2 Marathon Questions - Race Retreat & Official Pacers

[RnbwSktles]

I have 2 separate questions regarding the Marathon...

1) Has the Race Retreat ever sold out? I bought access for myself, but I was thinking of buying it as a late birthday/Christmas gift for the friend I will be running with. She is having trouble keeping up with training (had a baby 5 months ago) and is starting to say she won't do the race. If I do buy it for her, I'd like to wait until the last minute if possible.

2) How does the whole "CLIF Bar Pace Team" work in regards to the corrals? Is there a team in each, or are they staggered so that the 3:10 pacers are with corral A and the 5:30 pacers are with corral E? I am just wondering how it will work if I'd like to follow the 5:00 or 5:30 pacer, but end up having to start in the back.

Thanks!

 

[cewait]

1) Yes. Generally it is a late sell out. Though make sure to keep an eye to the sell out ticker on the runD site. You would hate to be closed out. Like most things, the ticker will seemingly go slow until the 80-90% full range then close quickly and folks notice.

2) No, the pace teams are associated with the corral that has the majority of runners estimating a similar time. In the last few races, runD has put up an estimated finish vs corral chart up before the race. In the previous method of providing proof, a 5:00 and higher runner did not need to provide proof. What you would see is Corral E (I think but may have been D orF) that was almost 5 hour exclusive runners since many folks would estimate the minimum time that did not require proof. The next corral would have the 5:10 estimates. The deal here is that you may be one corral off from your pace group. Since runD indicates they will not do corral adjustments, you may not start with a pace group.


Hope this helps

 

[RnbwSktles]

1) Yes. Generally it is a late sell out. Though make sure to keep an eye to the sell out ticker on the runD site. You would hate to be closed out. Like most things, the ticker will seemingly go slow until the 80-90% full range then close quickly and folks notice.

2) No, the pace teams are associated with the corral that has the majority of runners estimating a similar time. In the last few races, runD has put up an estimated finish vs corral chart up before the race. In the previous method of providing proof, a 5:00 and higher runner did not need to provide proof. What you would see is Corral E (I think but may have been D orF) that was almost 5 hour exclusive runners since many folks would estimate the minimum time that did not require proof. The next corral would have the 5:10 estimates. The deal here is that you may be one corral off from your pace group. Since runD indicates they will not do corral adjustments, you may not start with a pace group.


Hope this helps

Thanks for the reply! That info does help a lot