Club relay marathon race - Denver

Alan-

You may have DFL'd in the USATF division, but there were another 370 teams behind you and almost all had slower anchors.

Count me among them (the bkbltd.com website has me at 46:42). I could be in better shape, but shortly into my leg I realized that I needed to focus on maintaining, not blowing up and just making it to the line. I haven't felt like that in this short of a race in awhile.

I had figured I would run at least a couple of minutes faster on a normal day, but it was not to be yesterday. You did alright for everything we had against us yesterday.

Tim

leggy wrote:

Where did you find the individual splits?

Ind. splits are now posted, they weren't before.

Alan

Our club (Big Sky Distance Project, Moving Comfort Montana) took a 15 passenger van down from Montana and had a great time. The course along Colfax is butt-ugly, but the organizers did a great job, the volunteers were friendly and helpful, and it was a very good race. Between our open women's team (our strongest team by far, 3rd overall), two masters men's teams (1st and 2nd), and master's women (another collection of animals, 1st), we picked up $6000 of prize money with a collection of club runners that span a pretty broad range of (current) ability.

Clubs below the level of Hansons, BX, etc should seriously consider going to these USATF club championship races. We're glad we did, despite the 30 hours of driving.

The splits are listed on the USATF website, follow the link at the beginning of the thread.

The idea of this event is to have one road race, instead of many, to attract the maximum number of clubs to make a fair ranking of clubs as road race clubs to compare in popularity with the club x-c and the club track nationals. Does it do that?

Can we say for now that BX and Raleigh are the champion road racing clubs in the country?

Tom

To be clear, Big Sky Distance Project did not take first in the mens masters. That went to Fleet Feet Boulder.

OPEN MASTERS MALE RELAY TEAMS

Place Team Bib # Time Pace Net Tim 10k 5k 10k 5k 12k

===== ==================================== ====== ======= ===== ======= ======= ======= ======= ======= =======

1 FLEET FEET RACING TEAM-BOULDER (MAST 5217 2:25:58 5:34 2:28:04 33:19 16:37 34:01 16:00 46:03

Peter Hegelbach Andy Ames Lance Denning Ken Pliska Hans Funke

2 BIG SKY DISTANCE PROJECT - TEAM Z 5243 2:31:50 5:48 2:34:21 35:47 17:41 35:41 18:45 43:57

Tony Banovich Scott Creel Ray Hunt Donald R Matteson Steve Simpson

3 BIG SKY DISTANCE PROJECT - TEAM Y 5641 2:47:59 6:25 2:47:58 40:27 19:51 36:55 20:45 50:02

Jeff Braun Dave Coppock Thomas H Deluca Elton Kirtley Mark Burke

Truth or dare wrote:

Was the course long? I realize that the course is at altitude but come on. Over 5 minute pace for the winning mens team. These guys were talking about beating THE HANSONS. Their entire team ran slower than SELL. They only ran a few seconds faster than VERRAN. They ran slower than MORGAN or EBERLY ran for the 25k this past weekend. It is a good thing that the HANSONS stayed home. This race would have been a run away.

Where do you get the idea that the winning team should run a relay race faster than they needed to in order to win? They should've just thrown out all thoughts of any future races (I imagine a fair number of them will be racing a hard 10k a week from today) and thrown all caution to the wind regarding the course and conditions and raced themselves right into the ground? Why, would there be extra prize money involved, sponsor bonuses? Or would it be just so that a few braindead Letsrun 18:00 5k high schoolers would say that the Hansons wouldn't have won easily if they'd shown up?

Regarding that lack of Hansons teams, it should be no secret that Hansons has little regard for USATF events and only do those that fit easily within the framework of their own goals. I suspect that sending 5-15 runners to hammer out a hard race at altitude on a hard course under intense sun does little to further their goals. Just a hunch.

Hansons aren't entirely wrong, either, holding the marathon relay champs on a course like that at altitude in May is just another bonehead choice by USATF, similar to the XC Nationals up in Boulder next year. That marathon course is not for serious competitors, it's basically a jogger's event. Look at the marathon results, outside of the relay they made no attempt to lure meaningful competition to the race, it's an event set up to cater to the TiT and running tourist crowd.

I never understood this course and why the whole city got behind it. Boring, straight, uphill course on a sh!tty street at altitude, a week before the Bolder Boulder? Good idea Colorado.

Hey, is Clint running for Team Colorado in the Bolder Boulder again this year? Is he going to kick all the Team USA guy's asses again this year? That was hilarious.

Mr. Zack I've heard the rumors around town. Are you one of the guys who trolls Boulder folks on here?

