Road races starting late

Most race directors have never finished a 5k at a pace faster than 12m per mile.

I rarely see them start more that a few minutes late. Road/traffic control is usually non negotiable, the race HAS to start on time essentially.

I've felt that far more of the competitive races I've ran in have started much later than what was planned. BY FAR road races have usually been the most accurate followed by the trail races. My experience is that Track is the worst race surface when it comes to actually starting on time, almost always early or late on there.

Be grateful; at one of my recent races the race director decided to start the race 10 minutes early. Needless to say, some runners missed the race.

RunWild wrote:

I've felt that far more of the competitive races I've ran in have started much later than what was planned. BY FAR road races have usually been the most accurate followed by the trail races. My experience is that Track is the worst race surface when it comes to actually starting on time, almost always early or late on there.

Collegiate 5,000 meter runners everywhere are familiar with the warm up-wait-warm up-wait game as endless 200 meter heats are run. One time, my 5,000 meter race was scheduled for 8:00 pm...I stepped on the track at 11:30 pm.

Sounds like you guys have never been to an indoor track meet. My experience with those is that they run 1-2 hours off schedule (sometimes late, sometimes early, but never a consistent amount of time off schedule, even at the same meet); you just sort of walk-jog around, wait until you hear your race called, then dash to get your spikes on and get to the starting line, hopefully somewhat warmed-up..

If you're at a large invitational track meet and you're not in one of the first few races, you can pretty well count on your race starting late. Just part of the game.

I'll never get why road races can't start on time, but they consistently don't. If they advertise 8, figure 8:10 at the earliest. I ran one a few weeks ago where the announcer kept saying "5 minutes to the start"... For about 30 minutes. I just kept walking and jogging around the starting line, figuring they'd eventually start the thing...someday.

Funny you bring that up. I was volunteering for a road race this morning and was helping the timing guys set up. They were talking about how they've also noticed races seem to be starting later and later than advertised. They think it's due to the increase in hobby joggers not understanding that you can't try and park at 7:55 for an 8:00 start time. I guess directors think waiting for those extra people will pay off somehow, who knows.

And as a side note, the race I was at started at 9:00 on the dot. They start it on the green and use a church bell to start the race. Pretty neat.

New England wrote:

Funny you bring that up. I was volunteering for a road race this morning and was helping the timing guys set up. They were talking about how they've also noticed races seem to be starting later and later than advertised. They think it's due to the increase in hobby joggers not understanding that you can't try and park at 7:55 for an 8:00 start time. I guess directors think waiting for those extra people will pay off somehow, who knows.

And as a side note, the race I was at started at 9:00 on the dot. They start it on the green and use a church bell to start the race. Pretty neat.

This is the correct answer. I've run several races where the announcer has said something like "We've still got some folks trying to register, so we're going to give them a few more minutes.". Meanwhile, it's already 5 minutes after the stated start time.

What I can't stand is when everyone is gathered at the starting line ready to run, and having to wait as they do the National anthem, a speech from the mayor, announcements from the race director, and a presentation for the sponsor. JUST START THE RACE!!!

I ran one race where they did door prize drawings before the start as runners were standing on the start line, waiting to run. What a joke.

The only acceptable reason to start a race late would be due to a situation that requires emergency police (fire, ambulance) intervention. Everything else is poor race management.

In my opinion it is essential to start a race on time for the participants. For over 35+ years I have started 99.9 % of my races exactly on time.

Man, this is my #1 pet peeve at races, and yes, it's getting worse. I am actually shocked when a race starts on time. It's like race director s think listing 8 as the start time means they think people should start showing up at 8, and they'll start the race whenever.

Twice this year, I've actually considered just leaving because they were so late getting started. I have stuff to do on weekends and can't spend all day waiting around for your honorary starter to show up. Seriously, one race started over an hour late because they were waiting for the starter, a local radio guy, to show up.

I groan when the local politician/celebrity just has to give a speech before the start. Meanwhile, the runners are freezing in the winter or watching the temp continue to rise in the summer, wishing he/she would shut up so the race can start. I'm convinced many race organizers have no concept of what it's like to actually run a race.

I see this too, and yes, it's getting worse. People arrive 5 minutes before the scheduled start and expect to be able to register, pick up their bib, tie on their chip, and mosey on over to the start, oblivious to the fact that they're holding everyone up.

My running club actually advises runners to arrive an hour before the start and we state that registration/packet pick up closes 15 minutes before the start. Now, if someone wants to give us their money one minute before the start, we still take it, but we do not hold up the start for them. When we say 8:00, we don't mean 8:01. We've had a few get upset, probably because they're used to other races delaying the start for them, but they can't say they weren't warned.

The races we produce always start right on time. We sync our watches to time.gov and go by that. The only asterisk would be if we didn't get a "course clear" from the police/course monitors. Never had that happen yet. We always catch a few runners off guard and as they run past the start line after everyone else is gone they're yelling to us "why did you start on time?"

The kids races we produce are notorious for starting late, but even they have gotten better.

We provide subcontract timing for a bunch of races other people direct. These are small races, a few hundred max, so we're still handling the timing manually. We tell them if they want to keep registration open until the time the race is supposed to start then we're not going to give the go-ahead to start on time. We don't need to have all the registrations input into Race Director, but I can't have a stack of 50 to do after the gun goes off. The races that cut it off 10-15 minutes before the start usually start on time - those that take registrations after that never start on time.

not here wrote:

I rarely see them start more that a few minutes late. Road/traffic control is usually non negotiable, the race HAS to start on time essentially.

My 25 years of running road races, including somewhere between 400 and 500 races, says you're wrong. I'd estimate that approximately 80% of those races have started late, and yes it's getting worse.

I ran in a road race today and they canceled a 10k and replaced it with a 5k because it was raining... No thunder, just raining and windy. The race also started about 5mins late. Not too bad, but still makes me grumpy.

Blame it on the competitors who sign up at the last minute.

I put on an event each year and with two weeks to go I have about 20 percent of the entries I expect. At that point I need to make all my final plans about volunteers, supplies, road closures, everything. For the next two weeks I'm flooded with entries and then, after the deadline, I get another flood of pleas to get in. I get calls at midnight the night before the race.

I just can't make the deadline early enough to get people organized. No matter when I cut it off I get inundated with request that keep me from finalizing the race details.

You wouldn't believe the stress that is caused by not having somebody's t-shirt size at packet pickup. This is the kind of stuff that holds up the start time.