It’s been about a week since our first Great Smoky Mountains Half Marathon, our staff has had time to debrief and discuss the awesome things, and the things that could have gone better.
Overall, the race was a great experience. The course was beautiful, the weather was perfect, and our volunteers were awesome! The medals and shirts looked amazing and our runners seemed to agree.
This being an inaugural race we had a few hiccups, some a little bigger than we would’ve expected. Despite things going really well for the most part, we have already identified a few places we can improve for next year. Some of you had a difficult time getting to the start. Those who went to the finish line for shuttles had some difficulty parking as well, due to lack of direction. We also had a shortage of safety pins for race bibs as it got closer to start time, and of course our timing had some issues.
It was our first time using this timer and the results weren’t completely correct. We are working to remedy the timing issues and making sure everyone who earned a place medal will receive it. We have already discussed what needs to happen to prevent all of these issues from happening again in 2015. We’re sorry for any inconvenience they caused you and hope it didn’t negatively impact what was otherwise a great weekend!
While we are aware of these issues, we really want your feedback so that we can get a better idea of what our runners experienced, start to finish. We’ve made up this survey for each of you to take. It will take about 10 minutes to complete. As an extra incentive, we’re giving away prizes! On Thursday, we’ll select random prize winners from those who completed the survey.
