I was hoping that after having two race weekends in Hollywood, a few of the kinks would have been worked out of the system but a lot of the administration stuff was a bit less organized than I would have liked. Things like race theme, medal design and packet pick up info came out really late and some stuff wasn't released until packet pick up.
Their website could definitely use some work to make it a bit easier to navigate. If you wanted to be notified when new info such as medal design or course map was going to be released, you had to sign up for each bit individually. When the big packet of race info was given out, it was a bit difficult to figure out where everything was. I kept having to click in and out of different pages to find all of the info I needed. I was able to find everything eventually but I also knew what to look for since I've done theme park races before. It really made me appreciate how much of a well oiled machine runDisney is!
Packet pick up was located in the Blue Man Group building in City Walk. Each runner was given a pass for free parking but you had to physically print it out and bring it with you. No parking passes were accepted digitally on phones. Once in City Walk, there were plenty of signs telling runners where to go for packet pick up. Once I got to the pick up location, it was clear just how much smaller this race was than a Disney race. If this race gets bigger, they are going to need to find a better place for packet pick up. They were a bit more disorganized than I would have liked but it was really empty when we went to pick up so we didn't wait long. We each got a tech t-shirt, a draw string bag and our race bib. The bag was a nice touch.
I was disappointed by two things. The shirts were unisex sized which means I'll be drowning in my shirt. I wear a women's X-small so the men's small was a no go for me even if they hadn't run big. This is a problem I have with a lot of races and I hope that they start offering women's sizes next year. I did really like the design of the shirt but the actual material was not the greatest. It's going straight into the to be made into a tshirt blanket pile. Also, I did not get into the proof of time corral. There was an option to put in a proof of time during registration but no more info was given about corral placements. I spoke to runner relations and the cut off for A corral this year was a 60 minute 10k. It would have been nice to know that ahead of time. I'll go into corrals and whether or not I think you need a proof of time for this race in the actual race recap.
They did have one character at the expo, Woody Woodpecker but we didn't stop for a photo. They had a very small merchandise tent. Most of the merchandise was general Universal merch like you can get in the parks but they had a few generic runningUniversal shirts, jackets, etc. I'd love to see race specific merchandise as well as magnets next year. All of the race merchandise was adult sized even though I did see quite a few kids on the course.
The theme of the race was "epic characters" with the 5k being Shrek and Bumblebee (from Transformers) and the 10k being Minions and Blue (the velociraptor from Jurassic World). I did like that they picked more well known characters but I felt that the theming was a bit weak. They didn't do much else with the theme besides the medals and tshirts. I liked the themes for the two Hollywood race weekends better and I hope that they decide to go with a more dedicated theme next year.
Lots of City Walk places were offering discounts for runners and Voodoo Donuts had special 5k and 10k donuts. Overall, despite seeing areas for improvement, it was a really good first effort for the Orlando runningUniversal team. Putting on a race is a huge undertaking with a steep learning curve but hopefully my experience will help new runners be prepared for next year.
Stay tuned for Part 2 all about the race. (Spoiler alert: It was much more impressive than the expo!)
******
runningUniversal Part 1: Expo-You are here.
runningUniversal Part 2: 10k
runningUniversal Part 3: My Quick Thoughts
No comments:
Post a Comment