I am always happy to give credit where credit is due, but criticism is also necessary where it is deserved, primarily so that the organisers can take the feedback on board and offer a better experience to future participants. 

Let's start with the good. The race venue is near the airport with easy access and there's plenty of reasonably priced accomodation around, both hotels and airbnb. I got restaurant recommendations from google reviews and was quite satisfied with the food quality in general and great coffee pretty much everywhere! The temperature this time of the year is great for racing and a nice change from the northern European cold. Registration to the race was nice and easy and I liked the fact that it was a late start on a Sunday so you get to sleep in and check in the bike on the day. 

Unfortunately the list with what went wrong is quite a bit longer.. First of all, whenever I purchase anything whether it's a service or a product I generally want to trust that the seller will provide what they say. There is little benefit in advertising a race as a fast course suitable for PBs when the bike is 13km short, and why even try and pass it as a half-iron distance triathlon when it's clearly not. Even if there were last minute issues with the course someone could have at least told us during the briefing or emailed us before the race start. As such, by the end of the 3rd lap everyone was kinda looking at eachother wondering whether they've counted the laps wrong, I know a few people who did an extra lap thinking surely this can't be right.. Road surface pretty horrible for the 15km stretch out to where the loops start, but even there it was iffy at parts. Lots of drafting, especially the pros, great role models.. A police car that was driving ahead of us just decided to stop and do a U-turn, about 10 of us turned white and started shouting to people behind to slow down.. seriously guys?

The run was a disaster as well in regards to aid stations. Only a day before at the briefing we were told that twice per lap we'd have access to water, coke, bananas, redbull, sweets, gels etc etc.. and personally I rely on coke and water for my fuelling during the run. Why couldn't they just tell us that they had problems and we may have to be a bit more self sufficient rather than be forced to realize 7kms into the run - after having smashed myself for 3 hours already - that I'd have to get through another 14kms with nothing else but water and the occasional sip of redbull if I was lucky enough? I would have been more than happy to grab a gel the day before to have with me and would have actually appreciated the heads up by the organisers. There's always something that can go wrong, but at the end of the day transparency and the way you handle it is how you get judged, and the way the organisers handled this situation was terrible and reflected very poorly on the Challenge brand. By the 3rd lap the water cups where everywhere on the floor as there was no designated bins to dispose them, and the run course also ended up being a km short. Where were the km markers on both the run and bike course as advertised? 

All in all this race would have to be radically different for me to consider coming back. In all fairness all participants should be getting a partial refund and a heavy discount for a future edition of this race or another Challenge race for the simple reason that we did not get what we expected or told. The race is near Rome but not quite, so ads with the Colloseum are quite misleading. Just not the standard one would expect from a Challenge branded race or any other event where you invest so much money and months of training to get to.