Gaelic Gallop Race--Dyersville, Iowa

Friday was a gorgeous day in Iowa. Temps in the 50's. Then came Saturday. Saturday was miserable. Temps had dropped to the mid 30's. Winds picked up to 20 to 30 m.p.h. with wind gusts reported at 40 m.p.h. I was scheduled to run the 8K (5mile race) but when I stepped out of the van to the freezing temps and the wind smacked me in the face I quickly decided that 2 miles would be the furthest I would run in it. So the first thing I did was change my race with the registration guy. Brenden came along to take pictures, but seemed mad the entire morning that he wasn't running. He has chosen to take a break from running so his legs will feel better. Brenden did take a few pictures of us. Here is one of him throwing a baseball in the gym we were in.

Scott ran in the Leprechaun Leap race and placed 5th. That race was scheduled to start at 10:15a.m. and since the race people started the race early and I was in the bathroom, I missed him running completely, so there are no pictures of him running. I was ticked. Jason was with him thank goodness.

Alyssa, Jason and I all ran the 2 mile race. Here are our results:
Jason was 56th out of 274 total people racing.
35th of 91 Men. 4th of 10 Men in the 40-44 age group.
His time was 15:50 so that's a 7:55 minute mile!!

Alyssa was 262nd out of 274 total people.
26th of 27 girls in the 13 and Under age group.
She was 174 out of 183 females.
Her time was 24:59 so this means she ran a 12:29 minute mile. Not too shabby for a First ever 2 mile race. This is the furthest to date that Alyssa has ever ran.

My time was 17:42, so this means I had an 8:51 minute mile.
I was 123rd of 274 total people,
7th of 29 women in the 35-39 age group.
65th of 183 Women total!

Reasons to do this race next year:
The course was well marked.
There were police men to control traffic
Volunteers to tell you when to turn around
chip timed so race results are accurate

Reasons to NEVER do this race:
This race was so unorganized and you couldn't hear any announcements ever. No one knew what was going on, when the race was starting or anything.

Only 4 port-a-potties outdoors, and 3 bathrooms indoors total for 562 race participants, many others there for the children's race, supporters and volunteers. I would guess there were around 700 people there. That's 1 bathroom per 100 people=LONG LINES.

Food was minimal. Fruit that ran out before everyone had some. Thank goodness I was in the top third to get food. They had bottled apple juice, but again ran out halfway through the 2 mile finishers. So none of the 8K people received those. Then they had orange drink from McDonalds. EWE, really. How about Gatorade or something similar?

Two different racing start times for the children's races were printed between the website and the actual race brochure, and that caused confusion between volunteers running the race, and people in the race.

Race results took two days to post even though they were chip timed.

Shirts are SUPER UGLY, to see them closer double click on one of our pictures. I wouldn't wear this shirt as a nightshirt. I'm sure it will get donated for sure. Why anyone would design a shirt with a Jersey Shore guy is beyond me. This was a St.Patrick's Day race, there should have been either a Leprechaun or a Shamrock on the shirt, or even their Gaelic Gallop logo. And they chose bright neon orange for the shirt color. WHY?

No door prizes and I'm seriously not sure why. There were 29 race sponsors. I'm sure most of the sponsors MUST have just given money and the Race director must have pocketed it. Because the race director did absolutely nothing for all these race participants. When Jason put on that indoor triathlon he only had like 6 sponsors and had lots of prizes to go around.
The distance from Iowa City to this race was not worth it.

So as you can see a Race NOT WORTH DOING. The race director needs to seriously make some changes for the better.