Well, as per the slogan I went, I ran and I partied (well, not exactly "partied" since I missed the concert, but I sure had fun!) The inaugural Seawheeze half marathon was a super cool event and I am so glad I got to be a part of their first year. Like many other thousands of people, I'm looking forward to next year - registration opens in January and I'm pretty sure it's going to sell out fast.
In my race report I commented that for me Seawheeze was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I had a wicked fun time but some of the organizational kinks really took away from the whole experience. In the absence of any sort of formal event feedback process, I thought I'd sum up my thoughts in a nice bulleted list...
Reasons Seawheeze was awesome:
Super unique, quirky and fun race atmosphere
Beautiful branding and logos
Awesome technical clothing, the bright colours and fun prints were really nice
Great course - beautiful scenery, lots of flat but a few hills to make it interesting
Cool training plan and accompanying iPhone app
Fun extras such as pre-race massages, manicures, spray on tattoos, games in the plaza
Awesome DJs at the expo, start line and finish area
Cool medals, love the shoelaces idea
Excellent, wonderful, yummy post race brunch
Relaxed start line and corral placement
Lots of on-course entertainment
Lots of feedback and interaction with Seawheeze staff and trainers via Facebook leading up to the event
Cool gift packs for runners staying in Seawheeze hotels (included things like bandaids and black nail polish to cover up black toes!)
Great pre and post yoga events
Timing chips had a picture of Chip Wilson's face on them (he's the guy who started Lululemon)
Things that were a little less than awesome:
Very little information provided when registration opened, nobody from Lululemon even seemed to know what was going on
Seawheeze polka dot shorts
Sizes only offered up to Size 10
Sellout and scalping of gear from the showcase store
Water stations - at one they ran out of cups and were handing out 1litre bottles to each runner!
Not enough water stations, need to be far more frequent if a race is planned for the heat of August
No formal feedback process
The heat! Not Lulu's fault, but maybe the race could start an hour earlier next year
Anyhow, overall I think it was a really great event and some of the details really impressed me. It sounds like lots of runners had the same concerns as me so hopefully they take it into account for next year. I can easily see this becoming THE race to get into each year and hopefully they can make sure it lives up to that in years to come.
Okay so Seawheeze is over, now it's onto Color Me Rad! Tomorrow morning I'm running my first ever colour run and I am super excited. Gotta go plan my outfit...
In my race report I commented that for me Seawheeze was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I had a wicked fun time but some of the organizational kinks really took away from the whole experience. In the absence of any sort of formal event feedback process, I thought I'd sum up my thoughts in a nice bulleted list...
Reasons Seawheeze was awesome:
Things that were a little less than awesome: