The Town’s Half Marathon

This is a fun race through the streets of Oakland. The first Town’s Half was 2014 and mayor Quan was at the finish line greeting everyone. 2015, the new mayor did not show up. The route for the half includes downtown, the piers, Chinatown, Piedmont, Temescale, and Lake Marrett. If you don’t want to run the half marathon, there is a 5K (five kilometers is almost a ¹⁄₈ marathon). The race starts and ends at Frank O’Hgawa plaza, by city hall. After the race, hang out at the plaza and have a beer. The Town’ Half Marathon is part of the Golden Gate Half Series, run all around the Bay Area.

So I ran The Town’s Half earlier this year.
In general I wasn’t expecting much as it was only the second year that the Town was being held. I heard from the first year they held it was really disorganized. Personally, I had a decent experience with this race.
What I liked:
–The packet pickup was a smooth process to follow and there are a good amount of exhibitors at the expo.
— The medal this year resembled the Oakland theater.
— The pre and post race refreshments were great! Bananas, muscle milk, sandwiches, oranges, optional beer, and coconut water.
What I didn’t like:
–Although the course support was absolutely great for a majority of the course: police blockades, cones, volunteers I would say this was rather lacking after you get around to Lake Meritt at mile 9 (even if you know that you go around the whole Lake to the courthouse) it can get confusing on where to go. This part of the course wasn’t closed off and you had people coming by thinking «is there a race going on?»
— Restrooms were lacking and the lines were absurdly long because there were only around 12 – 20 on site before the start of the race.
Considering they just implemented this race recently, I’m not totally let down as it is really hard to plan races out perfectly and have everything go to plan. I would run this race again, but I would hope they would keep on implementing improvements.

I’ve ran about 20+ 5k races and many other races at varying distances… here’s my take on The Town’s 5k:
The Bad:
The course was not measured to a 5k and people reported the same for the half. My GPS read 3.4 miles while many others reported the distance to be even closer to 3.5 miles. This was bad considering I saw the 3 mile sign and paced myself for a strong push during the final ¹⁄₁₀ only to burn out when the course kept going for at least another third of a mile.
The official finish times are inaccurate. Comparing the website official time to the race photos that show me crossing the finish line, the website has me 3 minutes slower than what the clock shows in the picture. This also screwed up placings. People that I lined up next to at the start who finished well behind me are listed with a significantly faster finish time (so this eliminates the possibility of net time over gun time). If you’re going to mess this up, at least screw it up equally.
Lack of course direction for the race. I finished among the top 5 or 6 runners (despite the website showing around 20^th) and there were times toward the last .3 mile where it was unclear as to which street to turn down. Direction is clear if you’re in the middle of the pack, but not when you’re among the leaders. Some simple signage, a volunteer pointing in a direction, or someone on bike for us to follow usually does the trick.
The Good:
Dynamic pricing with an extremely low starting point made the race pretty cheap if you signed up right away. This is common for most races, but the starting point for this event was about the price of a nice roach coach burrito.
The medal is nice… bottle opener at the end.
The free beer. Drake’s Brewing and SF Mead Co were offering unlimited beer. This is why I signed up for the 5k instead of the half… I was able to get a few pours before the half marathoners started to finish which resulted in a lengthy line.

+ Easy packet pick up.
+ Part of the Golden State Series where if you Run all 3 Half Marathon’s you get an extra medal.
= Medals heavy duty and pretty sweet tbh
+ Post run refreshments from Whole Foods and Muscle Milk (Almond Butter Sandwiches! Didn’t like that they added Blueberries too though. that was weird).
+ Teach T-​Shirt and cool medal.
+ 5k option available
— Distances for both 5k and Half Marathon were off. They were 0.3 — 0.4mi longer than they should have been.
— No official results at the finish line
Personal:
After having been part of the pacing team for the San Francisco Half and running Livermore Half the day before Modesto Half there was no way I was going to miss this one and not get the extra medal. As I’m trying to take it easy with a still slightly less than stellar Knee I was aiming for a finish time of 2hrs. Actually? 1:42 including the additional distance, it started pretty well but seems my comfortable running pace is between 7min and 8 min mile regardless of the terrain and I did notice that at the 3.5mi mark I was actually averaging a 6:03 min mile and had to slow myself.
The course was ok, by no means exciting but well… it’s Oakland. (Ha!) I did take in a lot of what was around me though and spotted many restaurants I had in my Unilocal bookmarks, never a Unilocal ”off” switch.
I’m trying to cut back the Running but I may still do this race again next year.