Indy Classic

Local Sign up wrote:

I guess I must be naive, I saw this event online last spring, thought it was a great opportunity and began training, even adding the 8 weeks after the date change.I have ran 14 Indy mini marathons and thought this would be my best chance at doing a marathon without having the expense of traveling. I didn't see the red flags until the date change but never dreamed it wouldn't go off. At least I know that I have trained and could have ran it, I just didn't get the opportunity.

With that rationale, why did you decide against the established Indianapolis Marathon at Lawrence, held this last weekend? I mean, in deciding to run your first marathon, at home, you go with an inaugural event over an established event? I'm just curious if its a promotion mistake on the part of the establish Indianapolis marathon for you to not know about it. I see the Indy Star included all of three sentences on a very sucessful marathon last Saturday. What's with the community ignoring the event??

quit oiling up your nordic pole....it is a work day!

Nordicski wrote:

Darn, I hope not. I just got out my nodic pole and was getting it oiled up for the big event.

dotato wrote:

With that rationale, why did you decide against the established Indianapolis Marathon at Lawrence, held this last weekend? I mean, in deciding to run your first marathon, at home, you go with an inaugural event over an established event? I'm just curious if its a promotion mistake on the part of the establish Indianapolis marathon for you to not know about it. I see the Indy Star included all of three sentences on a very sucessful marathon last Saturday. What's with the community ignoring the event??

Please lighten up a little bit. You're jumping all over somone because they wanted to run a particular race.

I like Joel's event, and I think that he does a good job with it. Unfortunately, he doesn't do such a hot job of promoting it. Pick a random 5K in the Indy area, and start asking runners if they know about the Indianapolis Marathon. More than likely, you will get the repsonse of "What?", or "Yeah...I love the Mini". People just don't know it exist. I'm sure that most of the people on this board don't know it exist, but they sure know about the ICM, thanks to everyone talking about it. This person thinks that they want to do a Marathon...They see 6 articles about the ICM, and not one about the Indianapolis Marathon. Which one do you think that they're going to choose?

I only avoided the Indy Marathon because I have two daughters that play high school volleyball and I knew that was sectional weekend and I would miss them play(by the way they won it). That's the only reason. I definitely learned a hard lesson.

Doug E. wrote:

Which one do you think that they're going to choose?

Um, you explain exactly what I was asking SOMEONE else. I agree with everything you wrote, but wanted to hear it from the person whom made their decision based upon said rationale.

This is a message board, not a face to face conversation dumb ass. If I wanted to be jumping all over someone I would have asked him far differently than I did.

But, your input was extremely helpful, that's for sho.

I hope that Mark Alesia and the Indy Star REALLY DIG INTO this whole mess and answer all the unanswered quwstions. Let's all, especially us locals, pressure them to do so !

trailrunner64 wrote:

I hope that Mark Alesia and the Indy Star REALLY DIG INTO this whole mess and answer all the unanswered quwstions. Let's all, especially us locals, pressure them to do so !

Why? It's quite simple if you've been paying attention.

Some people with deep pockets a a wild hair brain idea to have a grandiose marathon. They put people with no idea what they are doing in charge of different parts of the plan. They initially have some local help, but refuse to listen to anything these people say. (c'mon paypal?) The Website is a joke, even the most lame brain knows that a website gives customers a positive or confident feeling when giving up information, this thing, like the marathon is a train wreck. However, you don't want to piss off your wife by taking it away from her! This hardheadedness leads to the local folks taking their red wagon and going home!!

Local politics play a huge role in many of the challenges they had, lot's of dogs trying to protect their "turf". Why else would a local race director of one of the areas larges races be calling vendors who come to his expo to tell them not to support this one?

Bottom line, lots of petty, childish actions on both sides with too many promises being made by the race staff!

Here is a link to the most recent article:

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071024/SPORTS/710240467

Let me get this straight: the guy behind the Indy Classic Marathon and its $4 M in sponsorship is a non-running housing & general construction contractor that reports < $1 M in annual contracts.

