was brought out, so those that finished early and got their beer were in a bad position to grab pizza. Fine, we ordered some food from the menu, no biggie.

Normally, swag doesn't do too much to sway whether or not I run a race, but I do use it as a metric to gauge value and help determine whether or not I'd run a race again. This race advertised a beer mug, which made me think, 'worth it', upon signing up. The 'mug' was actually plastic, which, okay- I've done races with pint glasses before so I'm not sure why, other than cost, would go away from that model but the thing wasn't even a mug. No handle. Insult-to-injury: not only was the post race beer not an Oktobefest style beer (it was an IPA), the bar didn't even have any Oktoberfest beers available for purchase. I'm torn, because as far as a 5k race is concerned, this one is servicable enough, with very little wrong with it, but as far as an Oktoberfest-themed race, it fails pretty hard this year. Here's hoping that next year they'll make the race a little more worthy of a hearty 'PROST!'.