Letsrun Faithful: What changes would you like seen made to road races

Dang, one other thing...awards ceremonies...Our marathon pays prize money, we call up the money winners 3:15 after the race start. That means the winning men have been done for 45-60 minutes, but the masters women only 10-15 minutes. It also means we're doing awards while the masses are still finishing. That time table seems to work for everyone.

Our spring half has no awards. Race a flat fast accurate course, get some really good food, results posted online later in the day. No complaints from runners about no awards. 1:12 won this year, 7 under 1:20, 6.5% under 1:30.

Our winter 5k, we only give performance awards to the male and female winners and male and female masters winners. 2nd place, no cookie! We have a ton of other prizes that all go via random draw. We went to that after getting complaints from age groupers who finished 2nd or 3rd in their group that our awards for their place weren't good enough (no medals or trophies, all local restaurant certificates, ski passes, merchandise, etc). I got so sick of hearing it that I pushed through to only give performance based awards to the overall winners. And we don't give out the prizes by the "pick a name announce it over the p.a." system - We do the random draw ahead of time and post the winners on the wall while the race is in progress. You finish, check out the prize wall, and if your name is there claim your awards and you're free to go. No need to wait around an hour for the slow people to finish and to get results computed. Lots of positive feedback since we went to that.

Certified courses...cost me 150 bucks back in 1999, to certify my course.

I don't know how much now.

Liability: Back in the no-frills days, there was nothing at al to worry about..now, you either have to get an insurance policy for your races through USATF or just hope and pray nobody sues if they trip over a stick.

Waivers mean NOTHING.

To the poster who was discussing "how many runners should you expect at a no-frills race?"

That is the whole point! To try and influence the running community into appreciating the purist beauty of compettive racing.

Here in Indiana we have this mighty Indy 500 mini-marathon which even Julia Rudd quoted in an iNDY STAR article stated that you are not a runner unless you do the 500.

I remember a large city running club setting up a courtesy tent for all the people in their town running this race and it was an effort at getting people from their own town to join the club.

They had nearly 200 runners from their town run in the mini who went through their tent and got all the goodies and not a single person joined their local running club.

Our sport is the ONLY sport that I can think of where the majority of the participants who benefit from it have no actual interest in it.

That was a reason for me to start serious no-frills races, giving away old school runing books, passing out articles from TNF's of the 50's-60's-70's in my community..which of course was a naive and collasal failure..ha.

quote:

Our sport is the ONLY sport that I can think of where the majority of the participants who benefit from it have no actual interest in it.

Very interesting statement. Why is it that such a small percentage of runners are fans of the sport they participate in? (of course I am not referring to the people reading this, but just the hordes of runners who finish behind you.)

Tom

Whiskey Tango Firefox wrote:

So you consider >7:00/mile slow. What about everyone slower than 12:00 or 14:00 per mile? Frankly if you need more than 45:00 for a 5k or more than 90:00 for a 10k then you really have no business being at a sporting contest. I think that's a more realistic threshold for keeping road races from turning into penguin parades.

The fact is the vast majority of the people in those 5K's and 10K's are finishing before 45 or 90. Posters earlier in the thread presume slower than 6 mpm is a penguin.

If you exclude group waddles like Race for the Cure cutting off 5K at 45 doesn't keep out more than a few, while the prevailing LetRun mentality seems to be if you can't win overall you shouldn't be racing.

A lot of walkers aren't at nearly every charity 5k and 10k, which is at least half or more of the races you can find anymore in any given location. No matter what you presume that others are presuming.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot wrote:

A lot of walkers aren't at nearly every charity 5k and 10k, which is at least half or more of the races you can find anymore in any given location. No matter what you presume that others are presuming.

OK, so you're admitting that there aren't a lot of them there anyway, so why is it a problem? Does having a 1/2 dozen folks slower than 12 minutes per mile ruin the entire event? I just browsed through some results since I'm getting ready to post some and most of what I see > 12 mpm are kids under 12 running with a parent and 1/2 dozen middle aged ladies walking together. Looking at other races it's a pretty similar profile.

I don't get the mentality that says we kick these people out in order to improve the event.

Your melodramatic bent is getting in the way of discussing with an open mind. The fact that you use "event" instead of "competition" tells me exactly your background and perspective in approaching this topic. I suspect that's because it's where your identity lives.

Just to let you know, I fix all digital device clocks, including chronomix. We have several digital device Clocks that run as good as the day they were built.

We also rent them.

Just to let you know, I fix all digital device clocks, including chronomix. We have several digital device Clocks that run as good as the day they were built.

We also rent them.

Qualified wrote:

All major marathons (i.e., New York, Chicago, L.A., etc.)should adopt rigorous, Boston-like qualifying standards. It is ridiculous how these events are now filling in a matter of days with joggers who are just glad to finish, while serious runners are getting closed out. Not they they shouldn't have the opportunity to run a marathon, but the top marathons should have the deepest fields, not a bunch of 6 hour charity runners. Just sayin'.

What I would rather see is allow for open registration, but then set a number (say 1000) entries where you can sign up any time, up to 1 month (4 weeks) prior where you need a qualifying time.

Say for Chicago, that time is 3:00 for men and 3:25 for women.

When registration is 6+ months out, you don't always know how training will be. You could be injured. Move. etc.

Sometimes these are last-minute things. Hell, there have been a few half-marathons I've wanted to do, but they were filled up 2 months before hand. I didn't necessarily plan on running that race, but why not? Wouldn't the race director want a 1:14 guy in the race?