Cavedog Running

Race-wise, I had a good race. Unfortunately, the race organizers didn't have such a good day (I will get to this further down).

DISCLAIMER: Don't take my observations of this year's race as a reason not to do the race next year. Yes, there were problems, but I expect next year will go smoothly.

After fighting the unexpected crowds to get our race numbers and only getting about a half mile of warmup, we finally started about 15 minutes late because they had so many people still in line.

I put up a good time of 18:39 good for 1st in my age group and 7th overall. It was a little better than I expected as I trained like normal during the week and had over 40 miles on my legs. My overall effort was pretty comfortable. Only my calves were a bit sore. If not for that, would have put up a much better time.

They always have a decent course that starts in front of the Ice Palace. You loop around, through a couple tunnels, over a small bridge and out onto Bayshore and back. So, you can put up a pretty good time.

No real racing in this one. Once I cleared the people who lined up at the front and gassed themselves in the first half mile, it was just a case of running. Not really anybody to pass and nobody behind me.



My Garmin measured 3.22, but that was due to the tunnels screwing it up. The course is really about 3.13 miles.

Receiving my medal from former Lightning players Dave Anreychuk and Chris Dingman.

Now for the unfortunate issues that plagued the race this year. I believe this was the first year they have used chip timing which you would think would help things go smoothly. Believe it or not, the only races I have been to that got screwed have been those with chip timing. You see, the huge downside to chip timing is race day registrations. This time, they had a huge number of late registrants that had to be manually entered into the computer. Somewhere, it all went wrong. Things got so screwed with timing that they didn't even do the 5 mile awards. As of today (Feb. 22nd), results still are not posted on Cool Running. They did get them up on Active (they are net times and not the actual chip times).

Besides timing, this race had issues from start to finish. We arrived to the race site around 6:15 a few minutes later than normal and there was a huge line for packet pickup. After using the bathroom, we tried to figure out what line to get into as they had pre-registered and race-day registration lined up next to eachother. Then they had a separate line for number pickup. We were running out of time and not knowing what was where, I went to the number pickup line and left Jenny and the kids in the packet line. There were a lot of confused people. Another bonus, they ran out of safety pins for the numbers. Luckily, we have our own supply in the van. it was a good thing we grabbed our packets when we did. They announced to people to pick up the packets after the race. Well, the volunteers unknowingly gave out a lot of shirts to late registrants leaving a lot of pre-registered people without shirts.

For me, the race itself went fine. But, there were issues there as well. Miles were not marked well. I happened to notice the 1 mile mark spray painted on the road but no signs. No big deal with my Garmin. Jenny told me after that they were using foam cups at the water station. No big deal as I don't take water during 5K. Would have been problem if I did. In order to actually get water in your mouth, you have to crush the top of the cup and make a spout, you can imagine what would happen with foam. There was plenty of food and drink at the end including some pretty good pizza that they kept bringing out.

Police did a good job blocking traffic for us and it was fun watching all the POed drivers having to wait.

The timing issues caused the longest wait ever for awards. The race started at 7:00 and the 5K awards didn't start until around 10:30. That is pretty unacceptable.

Another SNAFU that did impact us was the tickets to that night's hockey game that come with each entry. You would think that 5 entries with the same name, in sequential number order would get 5 tickets together. Nope, we ended up with 5 tickets in 3 different sections. They had a ticket upgrade/issues table setup. They wouldn't be able to get 5 tickets together for the night's game so they offered up tickets for Wednesday or Friday. We went with Wednesday vs. Phoenix. Except for screwing up our plans for the night, this sort of works out as we all griped about having to watch the Lightning vs. Panthers which always and did suck. So hopefully the game tomorrow night will be a good one.

I was impressed that there was an email from Kelvin Woodson of the Lightning apologising for the mess when we got home. I was more impressed that he replied to my email within 5 minutes.

The Bolt Run is a good race that got completely blind sided. I am chalking all the oranisational snafus to a fluke and expect that the race will be top notch next year.

Next up for me is Gasparilla weekend where I will run all four races as part of the Michelob Ultra Challenge. Should be fun!