Run for a Dream Half Marathon (part 2) - Williamsburg VA

Well, it's true .... the course was a little bit longer than 13.1 miles and the Event Director sent an mail to all the runners explaining what happened, apologizing and taking full responsibility for the error.

Thanks a lot for spending time and money to recheck the course and keeping us informed. This is one of the best efforts I've ever seen from a race director in trying to fulfill runners requests.

THANKS, and keep up the good work!

FYI, here's the mail:

Dear Half Marathon Runners, First, congratulations again on a great race. The weather conditions were as perfect as Williamsburg gets, and we were thrilled to hear that several of you PR’ed on May 20th. We strive to put together a first-class road race, aiming to deliver on all the little details to give you a great run and overall experience. To that end, we partner with the best of the best, from DMSE race management to the Williamsburg public safety team, and we were proud to host a great race weekend on May 19-20.

Unfortunately it has been brought to our attention that several runners who wore Garmin watches found the half marathon course to be longer than 13.1 miles. We take this very seriously. Please know that this course was measured by a USATF certifier in 2011. We made a few small changes to the 2011 course, and adjusted the Colonial Parkway turn-around accordingly when the course was re-certified last fall.

Since last Sunday night when reports and questions about the course length began coming in, our course crew and race management team have worked diligently with the course certifier and USATF to determine the exact length of the course. After riding the course and new measurements, it is clear now that there was an error in measurement for 2012, and the course is indeed longer than 13.1 miles when measured on the tangents.

The USATF Mid-Atlantic Course Certification Supervisor came to Williamsburg this weekend, and will be back in June to validate the course as it was marked and run on May 20th.

Once we determine the exact certification length of the course that you ran, we will add a column to the timing results to give you an adjusted time for 13.1 miles. Since we had such great weather conditions, we suspect many of you will find that you did indeed PR, and will be pleased to see your time improve.

Of course, once the USATF supervisor has measured the May 20th course, he will also certify the course properly, and adjust the turn-around point so that our half marathon measures exactly 13.1 for next year's half marathon on June 2, 2013.

We greatly apologize for this error in course delivery. Our goal is to create the ideal race experience, and in this area we did not deliver. I know you have questions, and ask for your patience while we go through this process. We will follow up with an email in 3-4 weeks when the course has been re-measured and times adjusted. In the meantime, congratulations again on a great race, and thank you for your support.

Yours, Kelly Cannon Event Director, Run for the DreamKelly@RunForAchievableDream.com 804-212-8721