The Boise Marathon happened on a rainy day back on Sunday, October 24, but it didn't go well, we sat down with race organizers to learn more about what happened and where they go from here.
In the week following the marathon runners had a myriad of complaints about the race and how it was organized.
Runners in the 5K, the 10K, the half marathon and the full marathon all had issues with getting lost because the course wasn't properly marked.
"A lot of our signage got damaged, but there is really no way around it, we are aware that signage should have been detailed a lot more specific," said race director Julie Sanchez. "In the coming year with all of our races, we are looking at doing color-coded signage for specific distances making it a lot more clear so runners aren’t out there and feel alone."
Another issue runners highlighted were aid stations that were either abandoned, not set up, or not prepared for runners and race organizers told us this happened because several volunteers did not show up on race day.
"The procedure that we asked them to do was take a picture of everything that has been set up to confirm that they were there," said Sanchez. "We went and checked then we realized that a big group didn’t show up and unfortunately we can’t make them and the morning of we were like what do we do."
Race organizers told us they value the input from the runners, they are putting together steps to address these issues and other problems and that starts with putting together a runner's board.
"Our main message is give us another opportunity to really prove it to them because it motivates us more than ever to want to make it up to that field," said Sanchez. "We know how important they are, we understand how important their training is and we are going to do whatever we can.”
The Go Agency puts together the Boise Marathon, they plan on having three races in 2022 including the Boise Marathon and they are offering one free entry into any one of those races to anyone who ran any race in the Boise Marathon.
They ask runners to email them at events@thegoagency.com and they will send out a coupon code for one free entry.
"We wanted to make sure everyone felt heard," said Sanchez. "We didn’t want anyone to think we were ignoring it or that we didn’t understand the magnitude of it."
Runners also didn't get their finishing shirts because those didn't arrive in time for the race, we were told the company race organizers used for the shirts got delayed because of the supply chain crisis the United States is currently dealing with, but they have arrived now.
Runners have several opportunities to pick up their shirts starting today and for people who traveled for the race they email their addresses to events@thegoagency.com and their shirts will be mailed out.
