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The Cherry Blossom 10M has the potential to be an amazing race. This year was marked with a couple of issues. Beautiful flat course, but we missed the flowers by 4 days. Road conditions were not great. This year's crowd was not the best.
In comparison to the Army 10 Miler, and missing most of the cherry blossoms, it was just an okay course. Crowd support was low, except at the start and end.
Road conditions in DC were not great after this winter. Lots of small potholes, and due to the sheer numbers it was dangerous (18k with waves of about 2k separated by only 3 minutes). The published plan had a bigger stagger, but the clouds rushed the course. I personally witnessed several people fall, and almost trampled as runners in the red wave (2nd wave) were overly aggressive. During the race, I also witnessed two pushing matches between runners. *Yes, we know this is not the fault of the race.
Another positive, the day prior, was a large protest on the national mall. A lot of trash was left the evening prior, and almost all of it was cleaned up prior the the start of the race.
In order to keep costs down, you get a race shirt, and and pay to upgrade to a better shirt if you want to. Shirt design is usually a local artist, and this year was no exception. Race medal is an option, again to keep costs down.
The expo was well organized, with different entries for 5k and 10M. Races are on different days if you want to do both.
A negative is you submit your pace, but there are no confirmation of pace. This is why I recommend only elite or casual runners. There were too many dishonest runners in the 7 to 8 minute pace groups, and it was ugly this year.
Bottom line, this is a good race, not a great race. Put in for the lottery, and enjoy the run!
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