amclean wrote:
I know you love this race and the community... but I can't help but ask here...
is this a poorly organized/executed event? I've been considering doing it for a while now since it happens to be very close to family and friends, but after reading some of the posts here, it seems like a real mess.
-A history of locals dropping tacks on the road
-Cars all over the course and someone actually being HIT by a car!?
-Running out of water on the run
-I didn't follow up, but I saw a thread about a bike missing for an athlete in T1...
It sounds like a race to avoid. I'm sure you have personal relationships with the RD and I dont intend to stoke any ill will. If you do feel its a poorly run event, do you have any insights as to why?
- They have deployed police (to what extent, I don't know) to try and catch the tack dropper, but I guess the person changes how they do it. I personally think it shouldn't be that hard to catch the person. They probably just need more police. It's a relatively short stretch of road, so it should be that hard to really monitor it super effectively. This is the only thing that I think is a relatively easily solvable problem that hasn't been solved for whatever reason. I do think this a legitimate problem, one that everyone involved in the race should want to really prevent, and which I think is not that hard to prevent. McClean Creek Rd, start to finish, is about three miles. You could simply space out volunteers in a line where every volunteer could see every other volunteer. I'd wager that would require ~25 volunteers (one every 200m). I can't imagine anyone being able to drop tacks successfully with that level of monitoring. And since that section occurs relatively early on, (i'm guessing that from first to last athlete, it takes less than two hours to get all athletes through. Why this hasn't been done, I have no idea. And I think it's probably the biggest issue on your list.
- cars are all over the course because it's a one loop course. You couldn't close 112 miles of roads. It would be totally impractical. But it's also what makes the course awesome. I think the car issue would be less of a problem if the size of the race was returned to what I think is a more reasonable amount of athletes - 2200ish. As far as athletes being hit by a car, that happens at plenty of races. It was not at an intersection, meaning I don't think there was anything the race could have done to prevent it. Even with less athletes, a careless driver is not the race's fault. Any race that is not on a totally closed course has the chance for athletes to get hit through not fault of the races. I've never heard of this happening before at this race (doesn't mean that it hasn't), but it's certainly not chronic. To me, this is like saying you wouldn't race in Kona if someone ever got bitten by a shark there. Maybe you wouldn't, but I don't think you could pin that on the race.
- Running out of water on the run. I won't make any excuses here. However, I also don't know what's involved in being a race director, so I also won't offer any criticisms either. This is, to my knowledge, also the first time that this has happened at this race (though, as I said before, I don't know 100% of what happened over the previous 29 years). Everyone makes mistakes. If this happened again next year, then yes, I might reconsider. But even the very best races have mishaps. You have to remember that this race has been going on for 29 years. I think that gives them some "money in the bank." I'm not saying a free pass on this, but I think that 1 out of 29 is not bad.
- Apparently, the guys ex-wife stole his bike. And one of his running shoes. This is one that I'd definitely put in the "fluke" category.
Historically, this has been a fantastically run race. The only consistent issue has been the tack dropper. Other than that, two of the "issues" you mentioned are not things where I'd put the race at fault. I would put the running out of water as a fault, but it's certainly not a consistent complaint; it's not even a complaint I've ever heard about this race ever before.
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