Jumping in the City

Sunday I ran the Turbovite Jump City GP urbanathlon. This style event is absolutely awesome in concept unfortunately it didn't manage to live up to the marketing hype on the organisers web site. I was hoping for 10km of urban assault course. The route through Johannesburg and some of it's parking lots was pretty good. What was missing was any form of route marking, at all. Would it have been so difficult to mark the route? even just signposts at the turns. The marshaling at some of the key obstacles was non-existant. For instance - at race briefing we were told to collect a rubber band in a parking lot, 7 floors underground. We got there and there was no marshal, no rubber band and no clue as to what to do next. Some people heard this from those coming out and simply turned where they were. A further example was at another parking garage, we had to push car tires up some ramps and then return to the same point before continuing. The marshal at the bottom just said 'go to the top and them come back'. We ran 3 levels before running out of parking garage and returning. We were told at the finish by some other competitors that they'd only run one level. There were other examples of people complete inefficiencies on the course including blatant cheating where people just skipped entire sections of the course. Oh and the course distance was less than 8km's, not the advertised 10km. I hope the organisers take heed of all the problems and run the event better the next time. I'd also like them to take the obstacles a little more seriously. The obstacles en-route felt like tokens and wouldn't have challenged an average 10 year old child. I will do the event at least one more time because the idea of the course appeals to me.