My First Attempt at a 5K

Over the Christmas holidays, I was challenged to do a 5K by the end of June. I quickly discovered and registered for the Go Green Saint Patrick’s Day Half Marathon. I was using my trusty RunKeeper app as I ran, and quickly noticed discrepancies between the mile markers and what RunKeeper was telling me. It also seemed as if the path was different than I had thought I understood from the maps which had been posted. I crossed the finish line to discover I had only gone ~2.7mi (~4.3K).

The official response from the race organizers

We are well aware that there were a portion of your who were affected by course misdirections on the 5k and half marathon courses – for this we sincerely apologize. The course was set up and marked on Friday and all chalk marks were washed away by the heavy rains. Every attempt was made to remark the course on race morning, but clearly, there were some issues. We are absolutely not making excuses, and are truly sorry to all who were affected by the confusion caused by the weather and volunteer misinformation.

Overall, I feel cheated at trying to accomplish my first 5K. I feel as if I was on a really good pace and was going to finish well ahead of my planned goal. I was also very disappointed when I went to pick up my race packet. The biggest shirt size they had was a Large!? I certainly would have liked at least an XL, even though it wouldn’t have been long enough. Combining the shirt issue and the distance error, it was fairly disappointing.