Social Media: VanRace is pretty good at keeping engagement up on Twitter @VanRaceBC, although I’d like to have seen a bit more activity. The VanRace Facebook page is oddly hard to find, since it’s categorized as a Product/Service…so I think there is some room for improvement here. The VanRaceBC Instagram page was also pretty active in the weeks leading up to race day. Overall, I felt they did a reasonably good job.

Package Pickup: Identical to last year – a table set up at the Running Room on Cambie Street. Grabbed my bib and was done in a couple of minutes.

T-Shirt/Swag: There was a t-shirt available for purchase, but I already have enough race Ts! We got a bag of SportsBeans with bib pickup. The medals were small but I liked the simplicity and the translucent blue V – and the nicely matched age category winner medal!

Course: Almost the entire VanRace route is along the Seawall, with the exception of the 30K when it cuts across from Second Beach to Coal Harbour. As such, it’s a very flat course. The 15K is 100% out-and-back. The 30K loops Stanley Park, but the first 10K and last 10K are identical. The biggest challenge is that as it gets later, there are more and more pedestrians/dog walkers on the Seawall, so it can get a bit crowded.

Post-Race: Baked goods! And coffee! And chips! A very easygoing, hang-out-in-the-park finish line. Enjoyable and simple.

Organization: Things went really well – I didn’t notice too many differences compared to last year, though I may have missed some stuff since I finished about an hour and a half later (due to the length of my race). My two observations: 1) some sort of sound system would have been good at the beginning, just to get us started efficiently; 2) the race markers from 23km to the end were backwards (27km came at 23km…) – not sure what happened here, but that should have been dealt with. Overall, however, I thought things went really well.

Would I run it again? Unless I decide to train for another marathon next year, I will probably stick with the 15k! But I expect that I’ll be back!

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