This race seemed to suffer from either a lack of race staff/volunteers and/or lack of effort on the part of the organizers. I ran this as the fourth in a … MORE
This race seemed to suffer from either a lack of race staff/volunteers and/or lack of effort on the part of the organizers. I ran this as the fourth in a year-long series of four local races. First, the swag was yet another low-quality, unattractive shirt with the exact same design printed (at an angle) as the previous races. I realize that for economics, many race series cannot provide new designs for every race. But I had hoped that at least one of the races in this series would pick a shirt color that was remotely wearable. Second, the course was not well managed/monitored. In multiple locations, I saw runners veering off course for what ended up being shortcuts. I thought this was a mistake the first time it happened, but quickly realized that there were too many people making the same “mistake”. Since no race staff was nearby to monitor these transgressions, the end result were racers who cut 1-2 miles off their runs and, consequently, had some remarkable finishing times. When the race field is ~100-120 people total, this creates quite an impact on the finish order. Finally, the finish line was barely attended. After picking my own medal off of jumbled pile on a table (after the mat), the “race staff” member barely glanced up from her phone long enough to say “congratulations” before returning to her texts. It’s a small thing, but I like having someone look me in the eye or at least hand me a medal after I paid to run 13.1-miles…especially when others didn’t even bother to go the full 13. So I’ll chalk this one up to a paid-training run and save my money for better productions this time next year.
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Unmotivating Race
This race seemed to suffer from either a lack of race staff/volunteers and/or lack of effort on the part of the organizers. I ran this as the fourth in a … MORE
This race seemed to suffer from either a lack of race staff/volunteers and/or lack of effort on the part of the organizers. I ran this as the fourth in a year-long series of four local races. First, the swag was yet another low-quality, unattractive shirt with the exact same design printed (at an angle) as the previous races. I realize that for economics, many race series cannot provide new designs for every race. But I had hoped that at least one of the races in this series would pick a shirt color that was remotely wearable. Second, the course was not well managed/monitored. In multiple locations, I saw runners veering off course for what ended up being shortcuts. I thought this was a mistake the first time it happened, but quickly realized that there were too many people making the same “mistake”. Since no race staff was nearby to monitor these transgressions, the end result were racers who cut 1-2 miles off their runs and, consequently, had some remarkable finishing times. When the race field is ~100-120 people total, this creates quite an impact on the finish order. Finally, the finish line was barely attended. After picking my own medal off of jumbled pile on a table (after the mat), the “race staff” member barely glanced up from her phone long enough to say “congratulations” before returning to her texts. It’s a small thing, but I like having someone look me in the eye or at least hand me a medal after I paid to run 13.1-miles…especially when others didn’t even bother to go the full 13. So I’ll chalk this one up to a paid-training run and save my money for better productions this time next year.