I participated in a triathlon on Sunday. Following the race was a raffle where a bunch of little goodies were given away, and on top of that a new bike!
Awards were supposed to follow, and this is where the problem begins:
The RD didn’t have results for us. That was Sunday morning, and as of 5:30 pm CST there still aren’t results posted. We still don’t have AG winners or awards, nor do we have official finish times.
For a race of about 100 people, I can’t imagine it’s that difficult to gather up some times and get them out. I’m afraid the cause of this would be the lack of number plates for bikes or the run, only marker on our arms.
** Am I being unreasonable for expecting results by now?** If I am, let me know and I will chill and wait. I could vent about 10 other things that I don’t think were handled very well with this particular race, but each race has it’s own challenges and I understand that, but what could take so long for these results?
On the positive side, I think the RD had a great bike and run course, great pizza at the finish and great weather!
I never got why it takes so long to post results; it takes all of five seconds to upload something to a webpage.
But, putting on a race is a ton of work, and the race director has hundreds of things vying for his/her attention, so I just sit tight and wait it out.
Yeah I hear ya that they have a lot going on. But at this moment, that event is done. On the event website they have “Preliminary Results” now. Those results are missing a bunch of ages, the times don’t add up, etc. And the site also says:
“Updates will be added as soon as they become available.”
What is going to show up that they don’t already have? Shouldn’t all of the data be available as it is? I really want to know how I did in my AG, but there are 4-5 people I think that finished ahead of me (according to the preliminary results) and I have no idea what AG they are in.
What you just described bothers me to no end. One time I had to wait about three and a half months to get my “official” finishing time for a marathon I did…Guess what!!! the time on my watch was the same time they gave me. I still never got a finishers medal even though the race application clearly stated that all finishers would receive a medal. furthermore, at that race, I qualified for boston (not like I could go anyhow as IMAZ is a permanent part of my life…as of now), but they never got my info.
OK, so at least I’m not alone being bothered by this. There were only 88 people now that I look back, it can’t be that tough to get those results together.
Also forgot to mention, this was an XTERRA and I am trying to stay in the hunt for a top 3 AG point series finish. So each race could potentially help me remain in 3rd, move to 2nd, or even let someone behind me catch up. So I am eagerly awaiting the finish times to see how many points I earned for the race.
I emailed the RD very late Monday night to get an estimate for results; no response. It’s been almost 48 hours since I emailed him and he hasn’t even said “yeah, we’re working on it, sorry”, nothing at all.
How long should I give him before getting upset? Right now I am more agitated than anything else.
There are no reason results are not on the web site by 5pm race day…
For us each of our staff are provided with Data cards for all the events (up to 7 on the same day) and they are told to put up results before they leave the race site so most of the time
results are on our web site (www.sportstats.ca) by noon on race day.
If no cell coverage is available they will upload results on the road back to the office but has soon as they have a connection they must have results up.
We have done this since 2002 so 5 years now, pretty much since data cards were out at 9600bs, now most data card will have over 1 meg download and 400kbs upload.
There are no reason that results should not be on their web site by 5pm race day. Any delay beyond that would indicate major results issues. For some timing companies they simply do not invest into these aircard since they can be pricey.
Remember the timing company might have results pretty fast on their web site but it might take a few days for the event web site to add the links.
Wow, that’s great info to know! I know this race did it’s own timing with volunteers, so there wasn’t anything to download or upload. I also happened to wander into the timing/packet tent and saw the race staff feverishly writing splits/race numbers on scratch paper, while 5-6 of them were arguing about handwriting and whether the character they were looking at was a “6” or a “0”.
If I had known this about the RD, I would have never driven 550 miles each way to the race! Part of me wants to relax and wait it out, but the other part of me wants to spread their name to prevent others from being in my spot after an event.
I can’t believe I paid for an event like this, I feel like my money was stolen from me as an accurate and timely result is one of the things my money pays for.
As an update, I called the RD today and received no answer from either of their business phones. I will try again tomorrow and next time will leave a VM.
