Since my office is about an hour closer to the race than home, I decided to stay at a hotel Friday night about 20 minutes from the race instead of driving 2 hours on Saturday morning. That was an AMAZING plan because it didn't involve me waking up at 3:30am on Saturday.
Mom and I met up with Jennifer just after we parked. We headed out to go get our bibs which was easy and quick. Since it was cool before the sun came out, we opted to hangout inside (and use indoor restrooms) before heading to the start.
The first 4 miles of so took you through various parts of Athens before heading into the heart of the University of Georgia. Being a Georgia Tech girl, didn't get a thrill from this by any means...lol. I mean, it is always neat to check out other college campuses, but meh.
I knew that my friend Chelsea (Pittsburgh City Girl) was here to cross off Georgia off her 50 state half marathon quest. I was excited to see her around mile 8 and run with her for a bit.
The post race area was just ridiculous in my opinion. Trash cans were overflowing with banana peels, chicken biscuit wrappers, bottles, etc which was very unappealing. The set up was just not ideal as people were flocking around trying to get a biscuit.
Momma K and Jennifer were interested in their official results so we headed over to the iPads to check our times. Just when I thought the morning couldn't escalate further, I was shown as not finishing! I had a start time and a 10K split, but no finish. After spending about 10 minutes with a race official, showing pictures of me crossing the finishing and my splits on my Garmin, I was given a finish time. After this, I just wanted to leave.
As we were about to walk out, a Chick-Fil-A employee arrived with more biscuits! By then almost everyone had left, so I was able to get my biscuit easily. My friend who had ran this race twice previously told me that the race definitely went downhill this year in terms of organization (the biscuit fiasco, trash everywhere, and even very delayed posting of results online). I am disappointed because I wanted to love this race, I really wanted to. Will I be back in 2018? I doubt it. There would need to be a lot of improvements to get me back next year.