Rock N Roll Cleveland Half Marathon Announced

[FireDancer]

October 5th, 2013.

Here is the link. As usual the first 500 people can get in for $55. I'm all signed up. With Pittsburgh also having an inaugural event next year two months earlier I'm most likely going to do both.

 

[Villains_Rock]

YAY!!! Finally! I'll see ya there Frank.

*off to sign up*

 

[Ariel484]

I'm in! Definitely the furthest in advance I have registered for a non-Disney race.

 

[Haas4Concern]

Im in if i can make it work with my crazy job. Gotta love Ohio races.

 

[johde]

You all are bad influences. I just signed up. I need to remember to put in on the calendar. At 14 months away, hopefully we can change expected finish times if needed.

 

[vsimeone]

My friend and I registered!

 

[FireDancer]

Glad I'll be seeing some familiar faces there. One of my friends and I were considering trying to do 4 of 5 RnR races next year to get some of the Heavy Medals and with new races close by in Pittsburgh, Lexington, and now right here at home that looks like the plan.

Just wanted to let anyone who was on the fence know that there are still some of the early discount places left.

 

[escape]

Oh, wow! They are taking over. I still need to do an Ohio race. Hmmmmm.

 

[FireDancer]

This has not been a good year for Competitor Group. As you can see from my prior post I planned on running both Lexington and Pittsburgh which have now both been canceled.

They moved the date of the San Antonio race to the same date as Vegas, and now they moved the Cleveland date to Sunday October 6th instead of the prior day. I don't care really since I'm local but anyone who made travel plans will have trouble.

I've got to say, they are really dropping the ball over there and I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would buy their Tour Pass since you never know if the races you decided on will even be run let alone races being moved to dates you can't make.

 

[Figment1990]

I saw the announcment last night on the news about Pittsburgh and I have to say I wasn't really surprised (though a little disappointed as I was considering running it). The beginning of August can be pretty brutally hot and humid here, and it was the first thing I thought of when I found out it was a morning race. For some reason I thought it would be at night (like Vegas), but I guess safety could be difficult and/or expensive. Also, there had been next to nothing on their website about the Pittsburgh race details, and no media coverage. Just downloaded the vendor list and they are not on the list for this weekend's marathon expo.

Not sure what's going on with Rock n Roll.

 

[Diskidatheart]

I saw the same thing on the news last night Figment. I didn't sign up for it when I first heard about it because I thought it was insane to run a half marathon in Pittsburgh in August when it can be 90 degrees and 90% humidity. If they had it in September or October, I think there would be more willingness by the city to host this event and I think more people would sign up for it.

I was hoping to see a map of the course, but I don't think that was ever decided upon either. I could just imagine a course that went up to Mt Washington...in that heat and humidity, people would be falling over left and right. Although the city is losing lots of money over this, I think they did the right thing.

BTW Figment, good luck on Sunday!

 

[FireDancer]

I saw the announcment last night on the news about Pittsburgh and I have to say I wasn't really surprised (though a little disappointed as I was considering running it). The beginning of August can be pretty brutally hot and humid here, and it was the first thing I thought of when I found out it was a morning race. For some reason I thought it would be at night (like Vegas), but I guess safety could be difficult and/or expensive. Also, there had been next to nothing on their website about the Pittsburgh race details, and no media coverage. Just downloaded the vendor list and they are not on the list for this weekend's marathon expo.

Not sure what's going on with Rock n Roll.

I don't buy the heat excuse. First, if the city was going to block it because of that it would be known when they announced the date, not 4 months out. Second, there are plenty of hot races done all around the country and world. The July RnR race in Chicago is just as hot and humid. There are full Ironman Triathlons run in areas where the heat and humidity is 90 and 90%. The Parkersburg half I did in 2011 was hot and humid. It is run at the same time of year and is the hilliest race I've ever done.

 

[Figment1990]

I don't buy the "heat" excuse from the city either, as you pointed out it's not like they just discovered it... I just think it was a poor time to schedule it to begin with. I'm sure with the tradition of the Great Race at the end of September, they didn't want to do it then. But hey, maybe they could have stole a page from Disney book and made it a Great Rock n Race Challenge with the 10k and half combo... lol I'm kidding.

I just thought it wasn't going to be as popular due to the heat. Not sure if you are local Firedancer, but there was such a to-do about last year's marathon weekend being so hot. On May 6th. I know other parts of the country may embrace running in high temps, but I'm not sure Pittsburghers would. Unless there was a primanti sandwich at the fuel stop handed out by the Penguins.

I have no idea if I'm right on this, but as a native Pittsburgher, I can tell you that we seem to get cranky about the heat and humidity in August. As if for some reason, we think, "we're not Florida or Texas, what the heck?!" We spend December hoping for a White Christmas, and on January 1st, that snow better melt because we are all ready for spring. By May we want to swim and by August no one wants anything to do with anything not in air condition unless it has to do with the Steelers. (I'm exagerating, and speaking from my personal experience)

I think there was additional reasons behind the cancellation and who knows if we'll ever know what that was. But it definitely would not have been fun running the hills around here in 85 degree temps. Maybe if they had the race scheduled to start at 5:30, like Disney, but RnR had it starting at 8 or so, and by 11am it could be 95 degrees. You'd have people jumping off the bridges into the river right and left. (again, joking....)

 

[Diskidatheart]

I don't buy the heat excuse. First, if the city was going to block it because of that it would be known when they announced the date, not 4 months out. Second, there are plenty of hot races done all around the country and world. The July RnR race in Chicago is just as hot and humid. There are full Ironman Triathlons run in areas where the heat and humidity is 90 and 90%. The Parkersburg half I did in 2011 was hot and humid. It is run at the same time of year and is the hilliest race I've ever done.

The Director of Safety in Pittsburgh said it was too dangerous and they didn't want to commit that many health employees to the race. There may be more to it than that, but that is what was reported.

It also seemed to me that The Rock N Roll group picked that date and didn't actually have a plan in place (there was nothing but very vague and general information on their website). As they started to work out the details with Pgh organizers, I'm betting things fell thru and the cost to have all the security, medical teams, etc was too much for the RnR group. Just my thoughts and guess.

 

[Figment1990]

I saw the same thing on the news last night Figment. I didn't sign up for it when I first heard about it because I thought it was insane to run a half marathon in Pittsburgh in August when it can be 90 degrees and 90% humidity. If they had it in September or October, I think there would be more willingness by the city to host this event and I think more people would sign up for it.

I was hoping to see a map of the course, but I don't think that was ever decided upon either. I could just imagine a course that went up to Mt Washington...in that heat and humidity, people would be falling over left and right. Although the city is losing lots of money over this, I think they did the right thing.

BTW Figment, good luck on Sunday!

Thanks! I actually had to back out of the half thanks to an injury messing up my training. But I'm running the 5k on saturday and I'm psyched! DH is running with me and it's his first race ever.

And yeah, no course was ever posted....

 

[johde]

The change in date for Cleveland was a blessing in disguise for me. I'm just starting to get back at it after having knee trouble starting in September. I had been trying to pencil out a schedule and nothing was working out. So I asked for a refund of my Cleveland entry fee.