Latest reviews by Lauren Kay

(2019)
"Amazing race!!"
Overall
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Really, really loved this race. The organizers were fantastic. The course was flat and easy. The race was run like a top marathon — even though there were only 300 participants. I have only ever run the NYC marathon before, and so I can’t stress enough how well this race was organized. SO many things can go wrong, and it can be hard to get everything right with only 300 people paying to participate. But BQ2 did! Bathrooms were accessible; there were 16 water stops total; everything went smoothly. The eight loops meant you had pretty constant support from fans, too. Due to construction, a last minute change had to be implemented, and BQ2 got that done and kept the course as an official qualifier. Can’t imagine how stressful that must have been, so thank you thank you for everything!

My *one* suggestion for improvement would be the pacers. For the 3:30 group (one of the biggest - 20 or 30 of us), we started with two pacers who pretty quickly had a significant gap. This left us runners questioning which pace group we should be with. I wanted to play things smart and start out slow, so I stuck with the second pacer. But the other group was running maybe 10-20 seconds faster, which is huge! And no one really knew if they were going fast, or we were going slow, or both. Also, the pacers switched out every 6-8 miles, and the pacers coming in weren’t exactly sure if we were a few seconds ahead or behind — which, once again — huge, when it comes to executing this race. You don’t want to get stuck at mile 23 realizing you have to *increase* your speed by 10 or 20 seconds when you are just hanging in. At mile 20, our pacer left and told us we’d have another pacer at mile 23 … but these are crucial miles! So the few of us left with her were a bit shell shocked.

To be fair — I am not blaming anyone’s performance on this, but I did think we’d either have 1 pacer for the entire race or two pacers for half a marathon each. If the two initial pacers hadn’t split into ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ groups, this also wouldn’t have been a problem.

In the end, only 2 out of 11 in my age group BQ’d, and 4 dropped out. Once again — NOT blaming the pacers. So easy to blame everyone but yourself in these types of things. But 20 miles in, body dying and not sure if you’re going to be able to take another step .. having your super amazing supportive pacer tell you she’s leaving was not a fun surprise! But let’s be honest — I was dead at that point anyway, so it didn’t make much of a difference. But it could have for someone who was just hanging in.

All in all, once again — amazing race. All of the pacers, organizers, and volunteers were so, so fantastic. Thank you so much for putting this on!!

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