Boilermaker 2007

thanks Pat. I had a 4 hr ride home and i called a friend to go on line and check the stuff out for me. He said it was all on there real fast.

Good point, Don. I forgot that the 5k is officially timed now. I imagine that starting the 5k at 7:00 AM wouldn't be a huge issue either as most entrants are probably either local or part of a group coming in from away (and staying over), some doing the 15k and some the 5k. There's also the possibility of doing the 5k in Proctor Park, near the expo (completely off-road, the same site as the E J Hermann Invitational). Of course, one of the ideas of the 5k was to get people excited about the 15k by running the final third of it. I wonder what the "graduation" rates are (i.e., how many people who do the 5k do the 15k the following year)?

Still, I think there needs to be some management of the post race party as it's getting too big for the available space. I'm hearing more stories of people leaving early. My wife and I rarely stay until 11. Usually we're gone 10 minutes after the fireworks and flyover. Of course, we're not big-time party folks and crowd-lovers either.

I concur that Pat and his crew did a top-notch job. The results were up by the time I got home. Super!

I think I can answer one of your questions, and suggest answers to the other.

On the question of the older woman in Blue -- for a long time it's been Boilermaker practice to put the previous year's age group winners (1st place only) into the Blue corral. The reasoning is that it's a nice reward for having won a group and that the number of people who on time alone shouldn't be there is very small (even if every winner showed up, and they never do, there would only be a couple of dozen).

I can answer part of your corral question because Pat assigned the numbers in the same way that I used to. I'm not sure of his boundaries, though I do know that they didn't differ too much from the ones I used to use.

The bibs are ordered long before the race, and the number of bibs for the corrals south of Dwyer haven't changed.

You can only approximate what the distribution of seed times will be, because it's sensitive to truth-telling, to the conditions in the previous year, etc. etc. And, as happened this year, if you get a big bump in the number of entrants, then the number of people with particular seed times is going to go up...but you don't know that you're going to get a bump in entries until it's too late...and you don't know whether you're going to get more fast-ish or more slow-ish people....

So it's really a giant jigsaw puzzle problem. You know how many bibs you have available in each corral (and that cannot be changed after you have the bibs because you're doing COLOR not NUMBER). And you know the seed times that the runners gave (and you know that some people are lying but you cannot check every one).

Then you start the work. If you have 500 bibs in blue, then what whole-minute seed times will give you fewer than 500 runners for that corral? If you have 800 in the next corral, then what seed time....?

I tell you, it's hellish. You go up a minute, the corral overflows. You go down, it's too far from being filled.

One year, there was an error and when the bibs arrived there were 1,000 fewer for one of the corrals than I was expecting. That was the only year I checked times for anybody other than the sub-elites. I knew that many entrants just put down "popular" times, and that led to serious clustering around, say, 1:12, 1:15, and so on. So I wrote a routine that took the alleged popular-time seeds and checked actual (net) times. There were enough of them that were actually significantly slower to let me move them away from boundaries and fit everybody in.

For example, in 2006 it looked like this:

Blue..... 59 & under & AG winners

Orange... 1:00 - 1:06

Green.... 1:07 - 1:14

Yellow... 1:15 - 1:20

Grey..... 1:21 and up or no time

but in 2005 it looked like this:

Blue..... 59 & under & AG winners

Orange... 1:00 - 1:04

Green.... 1:05 - 1:10

Yellow... 1:11 - 1:15

(and 3 more south of Dwyer, rather than the 1 large one we used in 2006 and 2007).

The bottom line is that the corral boundaries change from year to year, sometimes even by 2 minutes for the smaller corrals. And, to make things harder (and more unfair to people like you) the boundaries can't be worked out until race week itself. Boilermaker bibs are assigned on Tuesday or Wednesday before the race, so that the bibs can be prepped for packet stuffing, which is always on Thursday.

The best answer would be to verify the seed time against a prior time. This is doable but it's non-trivial. If we always knew the prior year's bib number for anybody who re-entered, it wouldn't be hard. But since we don't, then any checking has to be via some name-matching method, and then it gets really tricky. Not that it can't be done -- but that it can't be done in such a way that it doesn't add a lot of time to the data entry procedure.

