It Shouldn't Be This Hard
When you think about the most difficult aspect in the whole marathoning process you probably think about the actual 26.2 miles, or maybe trying to catch your flight after it took you longer than expected to complete your race, or possibly it might be dealing with the TSA agent who thinks your Finisher’s Medal or The Stick in your carry-on could be used as a weapon. But what you probably don’t think about as being particularly hard is signing up for your race.
As I approach the completion of the 2nd time around the states, I had 3 marathons to go and found myself asking why it was so difficult just to get signed up. In fact, if it were possible to quantify the difficulty of signing up for a race, I would not be surprised to discover that any one of these last 3 were more difficult than the cumulative difficulty of all the 97 prior marathons.
Rather than besmirching the reputation of marathon number #98 (which, by the way was a great race that I would return to) I will just refer to it as #98. I repeatedly returned to the race website with the hopes of signing up. After checking the website a half dozen times over a 2 month period, I called and was told the website would be up and running the following Wednesday. Wednesday came and went, but no website. An additional phone call was made and I was told that they were experiencing difficulties. They took my home address and told me they would mail a paper entry form. Two weeks later and, you guessed it, no entry form. Now I was starting to get frustrated. But now we move on to marathon #99.
I had signed up for Mind the Ducks 12 Hour in upstate New York well in advance. No problem, right? Wrong. Sixty days prior to race day I received my race entry form and check in the mail along with a letter apologizing for the fact that the race was being cancelled. The next day I called the race director to ask her if there was any chance that she would reconsider. She stated that she was not able to put the race on due to health reasons. I discussed with my wife the possibility of putting on a race ourselves (since we had already paid for lodging for a week at Lake Placid) rather than having to make an additional trip across country. Also the number of available races in New York prior to Chicago (where I wanted to finish my 2nd time around) with a generous time limit, was very limited.
We decided to go ahead and put a race on. My wife was to be the Race Director, although most of the leg work would be on me. I immediately submitted the race to marathonguide. I then e-mailed Paula Boone to see if there would be any problem with this. She wrote back to state that the Board was having a conference call the following afternoon and that it would be discussed. The next afternoon Dave Bell called to let me know that the Board had approved going ahead with the race even though we were slightly inside of the 60 days required by Club rules. I’m guessing they were taking mercy on me since this was a situation beyond my control. Finally something was going right. Now all we had to do was get enough runners to have a good chance of 10 finishers. More on this later.
Chicago. My 100th. Unless you don’t follow marathoning news, you probably heard about the registration problems Chicago had this year. There website collapsed (insert whatever joke you want about the government healthcare website here!) and I was one of the individuals that didn’t get registered prior to the shutdown of the site. As a result, I had to sign up for the lottery and hope for the best. At this point I should mention that this all came to a head in the wrong order as far as timing. If I was selected in the lottery, I would need to sign up for the marathon by the following Thursday, but this was about the time that #99 (Mind the Ducks) was cancelled, and I still hadn’t heard from #98.
Speaking of #98, I called to find out why I hadn’t received a paper entry form in the mail. I prefaced the conversation stating that I had not been able to access the website. I was told that the website had been up for a week. I thanked them and tried again. No success! I called back and told them I still was unable to access the website. She asked what web address I was using. When I told her she stated that it was not the correct address. She gave me the correct address and I tried it while we were still on the phone. Eureka! I told them they probably should update their link on marathonguide. One down, 2 to go!
After 2 weeks I had not heard back from marathonguide, so I e-mailed to them asking about the progress of getting approved to be posted on their site. A week later and they had not written back or notified us of approval so I e-mailed them again. A week after that I tried to access our marathonguide account to write them again and our account had disappeared. They never followed up on this submission or e-mails - not cool! Exasperation! How was I going to get the word out to get enough runners? Fortunately I had put together a Facebook event page. Unfortunately, this is not where runners go find races.
The Race Director of Mind the Ducks is the member of an ultra racing group. She was good enough to advertise our event within her club. It was picked up by one of their members and he sent out e-invitations to 1100 runners. Uh-oh. What if we had too many runners? We needed 10 finishers and we could manage a small race, but what if half of the 1100 decided to come. We quickly out a 50 runner cap on the race so we didn’t get overloaded.
