First time doing this race and I was really intrigued by the concept. I've not heard of any race doing this before. The idea is that the chaser car is your finish line, you start the race and 30 minutes after the race has been started, the car starts and gradually gets faster overtime until eventually catching everyone. When the car overtakes you, your race is over.
The race village was slightly disappointing, I expected there to be a few more running vendors at the event to take advantage of the green it was on. There was a massive screen in the middle for people to watch the race taking place worldwide.
The baggage queue drop off was horrendously long and there was quite a big queue for the toilets too. Not long after finally dropping off our bags we had to get into starting pens, there were only 4 starting pens with wave times. The race started ontime however it was very stop start at the beginning and alot of bottlenecks before getting out of the city.
There were mile/km markers quite frequently out on the run, the race started midday too and it was quite hot so we needed a water stop pretty early on to refresh. Unfortunately the markers for the first water station wasnt very accurate and so ended up being really busy when they finally came around. They were also serving water from paper cups which is hard to use without covering yourself in, however with the heat we didnt have much choice.
The crowd support up until the disused airbase at the 10km mark was amazing, lots of locals were out to support and cheer. However, it was alittle difficult to keep motivated after the 10k part as ther was no support allowed in the airbase, only runners so it was very lonely.
I got caught by the catcher car around the 7 mile mark and had a fairly long walk to the next bus stop, the buses were very busy and people had been waiting a long time. Upon getting back to the race village for bag collection and goody bag collection, queues were again very long and I had quite a while to wait for my partner to finish. The big screen did serve as some good entertainment however.
I did think that the medal was slightly disapointing, especially having seen other countries medals. but overall a great raceand a great atmosphere for the most part.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, I've seen that this race for the UK has turned into an app based race which kind of defeats the purpose and fun of having a chaser car which is alittle disapointing!
I did a YT race video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGIyBlsyeWQ