After a pre-race sell-out (3,000 runners) and a dramatic start, the 2009 ZOOMA Annapolis Half Marathon & 10K finished under a clear, sunny sky. Runners pounded the pavement, achieved their goals, strengthened friendships, drank wine, purchased goodies from women-specific vendors, indulged in chocolate, and rocked to the cool tunes of the Doug Segree Band.
We’re still catching our breathe after a whirlwind weekend, but I wanted to share my personal “race report” with you, as well as my thoughts on some of the helpful feedback we have received from runners through our post-race survey, emails, phone calls, and runner blogs.
Here’s what I think we did well:
Website and pre-race information. Our new website rocks (if I do say so myself) and we have gotten pretty good at the pre-race information emails. Generally speaking, runners are pretty well-informed before the race.
Packet pick up. Packet pick up seemed to run very smoothly. Many of you have told us that you appreciated the multiple locations. We were well staffed and organized. At only a few points during the week did we have lines that exceeded ~5 minute-wait times. This, along with the mailed packet option, makes packet pick up a seamless process for busy ZOOMA women.
Volunteers and water/aid stations. As always, our volunteers are amazing! Water stations were adequately stocked and organized. The inspirational quotes on the course hit the mark for many of you. Mile markers were clearly visible.
Post-race party. The sun was shining, blue sky abounded and a buzz was in the air! The truffles handed out as runners exited the shuttles were a huge hit. (As a side note, it’s been a serious test of my self-discipline to NOT eat handfuls of the leftover truffles sitting in our office this week. Next year, everyone eat more so we have fewer left-over! J)
The wine bar sponsored by Barefoot Wine was popular, and the Doug Segree Band did a fantastic job entertaining us all.
Many of you made purchases at the vendor booths and I hope you will sport your fun new apparel or gear proudly.
I thought the lunch was very tasty (and a definite improvement over last year’s sandwich) and many of you agree. My mother, who declares herself a chicken salad connoisseur, was very impressed, in fact.
What we will work on for next year:
As I read through the post-race surveys (less than 24 hours after we’ve opened the survey, already over 300 of you have responded – thanks for the feedback!), a few common themes are apparent. We can’t be everywhere at ZOOMA events, and it’s very helpful to know what you care most about. Here are my thoughts on the most common suggestions for improvement.
Parking/traffic. Obviously, parking was … a total disaster. I admit it – on race morning, our parking plan failed miserably. The rain did not help AT ALL. (The poor, poor parking volunteers.) We have already discussed this extensively internally and believe me when I say it will be at the TOP of the list of what to improve for next year. I hate that so many of you started late because it took an incredibly long time to get into the parking lot. We did everything we could do on race morning to mitigate the traffic, but the plan just wasn’t prepared for so many people arriving at the same time… Which leads to my next topic.
Weather. Ok – I know there is nothing we can do about this, except work on better karma for next year. But does anyone know where that rain storm came from? As you might imagine, we had been monitoring the forecast, and there was no precipitation in sight as of Saturday. Here’s my lesson learned – even where there is 0% chance of rain, be prepared for rain. That huge puddle in the middle of the start line arch was fun, right? I bet you all didn’t know you had actually signed up for an “adventure” race… hehe. Just kidding around. My shoes were soaked, too, and that’s not a fun way to start a half marathon or 10K race.
Mile markers. A number of you commented that seeing the back of the returning mile markers was confusing. I hear you on this one, and fortunately it’s easy to fix. Noted for next year.
Course. The B&A Trail was crowded and is not the most scenic part of Annapolis. The finish line turn was a little tricky to navigate. The point-to-point nature of the course, with shuttles returning runners to the start, is not ideal. I hear you on all these things. I can’t make any promises, but I will tell you that we are working diligently on a new, bigger, more scenic course for next year – that takes in more of Annapolis’ cool scenery and starts and finishes in the same place. Designing a course that both accommodates the needs of a race and doesn’t mess up non-runners trying to get from place to place on a Sunday morning is not an easy task. Rest assured that we are working on it! We’ll keep you updated. Agreed that this year’s course could not hold another single runner (hence the 3,000 person cut-off).
Pace Groups. Here’s the truth – we love our pace group leaders and appreciate everything they do, but 80% of them flaked on Sunday. Maybe it was the rain… I’m sorry for those of you who showed up relying on a Pace Group leader to help you through the race. We’ll think of better ways to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.
Where were the cupcakes? Our poor, poor sweet cupcake vendor… Spent all weekend baking over 3,000 mini cupcakes and was overrun with eager children and husbands on race morning! Plenty of cupcakes were baked for all runners, but keeping hungry non-runner cupcake-lovers at bay was more difficult than anticipated. Next year, we will bring out the enforcers to make sure that all runners receive their cupcake reward. Many apologies to those of you who were disappointed… We’ll be sure to have plenty o’ cupcakes waiting for you next year J
There is a long list of other details we will improve for next year. That’s just life, right? If we don’t keep moving forward and trying to improve, then we grow stale. Thanks again to all of you who care enough to share your experience and feedback with us. Feel free to comment to this post with your personal race report, and we hope to see you all next year!
Brae
P.S. Here are a few links we have come across to runners’ personal race reports. (Feel free to comment below with links to others.)
Amy Reinink, DC Running Fitness Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-8091-DC-Running-Fitness-Examiner~y2009m6d1-Race-review-ZOOMA-Annapolis-10K
Running: Weekend’s ZOOMA Races Were Run Smoothly, Evan Thomas for the Annapolis Capital Gazette
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/out/2009/06/02-19/Running-Weekends-ZOOMA-races-were-run-smoothly.html
(This is actually a newspaper article…)
Christine, Running & Triathlon blog
http://tri-and-run.blogspot.com/2009/06/zooma-10k-race-annapolis-md-may-31-2009.html
Leslie Elizabeth, Jackson’s World blog
http://lovejackson.blogspot.com/2009/05/zooma-annapolis-2009-race-recap.html
Natalie, Health & Running
http://healthandrunning.com/running/zooma-thunder-chocolate
