We are so happy you joined us for our inaugural half marathon. We would appreciate more details on which parts of the course you found difficult to navigate so we can make necessary improvements in the future. We hope you will return next year!

Thank you so much for your kind words and we look forward to seeing you next year!

We love and appreciate the view as well. Thanks to the land owners, City of Newport Beach, OC Parks, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife, for permitting us to host Newport Spirit Run in beautiful Upper Newport Bay.

We appreciate the kind and detailed review. Many thanks to our experienced and extremely dedicated race logistics team and our wonderful volunteers.

We are so happy that everything went so well for you and that you appreciate our sustainability efforts. They can slow you down a bit more than typical water stations but were necessary to obtain our permitting and to reduce waste and better protect the environment. We will assess how we can provide water more quickly in the future.

We appreciate your detailed review. Excuse us for the lengthy reply, but we will try to address all of your topics. To start, threshold requirements govern some of what you have discussed. We are privileged to have received permission from three agencies (City of Newport Beach, OC Parks, and California Department of Fish and Game) to host a road race event traversing Upper Newport Bay for the first time in more than 20 years. This privilege, however, came with requirements including, among other things, cup-less water stations and very limited equipment on the race course aside from the first and last .25 mile. We realize the “green” water stations can slow participants down a bit more than typical water stations and we will assess what we can do to provide water more quickly in the future. As to timing, for various reasons, we chose not to offer chip timing. One reason was that the permit restrictions and narrow width of the course prohibited timing equipment. As to the availability of results, we regret you did not see the many places we posted the QR code. This included on the website, in social media posts, in multiple email blasts, on the double sided Events Detail document we urged participants to download and review, and on signs in the expo. That QR code gave immediate access to your results and the overall results in each race. As to the awards and the award ceremonies, we posted this in the same places as the QR code including how to win prizes. While our method of awarding prizes is unusual, we do our best to provide as many prizes as possible to celebrate our runners. We are proud to offer many more prizes than most races. Finally, you are correct, we put our hearts and souls into this race. In addition to the hundreds of volunteers at the event, Newport Spirit Run is presented by an all volunteer Board of Directors who are also event sponsors. We hope you will choose to race with us again. We will continue to give our best effort to make the event the best it can be and appreciate input to help us do so.