Gfny Marathon Florida Sebring Reviews

  Worse experience for a Runner EVER!

By KW about 2022

Review

I was a spectator for two friends running this race in 2022, they selected this race in order to fulfill their virtual requirements for the 2023 NYC marathon. Myself I've done over 100 races ranging from half marathons to 5ks, this is the worst experience any runner could ask for.

1. The course was gravel in parts - not just loose stones but a mixture of old pavement and gravel that made it extremely hard to run on.
2. The race staff abandoned the finish line after 5 hours, no music, no announcement of runners finishing was done after that. There was still roughly 30 runners yet to complete the full marathon.
3. The sheriff was out monitoring the last runners - the race staff seemed to not care.
4. Finishers at the end had to get their medals from the table - there was not anyone to put it on them.
5. All the ice and refreshments for runners to soak in was disposed off except for one soak tub and even it was half empty.
6. For such a lonely course there was not enough race staff monitoring for injured runners across the course yet this could have been quite easy to do since it was only a 6.5 loop.

Race Tips

- better course coverage for medical personnel
- monitoring of course
- don't close down the finish line at 5 hrs.
- leave staff out to cheer and welcome those last runners to the finish line.
- Actually hold the race on a road not gravel.

  Worst of both worlds

By G about 2021

Review

This was my 40th marathon, and the most poorly organized race I've run. Everyone involved was friendly and seemed to have great intentions, but this race was a comedy of errors. Those of us running the fifty states dread Florida, the state without winter. I decided to do a “real” Florida race in the heat and humidity, rather than chickening out with a winter race on the Panhandle. A well-organized race makes your goal as easy as possible for you: you should only be worried about finishing, not about logistics. GFNY has operated 80 races, but never before a marathon; that may account for the wide variety of problems.

The race website had three major errors. It said packet pick-up would end at 7pm the day before the race. After pick-up had already started, we got an email saying that we had pick up our packets by 5pm. This forced me to change my travel plans on the spot. Oh, but the singlets weren't going to be ready by 5pm. (This was blamed on covid, but surely the RD at least knew about the problem by the time pick-up started. Couldn't an announcement have been made earlier?) "No biggie," I thought. "I don't like singlets anyway." Oh, but we were required to wear these singlets. I've only been required to wear a singlet once, at the Boston Marathon, with tens of thousands of runners, and a lot of people attempting to bandit. Why did this race with a few dozen runners need standardized singlets? The RD's response: because the organizers had worked for months on them! Umm! hadn't all of us worked for months, if not years, to prepare, including figuring out what clothes work best for us? No worries, said the RD, we could pick up the singlets at 7pm or the morning of the race. So if we didn't make it to packet pick-up by 5pm, we were DQ'd, but we could pick up singlets at 7pm? This race was so small that we could have easily done registration, packets, and singlets in ten minutes at the start line. We could even still do the tedious and completely unnecessary online “check-in” that was a required prerequisite for picking up a packet for unexplained reasons.

The second error on the website was the address for the parking, which was a mile from the actual parking. I walked to the race from a nearby hotel. There were many runners staying there. We got no directions or signage. The race website only gave the name of a road, not an address, for the start line, so we wandered along a state highway in the dark looking for a start line.

Small races like this are usually directed by an experienced runner who takes the time to brief everyone on the course and to answer questions. An experienced runner also knows that schedules matter. This race's published start time was 6:30am. That was the third error on the website. The race was actually scheduled for 6:45. In the heat and humidity of southern Florida, every minute before sunrise is precious. On top of that, we all had to be off the first section of the course by 7:50. Us slow pokes rely on accurate schedules for our pacing.

So at 6:45, off we went. I soon ran into a pack of walkers. This was strange. I hadn't noticed an early start for walkers. I wove my way through them. Everyone was walking! The director had sent us out with no guide and no one posted along the course. One runner took a wrong turn and the rest of us followed. At that point, the RD should have been on the PA system calling us back. Failing that, at least send some volunteers out to call us back! But, nope, at this race, we relied on word of mouth. It was a full two minutes before everyone realized that we had to go back to the start. Only after every single person had already turned around did we get a PA announcement. Now the race was starting at 7:00! making my concerns about heat and pace more pronounced.

I took this opportunity to take off my singlet, which was oddly sized and felt like wearing a plastic bag. (The humidity was literally 100% at the start. If you're going to spend months designing a singlet for a race in southern Florida, make it breathable!) I carried my singlet in my hand for the rest of the race to avoid getting scolded for not respecting the months of hard work.

Apparently GFNY has a lot of signs with arrows on them. Rather than making new signs for this race, GFNY papered over the arrows with mileage markers. However, in the sun, the arrows showed up much more clearly than the mileage. (You want me to turn left into this cow pasture?)

The early aid stations served two things: water and Coca-Cola. Seriously. I have only once tried drinking soda while running. It is a mistake I will not repeat. Maybe some runners like burping as they go, but at least serve some energy drinks for the rest of us. The volunteers at the tables were friendly, but totally clueless about how to be helpful. Many of them stood holding out exactly one cup of water, blocking the table from view. I had to move around them to get anything from the table. (Later tables were better stocked, though still didn't have any traditional sports drink. I ended up relying on gel and water, rather than risking the Coke.)

And the cherry on top of the whole experience was that there was no medal. The RD emailed three days later to say that the medals had been delayed for eight months because of--you guessed it--covid. In those eight months, had the RD not had a spare moment to let us know? How is it that between the online check-in, the packet pick-up, and the singlet pick-up, no one thought to tell us about the delayed medals and to collect our shipping addresses? The RD's email said that if we wanted medals, we could email our shipping addresses. This seems like a ploy to keep shipping costs down by having most people not realize that shipping is available. Weeks later, I still haven’t received a medal or even a response to my email.

This race combined all the worst parts of small, scrappy race (lonely course with few runners and few spectators, resources stretched thin, major errors on website, bad signage) with all the worst parts of big, faceless, corporate races (arbitrary rules, inflexibility, lack of personality and local charm).

  Rude Race Directors Got Runners Lost

By MRK about 2021

Review

I registered for this race to pace a friend. I read all of the terms that I agreed to in the check boxes. When I went to packet pick-up, I was told that a.) the race shirts were not yet in (and would be there at 6 pm, AFTER packet pick-up closed) and that b.) when they arrived we would be REQUIRED to wear the shirt in the race the next day. As anyone who has ever run a marathon knows, you don't race in clothing that you have not previously tested in a long run. When I pointed this out to the race owner she snidely told me that she had run 20 Iron Man's and never had trouble trying new things in a race. She specifically said I'm not one of those people that can't try new gels or anything in a race. I responded, "well, I am. And I did not agree to wearing your shirt." She insisted I did. I asked her to show me where and she spent a full five minutes scouring the registration page for a check box that asks for agreement to wearing the race singlet. Turns out….IT DOES NOT EXIST (I later reviewed the registration page and all the check boxes with a fine tooth comb. It isn't there.) She then told me I would be disqualified if I didn't wear the singlet.

Ultimately they gave me a refund, which I was pleased with. I still went to the race to cheer on my friends and proceeded to watch the Race Director, on a bike, lead the runners the WRONG way. The racers had to walk back to the start and RE-START the race fifteen minutes later. What a disaster.

I ran much of the course on my own. It was flat and fast. It had the potential to be a decent race.

I am willing to give a new race the benefit of the doubt. But the race owners/directors were so pompous and rude and clearly disorganized. They should stick to bike races and stop shoving their merch down runner's throats.