deardoja

I received an email from the RD from RWR: I have gotten KI to agree to full refunds for the 21 participants that went off course, so you are a part of that group. Please know how sorry I am for the issues that occurred on race day as that is not the normal SOP for RWR. We have put on over 300 events in 6 years with never an instance like we had last Sunday, but the only I can do at this point is to try and make it right as much as possible for this year and begin working on adjustments for the 2010 event. We'll see how long it takes KI to refund the race fees. But at least the RD and KI have discussed what went wrong. Good luck on the upcoming races. As for me, I'm doing the Susan G. 5K, the Reggae Run 5K, Nike Human Race 10K, Monumental Half Marathon in Indy and the 100th running of the Thanksgiving Day race in Cincinnati. That will round out my 2009 races. Next year I plan on giving the Pig another go. I ran it back in 2003.

I haven't heard anything either. Still annoyed.

Not sure how familiar you are with the park, but (after consulting the map and the Race Director) the missed turn happened right after the second water station, just before crossing under The Racer, Flight of Fear and Firehawk. we should have taken a 90 degree left hand turn and there was no sign or course director there to tell us. Going straight thru put us on the 5K course. I agree that the results are skewed because about 50 or more runners from the lead pack were DQ'd. If I hear back from Kings Island or Run Wild Racing, I'll update again.

Not to beat a dead horse, but this race was doomed from the start. I also was one of the lost runners early in the race. 1. Why require all the runners to "check in" before the start of the race? I can understand checking the park tickets for all the spectators but all the runners have bib numbers on. isn't that proof enough that they paid. Seriously, at what point during the race were they going to stop the runners to check the hand stamps? 2. The 5k and 10k courses overlapped - not a huge issue but why wasn't there a big frickin' sign at the turn off for the 10K route? The course was poorly marked. The 10K leader had the pace car to show him the way but the next 50 people had no idea where the course went. And at the point that the front runners missed the turn there were no 5K runners on the course yet. They hadn't even started the race. No one should have been allowed to run though the turn at that time. 3. The ran out of plain water on the course and only had gatorade available. They ran out of plain bottled water at the finish line. The recovery area was at least 1/2 mile from the finish line. This is a big deal for people who just ran 6 miles! 4. They couldn't hand out awards because the timing was all messed up because they used the same finish line for a 10K and 5K and a large number of lead runners was basically DQ'd because they were off course in both races. Has anyone heard back from RunWildRacing about the refunds or an appology from Kings Island? --Joe