First time doing this race. This is a well organized race. The Arroyo Creek half marathon had about 900 participants between the half marathon, 5K and 10K. Race course is on the bike paths in Simi Valley near the Arroyo creek. There are street crossings but these crossings are controlled by the police. There were a lots of trees on the bike path, which provided for a lot of shade on the bike paths. Course is pretty flat except for the part where you have to go up and down to cross the streets from the bike paths. The weather turned out great for a race in August (highs about mid 80’s).
Package pickup was relatively easy. There was package pickup on Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning before the race starts. It was nice that the race shirts were tech shirts! But they ran out of race shirts during package pickup on race day. But they took names and said they would be mailing the shirts to those who didn’t get one. Parking was free and near the race start in the park. It was a wave start (beginning at 7 am) but it didn’t take long for all the half marathoners (550 participants) to start, which was no more than 10 minutes. The 10K and 5K started around 7:30 am. There was plenty of course support. There were plenty of volunteers to direct where to go on some turns plus signage at other parts. There were several water stations on the bike paths with some bars/gels from Power Bar (one of their sponsors). I was surprised for a small event like this that they had pacers for the half marathon ranging from 1:30 to 3:00 time.
Timing was chipped timed, which you need to return once you were done. I liked their race medal. They had plenty of water, bagels, bananas and orange after the finish. There were about 4 or 5 vendors at the finish plus a food truck. It was nice that after the race organizers gave out all the prizes for the winners for the race and different age categories that they were drawing/selecting numbers to hand out the prizes to those who waited around at the end. That was nice. I won a $10 card for Sports Authority. In addition I was able to do this race because I won this race on Race Grader. Thank you Race Grader!