Biggest Loser 10K Recap

My husband and I originally signed up for this race back in April when I went on a race registration spree. I'm pretty sure in one day I signed us up for four different races, including the Biggest Loser 5K. Since my husband has been hurting I wasn't sure if he was going to be able to do this race with me or not and I had been contemplating emailing them to see if they would use his registration to upgrade mine to a 5K. However, he rallied and decided to do the race.

We met for lunch and then went to the packet pick up at one of the local Fleet Feet stores. They had a decent little area set aside just for packet pickup, a solutions desk, one vendor (besides all the store had to offer) and a table set up for Jay Sheets (BL season 15) who was signing autographs and taking pictures. We headed to the packet table and quickly got our bib and goodie bag. The bag itself was very nice and the kiddo has already acquired one of ours, the materials inside were fine for the fact that it was a little 5K; coupons, ads and a little bottle of sunscreen. The lady at the solutions table was very nice and it took less than 3 minutes to get me switched from the 5K to the 10K. Jay lives fairly close to where I grew up, as a matter of fact, the town he lives in was the big town that we always went to for our shopping and entertainment. I stood in a short line to get a signature on my shirt from him and he was genuinely nice. I told him where I grew up and he told me he was just there for vacation. After I got my picture I said bye and my husband and I headed out. (And yes he was wearing the same cowboy hat.)

The next morning we headed to Six Flags for the race. My husband wasn't sure if we would have to pay for parking or not as the emails (which I had never received) hadn't said anything about paying for parking or not. As it turned out we didn't end up needed to pay. After we parked we headed to the start area. Jay and Dan were hanging out by the start line and chatting about Biggest Loser and their lives afterward. The start line was outside of the park and we milled around until they asked us to line up at the start. There were no official corrals but Fleet Feet had pacers for 7:30 all the way to 15:00 and they spaced themselves out throughout the corral. They did a wave start pacer by pacer so it was actually not to horribly crowded at the front, since we were lined more toward the back it was a little less spaced out. We were wearing bibs with timing chips on them so we didn't think it would matter when we crossed the start line. I had convinced my husband that since we were doing 2 different races that he should run for a PR and not stick with me for the race, so he quickly left me behind.

The first 0.5 miles was outside of the park, in the parking lot. We ran into the park and ran through the park for about 0.25 miles until we hit the back service road which was the majority of our run. The back service road was incredibly hilly; it was just up and down some pretty significant inclines. There was one water station on the back service road with 2 volunteers manning it, when my husband made it to the water station, they didn't have any water and were waiting on a refill. When I made it to the water stop they had obviously gotten a refill and everything was fine.

After the water station we had to go about 0.25 miles through the back part of the park before we finally came back into the park for about another 0.25 miles before we came out onto the parking lot again. Since the 10K was just a double loop I knew that I had to do all those hills again. While I was running in the parking lot, they started opening the lot for people to park so we tried very hard to stay out of the way. At one point during the time I was in the parking lot I looked toward the finish line and I managed to spot my husband's bright blue shirt getting ready to cross the finish line! I looked at my watch and was sure he was going to have a PR. I was so excited for him and wished that if I would have screamed that he could have heard me but I knew I was to far away. The 10K split right before the finish line, which was the only other volunteer that I saw, to do the second loop of the course. Since my husband already finished he came over and walked and ran with me until I was almost back into the parking lot. They did have an additional water station in the parking lot for the 10K route which was nice, I used a GU at this time.

By the time I reached the back service road again, my legs were starting to get tired. I hadn't eaten breakfast like I usually do before a race and those hills had really taken it out of me during the first loop. I run hills almost every run that I do but these hills still killed my legs. I started to break up my run/walk times more and more to keep my heart rate under 183. By the time I made it to the finish line I was feeling fine, just tired. The only problem I had with the finish line was that they happened getting ready to start the kids fun run while I was finishing so they had to ask everyone to move over so that the 10K runners could finish. They had water, a protein drink, fruit and bagels at the finish line and they were printing out sheets with results and putting them on the bulletin board when they had a complete page.

My medal was also very disappointing to me. When I was walking with my husband previously he had shown me his medal, the medal was generic to the Biggest Loser/Six Flags race series and the ribbon was too, the ribbon was orange and said 5K. When I finished they had run out of the pink 10K ribbon medals and were giving out generic medals with generic ribbons and I'm not going to lie for the $50 dollars I spent the race, I expected a better course, course support and a better medal.

We decided to skip the board as we both didn’t need to know immediately and figured we hadn't placed anyway. I took the long way through the parking lot to our car to get some more mileage in since my GPS watch said 5.9 at the end of the race, my husband's GPS read 2.9 for the 5K and I really needed 7 miles for the day. My husband went to the car to sit in the AC. When I made it to the car I had finally reached 6.2 miles. So we headed out to a nearby park to finish up the last 0.8 miles.

When we finally made it home and checked the website my result came out just fine…

Female 25 to 29
Place	Name	City	Bib No	Age	Overall	Time Back	Chip Time	Gun Time	Chip Diff	Pace
10	Bethany		2864	28	112	40:42.2	1:29:42.7	1:32:43.1	3:00.4	14:28/M

 

However my husband had a bit of issue with his…

Male 25 to 29
Place	Name	City	Bib No	Age	Overall	Time Back	Chip Time	Gun Time	Chip Diff	Pace
6	Caleb	St. Louis MO	4939	27	160	11:07.7	41:32.4	41:32.4		13:24/M

 

He crossed the start line at the same time that I did so I'm not sure why he doesn't have a chip diff. His should be 3:00.4 also, which should have made his results look like this…

Male 25 to 29
Place	Name	City	Bib No	Age	Overall	Time Back	Chip Time	Gun Time	Chip Diff	Pace
6	Caleb	St. Louis MO	4939	27	132	8:07.7	38:32.0	41:32.4	3:00.4	12:24/M

 

Overall we weren't thrilled with the race, several people told us they have run Biggest Loser in other cities and the race was significantly better. So I can only speak about the St. Louis event. I don't know that either of us will do this race ever again because of the experience we had. Between the short course, running on a service road, the lack of spectators or support, difficulty with the timing and my disappointment with the medal it just left us very disenchanted.