Check the certification and see if it conforms.
Check the certification and see if it conforms.
take action wrote:
anyone want to write them?
info@thesfmarathon.comthought so. Nobody does anything here other than bitch.
i've written them twice about my own horrific experience, no response. i can say with confidence this was the worst organized race i've been a part of in my entire life.
i raced the marathon. i registered three weeks ahead of time, all of the literature on the website, and everything at the convention the day before, said that all runners who planned on running under 3 hours, would go off in the first wave, at 5:30 am (the start time needs to be changed to at least be somewhat reasonable, people are getting up at 330 in the morning).
anyway, 5:25 rolls around. i plan on trying to run under 2:40. i say this to the 'guards' at the entrance, who say i don't have first wave clearance. the man literally says to me, "wave one is for elites only." i look beyond him into wave one's paddock. at least a thousand people are milling about, some with fanny packs, iPods, 65 year olds, the whole deal. he tells me to go to the tech desk (3 minutes before the race), and the tech desk tells me i'm in WAVE FOUR (which i think is for planning on running around 3:45). she refuses to budge. i tell her my pr's and that i can obviously run under 3 hours. she says that the last day to make changes to your wave was yesterday. THEY NEVER TOLD YOU ANYTHING ABOUT SIGNING UP FOR A WAVE! everything indicated it was done for you. MASSIVE OVERSIGHT.
at this point i'm furious, it's probably 5:29 and i'm still not lined up to race. after four months of training for this moment, it is about to be squandered because i've been told i'm not 'elite' enough to start with the first thousand runners in the goddamn san francisco marathon.
i sneak into the wave three line with somebody else who had the same issue (a guy who wound up finishing either sixth or seventh), and we battled our way through thousands of people in the seconds before the gun. i wound up having to walk for around two minutes just to get to the start line after it was fired. the fun part was, i was passing guys for about the first 15 miles of the race (then i started dying).
moral of the story: DON'T RUN THIS RACE. extremely unhelpful staff. the volunteers are friendly, but not the hired staff. obviously the race director should be fired. what a massively glaring oversight. the whole two half marathon thing was obviously a fiasco too. san francisco is just not that great - the golden gate bridge and a bunch of digusting organic candy afterwards do not make being treated like shit worthwhile. i was there to run a race, i'd rather the entry fee be 30 dollars, rather than 145, get no runnersworld goodies, and just run the goddamn race.
It's asking for input on its Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/theSFmarathon?ref=search
My bus driver got lost and then circled back to a place where we were boxed in by marathoners. I had to get off the bus a little over a mile away and run to the start. Was fine for me as it served as a warmup but . . . not sure whether the other people on the bus made it in time or not. I guess that one can't be blamed on the race director either, but it seems par for the course.
I'm printing this thread out and mailing it to the race director, so pile on please.
I've never run the SF marathon, but after looking at the website, I found three links of interest:
1.
http://www.thesfmarathon.com/the-race/elite-runners.php
- Elite athlete (sub-2:40) registration was available. Why didn't you apply for this if you were going to run that time?
2.
http://www.thesfmarathon.com/the-race/registration.php
- There is a "wave change" link which tells me most people know their waves beforehand. Did you not know yours? From the looks of it, the early waves sell out early (which I find weird).
3.
http://www.thesfmarathon.com/the-race/start-wave-times.php
- Is it possible you made a typo when registering? Typing 3:40 instead of 2:40? That would put you in the third wave.
Did you run 2:40? Passing people would be stressful, but I can see it helping you, rather than being in no man's land. What was your final time?
truedat wrote:
Even if McCandless made the standard, is he as good as someone running a flat 2:19 marathon? The second half course seems pretty downhill to me.
You could say the same for other runners who ran CIM too? Yeah, the second half had some downhills to make up but it also had uphills that were not what I call 'easy' but then again what do I know? I'm just a hobby jogger who doesn't enter races for the "fun" of it, I did have to folk out some money that weekend (and trust me, I don't like to waste money...) in order for a race that did not go accordingly due to an organization's error. Again, I can certainly understand other's frustration and I ONLY ran the half!
anyone writing to an address that is info@XXX is ignorant. Those emails are never read. Go for the jugular and the heart of the beast: write to the sponsors and tell them about your shitty experience. You put down hard-earned cash and you deserve a decent experience for your investment. If what you wrote is true, you deserve your money back, dude. Do so and report back. Let's do something about this debacle. Let's make letsrun something more than a bitching website.
hell yes! Let's do something about the supremely shitty SF marathon! Let's galvanize as a semi-elite body of dyspeptic miscreants!
What makes organic candy organic and what makes organic candy disgusting?
sunset district wrote:
I've never run the SF marathon, but after looking at the website, I found three links of interest:
1.
http://www.thesfmarathon.com/the-race/elite-runners.php- Elite athlete (sub-2:40) registration was available. Why didn't you apply for this if you were going to run that time?
2.
http://www.thesfmarathon.com/the-race/registration.php- There is a "wave change" link which tells me most people know their waves beforehand. Did you not know yours? From the looks of it, the early waves sell out early (which I find weird).
3.
http://www.thesfmarathon.com/the-race/start-wave-times.php- Is it possible you made a typo when registering? Typing 3:40 instead of 2:40? That would put you in the third wave.
Did you run 2:40? Passing people would be stressful, but I can see it helping you, rather than being in no man's land. What was your final time?
I appreciate the devil advocacy, it will hopefully help illustrate my frustration in a more just manner.
1) I saw the elite registration link too. This was only my second marathon, and my first marathon was a trail race that had about 2000 feet of elevation change. I knew what I could run based on what I'd done in training. All my pr's are track pr's, and they weren't asking for that. So I didn't apply. It didn't seem like it'd be a problem. Like I said, "elite" athletes are supposedly under 2:40, yet anyone who was planning on running under 3 hours was told to start with wave one. You should have seen some of the people that started with wave one. They weren't finishing the first 13.1 in 3 hours.
2) I've never seen that link before. I wrote my estimated finish time on my application, where it was asked for. I didn't think I needed to fill out a series of forms to be granted the honor of lining up next to Fanny Pack Fred and Headphones Harriet, thirty yards back of the guys who will finish within 20 minutes of me.
3) I wrote 236 on my registration...still have a copy for my "records." Turns out I was close, depending on which of the two very different results you look at (oh yes, another aspect of this race that was horribly mismanaged), I ran either just under 2:40 or several minutes over it. I'm not demanding to be put on the first line, and I'm not asking for special privileges, I just want to start at the same general time. It's San Francisco, not Chicago. Hall and Geb aren't trying to earn a place.
I don't disagree with you on the final point. Passing people was motivational. Having to walk the first two minutes while the 730 guys are tearing down the Embarcadero, not so much.
The thing was, none of this was made clear. I received emails before the race stating explicitly that everyone planning on running under 3 hours starts with wave one. If there was something separate that needed to be filled out, it was never made clear during the registration process.