Verifying all seed times is really a cost/benefit issue. But that doesn't make you feel better, I know.

Some of you might be saying, Why not have a straight number series, without colors, so you have some wiggle room for the boundaries? That would be a good solution, but it makes the marshaling at the start line very hard. One year, we did a straight number series but put colored dots on the bibs...people who wanted a better corral went to office max and got their own dots....the whole thing is a supremely vexing problem.

I hope this helps a little bit.

Most of the discussion has been on the front, but I am always asked (and it will probably come up anyway), what about the back? The usual points raised are that chip timing helps, but people in the back half still can't get up to speed for a while. Also, there's obviously a very wide variation in pace back there and some people may even prefer to start off walking up the initial hill rather than run. So, the two obvious questions are:

1) Why one big corral for approximately 7000 people at the back (i.e., why did you go from three down to one)?

2) What are the advantages/disadvantages of a wave start and is it feasible here?

Obviously, a course reroute or expecting the city to widen Culver Ave. to 4 lanes are not very practical solutions.

Another possibility might be to bring some of the beer kegs from the post race party over to the start line. I think that would help to thin out the start and reduce the size of the crowd at the brewery. Of course, we might wind up with the lowest ratio of finishers to registrants at any major race in the world, but...

I haven't been part of the decision(s) about the number of corrals. But it's not quite accurate to ask why we went from three in the back down to one, because of the last 6 years, 3 have had fewer corrals than 2007, one has had more, and 2 have been the same.

2002 -- 4 corrals

2003 -- 4 corrals

2004 -- 4 corrals

2005 -- 7 corrals

2006 -- 5 corrals

2007 -- 5 corrals

If I were asked, I'd say that 6 would be a good compromise, and 7 is too many. I say this partly because making up the bib numbers (before packet stuffing; this is the timer's job) with 7 corrals is very difficult. Four is a lot easier, but that makes for a really large last corral.

I also say it because more corrals doesn't immediately translate to a smoother start, because of the road width. There's only so much you can do.

And no matter how many corrals you have north of Dwyer, it's very hard to load them.

As for a wave start -- sure, it can be done. But I've never liked it, for these reasons:

-- you have to have your marshaling done perfectly, or the timing gets screwed up. A runner in the wrong start wave gets a wrong time.

-- you have to wait much longer before you can put out overall results, because you cannot know who will "bubble up" from a later-starting wave. This would be especially true for the Boilermaker because, as we all know, the seed times the runners give are iffy. So you couldn't be sure that each wave had people who would run slower and slower times. Ideally you wait until every single finisher has finished ... then when you run the overalls, they're going to be stable. But at the Boilermaker, runners expect to see posted times fairly quickly and if the timer were super-cautious then the overalls couldn't be produced until as late as 11:30 or noon (depending, obviously, on the size of the waves and the interval between them).

-- the roads are closed much longer and on-course facilities (like water stops) have to be kept operating much longer. Consider, for example, starting in waves of 500 people at 1 minute intervals...for this year's field that would be roughly 28 waves. So the last, and slowest, people go off about half an hour after the leaders. Makes for a very long day. Larger waves at smaller intervals would help, of course.

So I've always thought that a wave start was something you did if you had absolutely no alternative.

We've been trying to find the best start solution since the early 90s, as I remember. There isn't one...it's all compromise.

Jim,

One thought I had is why make the sub-elite corral such a burden on yourself in the few weeks before the race. It seems to be predominantly filled with good runners from NY state, which is good for the race. There is virtually no place for them to otherwise warm-up, so access to the parking lot is probably the biggest perk. But getting the sub-elite seed is a privilege, not a right, and you guys set the rules. Why not make it a combination of performance and registration, e.g. the Gate River Run says their 1000 runner corral will be filled on a first-come basis, which would make a lot of sense for the Boiler since there is effectively no other registration deadline.

