Boilermaker 2007

Utica is in the 24th congressional district. To be fair to Arcuri, he entered through normal channels. I know he was first assigned a regular number because I was helping Leone Timing and one of my tasks was to go pull packets of people who had been moved to other numbers.

I said in another thread weeks ago that it's not rare for people who aren't elite runners to end up with bibs in the elite range. It happens, and it happened with #24.

At the Boilermaker, during the years I was its timer, special numbers weren't given in the very low range. Generally the 2-digit bibs given to runners who would not otherwise qualify were in the 90s. For example, this year the 90s included the Boilermaker scholarship winners, the director of the Marine Corps Marathon, the Mayor, and others. Often the Hall of Fame inductees were placed in that range, too.

But if you want a symbolic number for your congressman, what are you going to do? Over the years I assigned 911 to the emergency services guy (once to the head of the state police), 1040 to an accountant...and others like that. In these cases the numbers were always high so nobody cared...24 is low, which made it different.

What Don said.

To simplify, "elites" are fast, "invited" are just that, invited, not necessarily because they're fast but because of some other special reason. Bill Rodgers isn't running competitively anymore but do you really want to assign him #2462? (And to be fair to BR, I saw him exit the back of the elite corral and squeeze himself into the back corner of the semi-elite corral saying "I don't belong up there".)

As to whether or not inviteds should stay with the elites, what else would be a workable situation, that is, one that wouldn't create more hassles or extra expense for the officials?

John Geesler is one of those unfortunately unknown great runners. However, John never seems to race the Boilermaker. I have never talked to him about it but he never seems to get near what his potential is. I assume he just does it for fun. Either that, or he runs to the start from his home in St. Johnsville! (Not something beyond his abilities that's for sure.)

Now, who the heck dredged up that old thread from 2003 with my name on it? Dumb.

I got curious so I looked up Congressman Arcuri's time. He has a nearly five minute chip offset so either he stood off to the side of the elite corral and let everyone pass or he lined up in the back. Either way, one can't accuse him of getting in the way or taking advantage.

Speaking of taking advantage though...it seems like someone is being awfully quiet all of a sudden after putting this on another website.

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.

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