The Frozen errrr... Half--What happened?
Today, I and 1000 or so like minded runners, trudged up and down Shepard Road for the annual Securian Frozen Half Marathon (and 5k and 10k). This is one of my favorite winter traditions. It's a good race to stay in shape for to keep your honest and running through the winter months.
This year the course changed to take us around the farmer's market and then past the ice sculptures at Rice Park, before dumping us back onto Shepard Road. Personally, I love the new course, even though the hill at the end of the race still exists.
But today's race did not go without incident. The half marathon ended up being between 11.6 and 11.7 miles, based on two people with Garmins that I spoke with. So what happened? Well, somehow the turn around point was miscommunicated.
My mom and wife and out infant daughter went out to watch the race. I told my wife the perfect cheering spot would be to go to Rankin and Shepard Road, right around mile seven of the course and just before the turnaround (this was not a pure out-and-back, so the turnaround was past the 6.55 mile spot). However, when they got there they looked down Shepard Road they saw the flashing lights down the road and knew that was the turnaround.
So as I am running up Shepard Road, I like so many other runners was very confused about what was happening. Here was a police officer at a random spot telling us we are at the turnaround. We were nowhere near the official turnaround, but everyone else was turning around, so the informal turnaround would have to do.
My mom and wife said they overheard him saying that he had directions that this was supposed to be the turnaround and he was just following the orders he was given. Hard to blame the guy. So my family watched me go by, heard me say a few choice words about spending $30 for such a disorganized race to anyone within earshot before turning around to head back to the finish. Then they drove back home on Shepard Road (on what was supposed to still be part of the course.)
As they were driving back, they saw a few volunteers with an official clock, a sound system with large speakers, and your token fun music pumping out of the speakers. Ooops, there is the official turnaround. These poor guys had no idea that the race would never reach them because the runners were all turned back over half a mile too soon. So my family let them know, so they shut it down.
Boo.
To be honest, when I got to mile 11, I was kind of relieved to only have less than a mile to go. But I was hoping to get a true half marathon time as a baseline to measure my improvement when I run the Grnamda's half this June. I paid thirty dollars for this race with a certain expectation that was not met.
All in all, the race management company has to do a better job. Where is the redundancy in planning and execution to make sure this doesn't happen? What company doesn't have a system of double and triple-checks in place? All it would have required is one employee on a bike who knows the course to ride out in front of the runners. Or have an employee drive the course ahead of time and assure that each person knows his or her job.
But this did not happen. Because of one communication breakdown, an entire race was marginalized. Anderson Race Management has to do better than this. They make the Winter Carnival and Securian look bad, when really it is their job to make sure this race goes smoothly.
At the end of the day, I will do this race again next year. I love the course, the tradition, and the challenge. But my love for Anderson Race Management is lacking. This is not the first race I've been to where a huge error was made (2009 Go Northside 5k had a 12 year-old girl winning even though an adult woman was the actual winner) and I can point to other races where smaller errors were made. However, this is a numbers driven sport, as are all individual sports. And I am really not all that interested from the numbers that come from an 11.6 mile race.
4 comments:
Amen. I also think it takes something away from the mid- to back-of-the-pack 10K runners that we half-marathoners were finishing at the same time as them. This would have been a problem even if the half marathon was truly a half marathon. I hope they ditch the 10K and focus on the half and the 5K. I wonder how the extra race this year might have stretched their volunteer support and contribute to the snafu on the half marathon course.
Additionally, I'll add that the mile markers were almost all off, a couple ridiculously off. If you're going to use mile markers, make sure they're right. Not all of us have Garmins. I'm OK if the race doesn't use them, but if they're going to be there, they need to be accurate. Most were off by 0.1 mile.
Michael,
That was me with my Sound Support Services standing at the ready at the true turnaround on Shepard Rd. Thank your family for notifying us of where the racers were being turned back. We were lonely on that empty roadway with party-running music and camera waiting and no runners.
Like you, I learned more good lessons from the erroneous turnaround erected by the policeman who did his assigned duty.
When I moved my sound system and music to the faux turnaround I conferred with the good officer. I looked at, and read the same way he did, his erroneous printed directions which appeared to have been supplied by the police department, not by ARM. With two different sets of course directions, one for us race workers and perhaps another for the police/security I now understand all the more how communications and management errors can multiply, requiring as you wrote some final course overseer/manager with a single authoritative set of course map instructions.
Regardless, the final authority on a road course is the police and we all do well to follow their instructions for safety sake, even when errors in directions may sometimes, thankfully rarely, occur.
From experience in road racing 'round the world where racers sometimes go off course, I concluded when half marathoners were late in reaching the real turnaround, that they were likely turned back early by the police. And, I guessed before reading the officer's instructions that something was misprinted. Yep his instructions were different than ours. It happens sometimes. Yep...it happens sometimes.
Let's keep recruiting more race event workers along with more fellow runners and together we'll continue to meet event management challenges with experienced anticipation of all the variety of errors that can occur along our way to more finish lines.
Go Michael!
Congrats to the OVERALL winner of the 10K; Natalie Flynn 25 F Eden Prairie MN 30:05 4:52. I wonder if Team MN should recruit her and her new American Record.
Seriously, if I boycott Anderson races and Team Ortho races, will there be anything left?
Your comments are spot on Gary and I appreciate your input as both a volunteer and a race director. I appreciate just how hard it is to put on a race, so I am very hesitant to be critical of race directors. There was clearly a miscommunication between ARM and SPPD. But even so, it is up to the race management company to a) make that final double-check that we're all on the same page (just asking SPPD to cc' them on the race directions would have done the trick) and having a ARM employee on bike with the lead police car would have prevented this from happening.
But I agree, we need more volunteers, who are well-trained by the race management company in advance. And I agree mistakes happen, which is why I'll be doing more ARM races in the future.
But Team Ortho, well, I'm with Chad. Until they lower their prices, it's a little harder to forgive. :)
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