As for the misspelled last name, give him the benefit of the doubt. You're likely seeing the results of a distracted data-entry person earning peanuts and typing in information from a paper application.

very interesting wrote:

Let me get this straight: the guy behind the Indy Classic Marathon and its $4 M in sponsorship is a non-running housing & general construction contractor that reports < $1 M in annual contracts.

May not be this guy, but the person(s) behind this have very deep pockets.

trailrunner64 wrote:

I hope that Mark Alesia and the Indy Star REALLY DIG INTO this whole mess and answer all the unanswered quwstions. Let's all, especially us locals, pressure them to do so !

You are expecting WAY too much from the IndyStar...can't you tell that they rely on the general public to create a much larger portion of their content these days? "Submit your photo here," "Comment on this article there," "Post to our message boards here..." Of course our society "needing" all the news all the time has caused the demand for the larger amount of information, but that's another issue.

The previous post with the research that was copied over from one of the IndyStar forums (that was great stuff by the way) just proves my point - the Star doesn't NEED to do any investigating because we are doing it for them. Where is Rafael Sanchez when you need him? :)

While we are copying posts over from the IndyStar forums, I'll share my favorite thus far (submitted by someone in Ohio who registered and eventually received a refund):

"I thought I was the only one baffled by this idiocy. I'll admit that I was looking forward to running with a shirt that said, "I Ran the Indy ClusterF#@&"."

xtra extra wrote:

From the forum on the Indy Star's website:

Nothing but the facts wrote:

Sue Bozgoz has been involved with this race for at least the last few months. She is also the coach of the invited Foot Solutions elite athletes (see

http://www.runwithfootsolutions.com/bios.shtm

... and

http://indyclassicmarathon.com/Eliterunners.h

... ).

Wow, those bios on the

site are written almost as well as the average letsrun post!

The 2002 Kenya Olympic pre-time trial 12km?

Peter the "sprinter" whose shortest listed race is a 3000 steeple?

Belay Teka Kassa's resume that includes the events 'Ethiopian National Olympic Games' and 'Eastern Africa Olympic Game' which only show up in a google search as coming from this bio?

Tamrat Ayalew, who has several times race "the top runner in the world"? Who is 'the top runner', Geb? Tergat? Someone else?

Can't help myself - the humour is too good:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KAB/is_4_47/ai_85473037

"Bozgoz had hoped that her time in the All Army Championship would qualify her for the Olympic trials to be held in 2004.

"I tried, came so close to qualifying in 2000 but failed," Bozgoz said."

"Bozgoz will again try to qualify when the next Olympic time trial marathon window opens in February 2002. This year's qualifying standard is 2:48. That works out to about a 6:25 per mile pace. Her personal record for the marathon is 6:50 per mile."

Yeah, 6:50 pace is coming "so close" to that 6:25 qualifying pace.

I don't get this one.

"Coach Millie Daniels is an USATF Certified Coach, U.S. Army Captain (Retired), motivational speaker and an All-Army, All-Navy, All-Air force Track and Marathon Runner."

If you're in the Army, how can you be an "All-Navy" or "All Air Force" runner?

They do put together an All-Services team for several competitions, that may be what they meant. However you're right, it is worded poorly.

I would be interested in Flagpole Willy's thoughts on this, being as he is in Ohio he may have some special insight into this.

Fan of the Flag(pole) wrote:

I would be interested in Flagpole Willy's thoughts on this, being as he is in Ohio he may have some special insight into this.

Because Indianapolis has now been annexed by Ohio?

"A Finisher's Medal will be given to all Official Finishers: finishing within 6 hours of the start for the 13.1, and 5k events and within 7 hours of the start for the 26.2 event. Participants in the 26.2 will also receive a finisher's certificate for their completion of the Marathon."

6 hours... for a 5k... sounds like even I could get a medal!!!

CANCELLED