As I approach the completion of the 2nd time around the states, I had 3 marathons to go and found myself asking why it was so difficult just to get signed up. In fact, if it were possible to quantify the difficulty of signing up for a race, I would not be surprised to discover that any one of these last 3 were more difficult than the cumulative difficulty of all the 97 prior marathons.
Rather than besmirching the reputation of marathon number #98 (which, by the way was a great race that I would return to) I will just refer to it as #98. I repeatedly returned to the race website with the hopes of signing up. After checking the website a half dozen times over a 2 month period, I called and was told the website would be up and running the following Wednesday. Wednesday came and went, but no website. An additional phone call was made and I was told that they were experiencing difficulties. They took my home address and told me they would mail a paper entry form. Two weeks later and, you guessed it, no entry form. Now I was starting to get frustrated. But now we move on to marathon #99.
I had signed up for Mind the Ducks 12 Hour in upstate New York well in advance. No problem, right? Wrong. Sixty days prior to race day I received my race entry form and check in the mail along with a letter apologizing for the fact that the race was being cancelled. The next day I called the race director to ask her if there was any chance that she would reconsider. She stated that she was not able to put the race on due to health reasons. I discussed with my wife the possibility of putting on a race ourselves (since we had already paid for lodging for a week at Lake Placid) rather than having to make an additional trip across country. Also the number of available races in New York prior to Chicago (where I wanted to finish my 2nd time around) with a generous time limit, was very limited.
We decided to go ahead and put a race on. My wife was to be the Race Director, although most of the leg work would be on me. I immediately submitted the race to marathonguide. I then e-mailed Paula Boone to see if there would be any problem with this. She wrote back to state that the Board was having a conference call the following afternoon and that it would be discussed. The next afternoon Dave Bell called to let me know that the Board had approved going ahead with the race even though we were slightly inside of the 60 days required by Club rules. I’m guessing they were taking mercy on me since this was a situation beyond my control. Finally something was going right. Now all we had to do was get enough runners to have a good chance of 10 finishers. More on this later.
Chicago. My 100th. Unless you don’t follow marathoning news, you probably heard about the registration problems Chicago had this year. There website collapsed (insert whatever joke you want about the government healthcare website here!) and I was one of the individuals that didn’t get registered prior to the shutdown of the site. As a result, I had to sign up for the lottery and hope for the best. At this point I should mention that this all came to a head in the wrong order as far as timing. If I was selected in the lottery, I would need to sign up for the marathon by the following Thursday, but this was about the time that #99 (Mind the Ducks) was cancelled, and I still hadn’t heard from #98.
Speaking of #98, I called to find out why I hadn’t received a paper entry form in the mail. I prefaced the conversation stating that I had not been able to access the website. I was told that the website had been up for a week. I thanked them and tried again. No success! I called back and told them I still was unable to access the website. She asked what web address I was using. When I told her she stated that it was not the correct address. She gave me the correct address and I tried it while we were still on the phone. Eureka! I told them they probably should update their link on marathonguide. One down, 2 to go!
After 2 weeks I had not heard back from marathonguide, so I e-mailed to them asking about the progress of getting approved to be posted on their site. A week later and they had not written back or notified us of approval so I e-mailed them again. A week after that I tried to access our marathonguide account to write them again and our account had disappeared. They never followed up on this submission or e-mails - not cool! Exasperation! How was I going to get the word out to get enough runners? Fortunately I had put together a Facebook event page. Unfortunately, this is not where runners go find races.
The Race Director of Mind the Ducks is the member of an ultra racing group. She was good enough to advertise our event within her club. It was picked up by one of their members and he sent out e-invitations to 1100 runners. Uh-oh. What if we had too many runners? We needed 10 finishers and we could manage a small race, but what if half of the 1100 decided to come. We quickly out a 50 runner cap on the race so we didn’t get overloaded.
As my wife and I discussed our new #99 and what we would need to do to get it up and running, I mentioned the idea of having my parents, both in their early 70’s, come out and help us. It would be a road trip from Iowa where they live, to New York, in a van stuffed with provisions and equipment, with a one week vacation culminated in putting on a marathon and 12 hour ultra. The reason we opted for doing an ultra is it seemed more likely that we would be able to attract enough runners if we replicated Mind the Ducks (originally we were going to only do a 9 hour ultra, but had many requests to make it a 12 hour and I figured that if it got us more runners, what was 3 hours of extra work for my free labor?). When I called to ask my parents if they would be interested in coming along, much to my surprise, they said they would. It was the best thing I could have done. Not only did they supply the much needed labor, but many of the runners said how much they enjoyed having them there.