You shouldn\'t have to deal with a last minute flurry of e-mails with runners trying to get in. Part of the deal is that they have to register early enough to reserve their spot. You know the size of the corral, and also approximate time and gender breakdowns, so use that as an internal guideline to monitor how the corral is filling behind the scenes. You decide when to turn off the spigot, and then your response will be that \"while the application may have a fast enough time for the sub-elite corral, he or she did not register early enough. You would be happy to give him or her a low bib number in the adjacent 300-700 corral.\" Case closed. Many races do this, and it make a lot of sense to me. BTW, this would not impact elite runners since Dick already has a cushion for last minute invitations and withdrawals.

As usual, I thought the Utica Boilermaker was a well-organized race. The corral system seemed to work very well. I thought it was convenient to make it to my assigned corral (perhaps the walkway to the corrals was widened, then again I hadn't raced in Utica since '04).

I thought Jim Fiore, and crew (including Don) did a nice job w/ the seedings as well.

-Road Dog

i remember the dot year - ha. that was 97?

thank you for the answer. i had always wondered how it was done given the daunting nature of the task, and you and pat have done a wonderful job.

That is an avenue, but I'm not a decision-maker here, just a helper. I'm not really big on first-come first-served arrangements for something like the Boilermaker though. Given injuries and other commitments that pop up, it's hard to ask people to register that far in advance, especially as there are no refunds. Besides, you'd have to keep track of everyone in perfect order because as people drop out, you have to fill their space in a fair manner. I imagine it might even be a bigger headache than the current scheme. My understanding is that some people book a hotel room for the following year when they check out (it is extremely difficult to find lodging in Utica for that weekend a few weeks out)!

I think a better idea might be to have a deadline, say two weeks before the race date, in order to be considered. That doesn't force runners into a commitment way early but it gives the timing folks some breathing room. Heck, I had emails from people right up to the last couple of days asking for consideration, but in all fairness, I also had people saying that they had to drop out and offered their spot up (the nice thing to do and I thank them for the consideration they showed to their fellow runners).

Kudos to all the Boilermaker workers and volunteers. That International Mile was very cool this year.

I have no complaints this year except for the fact that Jim beat me but I can only blame myself for that. Nice race and congrats Jim. We'll be duking it out next year.

See what you can do to reinstate prize money for the veterans or grandmasters or whatever they call us nowadays(old).

Great race!!!

btw, Jim do you think I can have your email? There's an issue I was hoping to ask you about regarding the race.

Charlie, you must have had an off day. You always buried me in years past! I've been whining about the seniors/veterans money for the last two years but no one listens to me. I have mixed feelings about it though. They removed it when they raised the overall prize money and added American bonus money, and I'd rather see $ go to some promising young talent, but on the other hand, it does make for a more competitive race in the higher age categories. I think it's going to boil down to them getting a sponsor for it. The other thing I've been whining about is my desire to have a club competition (aggregate time scoring like the Corporate Cup). I think that would be great. Again, I imagine a sponsor is needed.

T12352, just click on my name and be sure to remove the "REMOVEthisPART" anti-spam bit of the domain name.

bump

terrible advice wrote:

chefdrp wrote:

I wonder if next year we sub elites could have a baggage pickup at the finish area too.

Horrible suggestion. When you ask for more you always receive less. The committee is thinking about how to handle the sub elites because some of them are the most demanding. There was a guy this year that stayed in the dorms with the elites and showed up to the dinner. This will never happen again.

This was posted on another site from Chef. why the elite dorms?

this was my first Boilermaker and i had a great time. Well my race time wasnt all that great. LOL. 57:59. But the event was great. The support was out of this world. I stayed in the elite dorm at SUNYIT so i was out of the whole seen but race day was fantastic. I had a little mix up with the bags at the sub elite and elite corral. But other than that it was great.

who is rudolph stevenson? he was listed as elite #27. This guy has no times anywhere!!!!! how did he get elite status? He never even finishes a race

is this guy an elite personator?

57 plus minutes does not deserve a room even if you are a masters women. Hell, neither does 54 minutes for that matter. Who are these people?

I have no idea. I didn't deal with the elites. Maybe he was "invited" which is not quite the same thing.

Jim,

What is the difference between Elite and Invited runners?

If you get into the sub-elite corral (and your time barely makes it in), then why would you be "invited" to stay with the elite runners?