It's begun. Road races have started to listen

$5 off for each. I was so excited I just skipped words.

I would also pay an EXTRA $5 for the course to be accurate. I always had to laugh at races where the t-shirts were perfect, the medals were perfect, but the course was random 3.38 miles. Just buy a dang wheel and measure it! Buy some spray paint and mark it.

So the 5K will now cost $60 instead of $70 and they spare the cost of giving you anything.

Things are looking up!

Just don’t give me a terrible t shirt that is uncomfortable I’ll never want to wear it.

I started simply refusing the medal a few years ago. Sorry, volunteers, but they're tacky and my house is full enough of junk as it is.

I also have enough polyester shirts to last me until the apocalypse.

Our only hope as a species is to stop manufacturing so much plastic crap that serves literally no useful purpose. I doubt I'll live to see the day though.

Everyone should refuse these medals and polyester shirts. Too much garbage being generated.

I think they should be optional (pay extra for shirt, medal). But the vast majority of people running these 5ks are people who are out of shape, or only slightly in shape who got off the couch and ran a bit to prepare for putting together 3 consectutive miles. So, for them, the medal means something.

While we’re at it, I’m not interested in the shirt a) unless it’s a quality fabric made for running and not some heavy cotton shirt, b) if it has an ironed on race logo, or c) if the reverse side is a billboard full of sponsor logos.

I like to go to Dunkin Donuts after the 5k. I wear the race t-shirt during the race, and keep my number pinned to it while I eat a donut and have a coffee, hours after the event.

There's no accounting for tastes. I used to like getting shirts at races but once the shirts stopped being cotton I stopped liking getting them. I'm with you on the billboard full of sponsor logos thing though.

The medal should be a little bitty GIS-marker-style pin about the size of a penny

I'll go further and say the prizes for age groups should be stuff people can use ($25/$15/$10) gift cards to a local running store, grocery store, whatever. Doesn't have to be a lot, could even be something as simple as giving away bags of candy to age group winners. But spending $ on custom trophies and medals...ugh.

I see literally zero reasons to ever run a 5k road race as a hobby jogger. It's not competitive (most of the time you're just flying past slower people), costs money, and gives you useless crap as a reward. I'll take a solo time trial or a race with a friend or two any day of the week.

Have any of you ever done the math on how much it costs to put together a road race? It's not that cheap.

You have a small minority that does not care about the ugly shirts or cheap awards or goody bags but if you want more than 50 people showing up then you'll need those perks that attract the masses.

I do like the no-shirt/no-bag option though.

Alan

I like the old cotton shirts.

Has anyone ever paid attention to the sponsors names that blanket the backs of the shirts?

Put the sponsors names on the entry and advertising forms. Leave them off the shirts. Shirts became billboards about forty years ago.

The sponsors want their names on the shirts and it's pretty much financially impossible to put on a road race without sponsors. People complaining about costs of road races have no idea what it costs to produce a race on streets.

I understand that and that is my point - why would I pay for an experience that is inferior to a simple time trial? You can't tell me that you guys enjoy standing surrounded by a thousand other joggers. I feel like cattle at these races.