I did a stage race many years ago where they kept posting results, taking them down, posting them, taking them down, getting protest after protest… Seems that when they were sorting the results in a spreadsheet, they forgot to highlight a column or two, and couldn’t reconstruct them (didn’t have a saved copy). So by the end of day 3, the final crit, no results. Never did get race results from that one.
But most races I’ve done (triathlons anyway) have results within an hour, and often have “final” AG results before the last finishers are even in.
So if it comes to that, where after a certain time there are no results, will I be out of line requesting a refund? Like I posted earlier, I do these races to accumulate points in the XTERRA series. I drove from Chicago to Pennsylvania for this race to try to secure my position. 1,100 miles ($150 in gas), 18 hours in the car, 2 hotel nights ($200), and a race entry ($75) and I have nothing to show for it…not even my points
It’s all very disappointing and I am on the verge of putting this RD’s company out there to be sure other racers don’t lose their money to a race with no results, poor organization, no goodie bag, a delayed start, and not even enough racks for everyone in transition.
This is the first time in my young triathlon career I have walked away unhappy and disappointed in a race.
I am very sorry for you. I get upset when I don’t find out my official results the night I get back. So…I can only sympathize with you about this.
One thing that surprises me…I thought XTERRA was a well-known renown organization. Did they not have control of this race…is it ran by someone that does not work for XTERRA. Because, I did a tri in B’ham, AL this year and got a look at the XTERRA S’eastern championship. It looked like a very professional race setup.
I cannot believe they were not using electronic timing. I would report this to the proper people immediately. Possibly, they don’t need to be in XTERRA. With volunteers doing timing…that is f**kng crazy. I have never been to a race like that. You don’t know what volunteers are doing…Mom and Dad volunteering and helping Jonny’s time! Report it now…just think…if you don’t report it…noone will…and this = problem remains.
Any idea who I should report this to? I emailed the XTERRA corp. yesterday, but they have yet to get back to me. Should I notify their regions’ USAT board?
XTERRA races are done one of two ways:
Regional Championship Races - Worth more points and run by XTERRA corp. More racers, more volunteers, that’s what you saw in Pelham this year (I was there actually!)
Points Series Races - Run by an RD who I’m guessing has certain controls he has to perform for XTERRA (but I don’t know this for sure). Smaller races, and fewer points possible.
So reporting him to the proper boards is one thing, should I post this companies name? I know for a fact I will absolutely refuse to use him again as I have yet to receive a response. Would you rather know this information about your next potential RD before signing up for a race?
If the results are not available within 30 minutes after the race ends, it most likely means they are totally screwed up and may never be published.
This type of delay is most definitely not caused by some inherent difficulty in tabulating results if you have the basic data. Any event that uses electronic timing (running, swimming, triathlon etc), the results are available to the folks running the computers in real time. Its just a question of deciding at what point you are going to post something and then hitting print and giving them to a runner to post. Putting it on the web takes only 30 more seconds. If hand timed, the results will usually be retyped but even that will not take more than 10 or 15 minutes.
Of course, all this presumes you have actually recorded who finished when. Without that, you’re screwed
Here is the first response I have received from them:
Hello:
The results are FINAL. We are waiting for XTERRA to enter some athlete data. Until XTERRA does that we can not post anything. I understand that you are attempting to obtain the highest point placement possible however I can not post what I do not have. I apologize for any inconvenience and the minute that I actuallys get the final document, it WILL be posted.
The problem with this response is that the results don’t add up! Take me for example:
Does anyone else see an issue here? Those three events do NOT add up to the total. The total time they have for me is correct, but they have the run portion off by about 17 minutes!
This is what my watch said:
Swim-17:20
Bike-1:03:06
Run-29:04
Total-1:49:30
How is the result they have posted a FINAL product?
XTERRA is an amazing group of people. I received a call from them this morning as well as an email (I only contacted them last night) and they apologized for the mix-up and gave me a brief run-down of the hold-up.
Basically the RD isn’t giving XTERRA all of the information they need about the racers (DOB, region of residence, etc) to post points and the RD isn’t moving quickly to get them that info. But, XTERRA is locked and loaded, so once that info is received from the RD, the final results will be up and all will be right in the world again.