As we were preparing for #99, we first considered having the race at the same location as Mind the Ducks, but in my discussions with their Race Director, it became clear that the location she used was not going to be the best choice due to restrictions in that city. She mentioned another location at a city park in a neighboring city. I contacted the parks department to inquire about permits. The Deputy Commissioner of Parks told me that the location I was asking about would not be the best as there were no toilet facilities there, there was an inordinately high number of geese who frequented that area and left slippery gifts on the path, but that the geese shouldn’t be a problem on the weekend as the park was usually full of dog walkers then. It was clear that would not be a good location.
She suggested having the race on a trail adjacent to the Recreation Center. It was a 1.02 mile loop with real bathrooms just a few steps off the trail. Granted the trail was a bit narrow, only 3 feet wide in most places, but it ran through some very nice wooded areas and we could drive our van right up to the spot where we would set up our aid station. It was perfect.
Now we started the process of really getting the race really put together. We discussed all the silly but important particulars of putting an event together. I asked the Deputy Commissioner of Parks if we could have shirts delivered there and she told me she could provide shirts. They were cotton and would not have a our logo, but we decided to take her up on it. One less thing to worry about.
She suggested having the race on a trail adjacent to the Recreation Center. It was a 1.02 mile loop with real bathrooms just a few steps off the trail. Granted the trail was a bit narrow, only 3 feet wide in most places, but it ran through some very nice wooded areas and we could drive our van right up to the spot where we would set up our aid station. It was perfect.
Now we started the process of really getting the race really put together. We discussed all the silly but important particulars of putting an event together. I asked the Deputy Commissioner of Parks if we could have shirts delivered there and she told me she could provide shirts. They were cotton and would not have a our logo, but we decided to take her up on it. One less thing to worry about.
What about medals? We had named the event What Was I Thinking? Marathon and 12 Hour Run. The reason we named it that is that there is usually a point in ever marathon where I ask myself and anyone around me, “What was I thinking?”. I decided to use the ‘question mark’ as our logo, but could I get medals made in the shape of a question mark? Probably. But as I was looking through a website that sold various custom items I found that custom shot glasses were not that expensive and I came up with the idea of giving those out since we all have medals and this would be a little different. We decided to honor Boston with their colors. Everyone at the race loved them.
The weekend came. We had 23 runner’s certainly enough to get 10 finishers. The weather looked like it would be good. We stayed up late putting together goodie bags. Morning came too early, but we arrived and set up as runner were showing up. I got a hug from Walt Prescott, who needed a NY ultra, since he was trying to do an ultra in each state. What started, in many of the runner’s mind as a quick little replacement run that they didn’t expect much from, turned into a great event. For their $25 runners got free photos, a cotton shirt, plenty of camaraderie, tons of food and Darla’s secret coconut brownies. It turns out, running in circles wasn’t as bad as I expected. Being a way-back-of-the-pack guy, I wasn’t lonesome. (Thanks for staying with me, Cathy Troisi!) We made many friends that days. Many of the local runners asked if we could come back and put it on again in 2014. It’s probably not going to happen, too exhausting!
What Was I Thinking? obviously came together, I did get into Chicago for number 100. It was my first marathon and I wanted it to be where I completed the 2nd time around and retired from the insanity. I have 2 of the U.S majors on Finisher’s Trophies. There won’t be a 3rd because of hip damage. Too bad, I was hoping to get NYC on my 3rd trophy. While training for Chicago I found out I had melanoma and had to have a 3x4 inch chunk of my back removed, but that’s a story for another time. Please wear sunscreen. Run safe and have fun. And hopefully getting into races won’t be this hard for you!
What Was I Thinking? obviously came together, I did get into Chicago for number 100. It was my first marathon and I wanted it to be where I completed the 2nd time around and retired from the insanity. I have 2 of the U.S majors on Finisher’s Trophies. There won’t be a 3rd because of hip damage. Too bad, I was hoping to get NYC on my 3rd trophy. While training for Chicago I found out I had melanoma and had to have a 3x4 inch chunk of my back removed, but that’s a story for another time. Please wear sunscreen. Run safe and have fun. And hopefully getting into races won’t be this hard for you!