• Santa Barbara,
    California,
    United States
  • May
  • 13.1 miles/Half Marathon, Relay
  • Road Race
  • Event Website

Fallon C

California, United States
55 50
2017
"Winding Through Wine Country "
Overall
T-Shirts/SWAG
Aid Stations
Course Scenery
Expo Quality
Elevation Difficulty
Parking/Access
Race Management
Fallon C's thoughts:

The Santa Barbara Wine Country Half is a smaller half marathon that starts in Santa Ynez and ends in Solvang. It advertises a scenic course with a great wine tasting party at the finish.

Registration- was available online up until 3 days before the race. You can register with a wine glass or without if you want a lower price. There was also a 2 person relay option. You could also purchase an extra wine glass at registration time for friends and family.

Packet pickup- Bib pickup was available at the expo Friday from 12-6. If this didn’t work for you, they did have 2 other options available for a small fee. Early bib pick up at a running store in Santa Barbara on Thursday and race day pickup for and additional $15.00.

Expo- The expo was located in the parking lot of the Solvang Park. It was small with maybe 10 booths. Bib and shirt pick up were at the same table and there was a station set up to take pictures if you wanted. The largest booths were the race merchandise and race sponsor booths.

Transportation- As the race was a point to point- shuttles were offered from a variety of hotels to the start. You could also park at the finish and shuttle to the start and vice versa.

The race- The race started in Santa Ynez. After the National Anthem, we started about 5 minutes behind schedule. The beginning miles or 2 are through residential streets that are pretty narrow, the runners were pretty packed in. It looked cool but it you wanted to be fast you needed to be at the front of the pack- passing was tricky. Miles 1-5ish take you through neighborhoods, the houses are pretty and while there was little crowd support from people- the furry kind was surprisingly present. Goats, dogs, full size horses, miniature horses and even a pet goose.

Mile 5 brings runners into Los Olivos, a quaint little town. This was also the relay transition point (mile 5.8) so the crowds picked up a bit. Coming out of the town it was into more rural roads before running into the beast named Corkscrew Hill. From then on, we were running down back roads between vineyards. If you’re looking for pretty courses, here it was. Mile 12 brought us into Solvang and on to the finish at Solvang Park.

Finish- At the finish you were handed your snacks in a bag (thank you!) and a water then your medal. You had to get your wine glass from a booth across the lot which was a bit distracting but made sense if not everyone paid for the race and wine tasting.

Elevation-If you look at the elevation map, it looks like a gradual climb from mile 1 to 7 then downhill to 12 with a little bump then downhill to the finish. I disagree. It felt most flat through mile 6ish when we hit Corkscrew which was a zig zag beast of a climb. It had a decent downhill after that but then it felt mostly flat until 12 again. The hill at 12 wasn’t huge, it just felt big being at mile 12. Bear in mind, my watch shows an elevation gain of 700ft so flat is relative.

Course Aid- There were water stations with water and Nuun every 2ish miles. All were well stocked and well staffed with kids and teenagers. They were also very enthusiastic.

Swag- The race shirt was nice cotton shirt. Not tech but a form fitting shirt that I will actually wear again. The medal was different in that it would also hold your wine glass if was around neck. The wine glass was good quality with the race name on it.

Quirks- The finish line area/ expo is very small and there were a lot of people and booths packed into that area. A slightly bigger area would be awesome.

Race Pictures- the race advertised that race pictures would be delivered directly to your phone through facial recognition by uploading a selfie. At the time of this review, this has yet to happen. There is also no link on the race website to access pictures via bib number or name.

Overall- I really liked this race, the course was great and it was very well run. This is one that I would run again without hesitation.

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