.US Championships - USATF deserves high praise for a great effort

I agreed actually. I was thinking, I don't know if it will work or not, but at least there are signs that they care.

I was happy to see they had a great livefeed with scrolling splits and decent commentary. However, considering I live close I couldn't make it to watch. The start time was so early..7:20, 7:45. I wish it was at 8:00 or 9:00 so I could get out there to see. This may have something to do with the low spectator turn-out. DC Metro here only opens at 7:00 am on Sundays.

agree, coverage was pretty good

enjoyed it

don't know who the announcers were, but they pretty good

The live feed footage was great.I planned to skip through for the highlights and stayed for the duration of both races. This is the first time I've seen race footage where I could actually hear a runner breathing hard.You could get a good idea of how hard Braun was working.

The reporting of splits/positions was a bit spotty, but they can easy iron that out and it was better than anything I've ever seen on TV in the US. The lack of splits shown on screen on major TV networks is crazy to me - essentially never. Not even the half-marathon split in a marathon!

Commentary was quite good also. Just move it to 9am next year and I'll tune in live.

Please pass the tissue box , seem's to be something brown on your nose.

The idea is correct , the execution , coordination , promotion ,impact and value to the world of running are very poor. An assessment or review would clearly show that this series needs professionals working on it to make successful.

This event launch was a just like the health care launch.

Admit it was poorly done , rehire or hire competent staff , take it out of the hands of USATF and lets get something together worth talking about.

I too would like to chime in.

1) Thumbs Up to USATF for putting $200,000 in prize money into road running.

2) Thumps Up to USATF for finding a title sponsor.

Long term for the event to continue it needs to be a success.

With that in mind here are suggestions to have a successful event. I'm assuming since USATF had a professional video production and a live stream, it wants people to watch the event, not just put on a local road race. With that in mind:

1) Change the start time. 7 am is ok for a road race. It is not OK for a road race that wants to attract national live exposure.

I'm really into running. I did not wake up at 6 am central time to watch the event. (If you can't change the time, make the event on demand later so people can watch without knowing the results).

2) Have a loop course. If you want spectators to actually come watch this event, it has to be on a loop course.

3) Have a community event, health fair, beer festival or something tied around the event.

My vision would be find a city willing to shut down a half mile by a half mile in the middle of the day. That's a 2 mile loop. The pros run that loop. There also is some sort of downtown festival associated with the event. There is a 5k for masses that is just prior to the pro event. A bunch of people, hopefully means spectators.

4) If you are not willing to do 1-3, then your only option is to get tape delay TV coverage. That's the only way to get some sort of viewing audience for a national event when 3/4 of America is asleep.

5) Get the event on TV. TV still matters if you want a viewing audience.

Other notes:

1) USATF shouldn't have made its year ending event worth triple points in the USARC series after it had already started.

Having said that, who really cares except the athletes who could win the series? The winner of the series got $6000 total. I and a lot of others thought the winner won $25,000.

With USATF offering $20,000 to the winner of its race, it didn't need to offer triple points to make sure people ran to try and win an extra $6000. So it pissed off a few runners and the purists, but it didn't need to. If that is the biggest complaint, we're doing ok. USATF as the governing body should not be changing the rules after the fact, or making them up as they go along.

And one point of criticism:

1) Get the local press involved. From what I can tell, neither local paper covered the race at all. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me. The newspaper clearly isn't the end all be all but high school football games get coverage in just about every paper.

Honestly, I didn't know much about the event leading into it. I did hear through chatter about the event and living near Baltimore I would like to have attended. Just too early. I did hear there was a festival tho or some kind of award show with Washington National mascots.

I didn't catch the live webcast but saw the reply on usatf.tv and was surprised how well it was done. Guessing that wasn't cheap so that shows me money is being spent on road running. Tim Hutching always entertains me and overloads me with info. The woman was good too. She seemed to have good chemistry with Tim. Why don't they have more road race webcasts like this?

LetsRun.com wrote:

PS. How do you like them apples? The new and improved Runnersworld/Flotrack version of Rojo. I only say positive happy things.

That didn't age well. Lolz.

Well written, I don't have any doubt about that, the best thing to do is to keep trying.