I wanted to let you all know that I felt very disappointed by the level of professionalism displayed at today’s race. My first ever obstacle race ever was the Renegade last October. What a blast! So well organized and maintained. When registration opened this year, I knew I’d definitely do it again, and recruited more than a dozen friends to run it with me. I was shocked when I arrived at the level of disorganization. The lines were outrageous. We arrived an hour ahead of our wave time, which was 10:40. But even arriving early, because the way the bibs were piled, we missed our 10:40 wave, and nearly missed the 11:00 wave. We almost missed the 11:00 wave because we had to go all the way back to the car to leave our bags, even though the website clearly states in the FAQ that there would be a bag check. Without a bag check, the options were either to leave the keys in our car, unlocked, along with phones, cash, and everything else, or lock the car, and run with a key. I didn’t have a pocket in my running clothes, and with the type of key I have, if it gets wet, it’s destroyed. Fortunately a friend had both a pocket and a zip lock bag. It was still an unacceptable oversight to skip the bag check. When we finally began our 11:00, I suspect many of the other 10:20 and 10:40 racers put themselves into that wave. It was so crowded that I had no choice but to walk. The first obstacle, the series of walls, presented a nearly 20 minute bottleneck wait. As someone who was trying to better her time from last year, I find that incredibly disappointing. As the race went on, I saw little, if any, staff/volunteers. I received NO water on the course, as the water stations were unstaffed, and either had no cups left, or no water left. There were also obstacles that were broken, for example, the rope spider web was tossed on the ground when I went by. Again, no staff out on the course. The tunnel tarp wasn’t in place, so no tunnel.(And no staff). With no staff on the course, I am glad I didn’t see any injuries, or experience one myself. At the end of the race, when I crossed the line, I was dying of thirst. I expected the bottle of water that your website promised, and I’ve had at every other race I’ve ever done. But there was NOTHING. I had to pay $ 3 to simply quench my thirst, but of course, I couldn’t even get that right away, because my money was in my car, rather than near by at a bag check. Looking at the Facebook page, there were several issues that others had that I didn’t even notice. The changing tent was unisex. Given that most people had to take off all their clothes, this is really unacceptable. One of the racers I was with was a 14 year old girl. Should she really be changing with adult men? Another issue seems to be photography. The promised professional photographers were not on the course. And while running out of water on a race course is bad enough, they ran out of beer as well. I could go on and on with the stark differences in quality of this year’s race vs. last year. Was it put on by the same team? Admittedly, I went into it with high expectations, having done the race last year. But having also this year done a half a dozen other obstacle races, I can say unequivocally that this was the last time I would do the Renegade Challenge, unless there were explanations given for the quality of the race, and an assurance that it would not happen again.