Temptations - drop me a note if you want to talk about it. Until then, as far as I am concerned, you are just another chicken shit who posts without a name or a real contact.

KnowItAll wrote:

I never understood this course and why the whole city got behind it. Boring, straight, uphill course on a sh!tty street at altitude, a week before the Bolder Boulder? Good idea Colorado.

Hey, is Clint running for Team Colorado in the Bolder Boulder again this year? Is he going to kick all the Team USA guy's asses again this year? That was hilarious.

I have to agree. Not one of the better ideas out of the Centennial State. But then again, a lot of really bad ideas have sprouted from there in recent years: mean spirited anti-immigrant legislation (Rep. Tancredo), anti-gay legislation (Rep. Musgrave), let's out the liberal faculty initiatives (Gov. Owens and others), let's cut funding for public education and give it to religious schools (a whole lot of them)....

Colfax is an ugly street. Why would you want to finish with an 8 mile uphill, at altitude? The now defunct Old Town marathon in Ft. Collins also had a silly course, 20 miles on cement bike paths.

The dweebs who say that a 2:13 on the Colfax course is slow are just plain dumb.

Derderian wrote:

The idea of this event is to have one road race, instead of many, to attract the maximum number of clubs to make a fair ranking of clubs as road race clubs to compare in popularity with the club x-c and the club track nationals. Does it do that?

Can we say for now that BX and Raleigh are the champion road racing clubs in the country?

Tom

Tom makes an important point. Does this event serve its purpose, and if not, how can that be changed? For a variety of reasons, only the club XC Champs lives up to its billing as a national championship event. Certainly the location plays a role in terms of the depth of talent from each region, but an impressively large number of clubs send full suads to this race each year. In contrast the T&F Champs are saparsley attended and not thought of as any sort of real championship. That is understandable since post-collegiately there is not a lot of track being contested. But why isn't there a better forum for crowning a road running team champion? Could it be solved by choosing a more appealing event than the Colfax race, or do deeper changes need to be made to boost participation?

Will this event be held in '07? If so, anyone know where it might be held?

On the event's website they state,

The Colfax Marathon Partnership, Inc. is a Colorado non-profit corporation that was founded by the cities of Aurora, Denver and Lakewood. Its mission is to produce an outstanding marathon each year that

1)makes substantive contributions to the economic redevelopment of the Colfax Avenue corridor.

2) promotes awareness of health and fitness among youth and adults.

3) benefits other local charitable organizations engaged in youth fitness.

This is why the race is run on Colfax. The fact that it's the week before Bolder Boulder seems ridiculous, but they had about 5,000 people run in one of the three races(relay, half, full) so there was definitely a market.

I'm sure the race was conceived of first, and the U.S. relay champs came in a bit later. That's usually how these things work for U.S. Road Champs.

As someone who competed in the relay, I would hope in the future that a lot more time and energy would be put into the "Championships" part of the race. It seems a lot of times race directors say, "Hey, we can put in a bid to host a U.S. Champs because no one else hosts this event. USATF will give it to us so long as we throw a little prize money into the race."

I'd really appreciate it if these race directors started the thought process with, "What can I do to put on a quality U.S. Championships that will really take care of the elite athletes, but can also have a good citizens race that's good for the community and some charity(since ALL races these days are for charity)?"

From my own experience it seems like New York tried to do that for XC this year and the 8km in the past, Houston for the half marathon, Papa John's for the 10 mile, and Dell Champs for the 10k. Twin Cities Marathon is another race that really does a good job on both sides and I think Boulder is trying to do that for the XC champs next year.

I guess my request to these race directors is that they don't try and half-ass these races on the championship side of things. Either put in an honest effort and take care of the athlete's needs or don't host it at all. I know the Gallowalkers and Penguins are providing you with a/an (dis)honest living, but there's a small population out there that still loves to RACE.

It could simply be just a lack of money. If races and their directors were dying to host a USATF event then we wouldn't be clawing just to find a host for the Marathon Trials, the Marathon Relay would have been held last year, and Papa John would be willing to fund the 10 mile champs again next year. Taking care of the "athletes needs" takes a lot of money that most races just don't have or, as in Papa John's case, are just being put elsewhere (Big Papa has a whittle bike team he wants to pimp out).

Alan

denver again is what i heard, because they're willing to front the 30k in prize money.

no one wrote:

denver again is what i heard, because they're willing to front the 30k in prize money.

And that is what the clubs need to even think about traveling. WIthout the $$$$ many will not think about traveling.

I heard USATF provided travel stipends for some of the teams.

I'll deal with you face to face.