Rubber Side Down

a great run, not such a great race.

The Great Race, 4 miles from Saratoga to Los Gatos along Hwy 9, April 15 2007. Celebrating in its 30th anniversary, the Great Run still has no web site (??). Why would I care ? It's not just because I'm a web freak. I also want to know where the start line is, right ?

I registered online with Active. The next day I received my bib in an envelope. It was a small envelope, and the only thing inside was a bib number. Not even a single piece of paper with race day information. Not even the race date. And, did I mention that there was no web site? I sent an email to Eric Eberle, president of the LG Rotary, twice, but received no reply.

Patrick arrive at my place in the morning and we had coffee and bagel. We then ran 1.3 miles to the start line, a nice and easy warm up.

Patrick signed up and got his bib number. We did what men has to do and we were all set to start. We head to the start line, and moved up to the 7 minutes pace sign where we found Sheila, Joe and David. I relaxed, stretched up, to the side, the other side, and down - only then I noticed that many runners have this thing on their foot that's called time chip. Where that came from ? ? "one minute to start", the call said. Darned, we're going to run without a chip. At least we will have gun time.

The run went very well. My first split 7:05, the second mile 7:13. Then my GPS dies out of battery. OK, I thought to myself, just keep going and keep the good pace.

The last mile is mostly flat with some downhill. I turned onto Santa Cruz road and could see the finish line down the street. I gave my best out for a strong finish and just before the finish line passed this 12 years girl who was doing remarkably well (she won her division, F 2-13 !). The official clock shows 28:30 and I was ready to hand my bib slip away. There was no one to collect it, though. "I think you need to have a chip to get your time in", one official said, "didn't you read the email?". What email? the email from Active did not say anything about time chips. There was no web site, remember? no race day pamphlet, no nothing ! Even the race day registration desk did not direct us to pick our chips. Aparently there was one more email with instructions, not from Active (then from whom?). I missed that one.

By now I am quite upset. Patrick did not receive the finisher's ribbon. They just let him pass through the finish line without handing it to him. He had to go back and ask the young guy (a third grader) to give him one. We ran back with Sheila to Saratoga, making it a total 10+ miles before we call the day.

The day after. As anticipated, we're not showing up on the results list. It's not like I would use this result as a BQ, but we do deserve to be listed. It took a couple days and several emails until I finally had this fixed.

Yes, it is a great run, but the organizers have to greatly improve the race communication to make this race hold up to its name.


Arnon

posted by Arnon @ 10:51 AM