arctic#runner wrote:...This is what I was thinking too. They shouldn't have cancelled the race, but made it clear that people needed to use their best judgment when deciding whether or not to come to the race...If people can't use good judgment and get hurt running or traveling, then consider this an example of thinning out the herd or natural selection.
That's fine to say to the entrants, but what about the thousands of volunteers it takes to put on this event? And I'm not talking just raceday, you have to think about packet pickup, course setup and breakdown, all the peripheral services it takes to put on a race, especially in a big city. If it's 25 people getting together out on a dirt road somewhere to run a race that's one thing, but you're talking tens of thousands of people. Given the conditions as reported in Dallas around the time this race was supposed to happen, if I'm on the list to volunteer I think seriously if I'm going to meet that commitment or not. Then, if you have thousands of runners show up and you have significant numbers of volunteers NOT show up, your ability to put on a safe race is severely compromised.
On the positive side, they cancelled somewhat early. Those of us who produce races learned a lot from NYC about making that call early. If you have a race of any decent size it's far worse to make a last minute call to cancel.
On the negative side, no refunds announced and little other consideration. If Memphis can make the kind of offer they did, even NYC stepping up to a degree, it's hard to believe Dallas is going to leave it at "so sorry" with nothing of value on the table for those who committed to their race in advance. As a long-time RD, if I had to cancel a race I'd do everything I could to try to provide some value to runners, even though knowing that once a race is cancelled nothing I can do gets those who trained for the event and were looking forward to it back to even. Even if the race's proceeds were all going to charity, I feel if you cancel you should give the entrants the option of donating to that charity or not. A well worded email that explains the mission of the charity, I have got to believe most entrants would just say "fine, donate it to the hospital".