I finished the 5K on St. Patrick's Day on Saturday. It was an extremely warm day, but it was better than cold and rainy. I finished with a time of 37:08. I should have been under 37 minutes, but they didn't have a timing pad at the start and we took our sweet time getting across the line to let the crowd thin out a little bit.
I don't think I trained enough for distance in the month leading up to it. I definitely need to concentrate on running longer distances between now and the next race. Ideally, I'd like to trim 2 minutes off my time and come in under 35 minutes next time.
Next race: Bash the Bluffs 5K. The hills should provide more of a challenge than the road race downtown, but I need to do more hills for the ascent anyway.
i'm registered for the pikes peak ascent (again)
I was up at 5:45am on Wednesday morning to fight the crowds on active.com again. The first couple of times I clicked on the link prior to 6am I got a "too busy" error. Around 5:59, I refreshed the page again and got the registration page. I quickly checked all the waivers and disclaimers and was in the race by 6:02. Back to the registration page, I now had to get my buddy Josh in. Since neither him or his wife bothered to call me back with their address, I had to do some quick web detective work to get it. I paid the $89.25 at 6:07am for Josh and we both were in the race.
Apparently, it was just in the nick of time, too, as the race filled up just a few minutes later. Some of our other friends were unable to get in and they were accessing the site at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if this system of registration is scrapped next year in favor of a lottery. It only seems fair since plenty of people still wake up early on a Thursday or Tuesday morning to try and register only to be shut out by the computers. It would be much more convenient to set a deadline to send lottery entries in by, with a credit card number, that would be charged if your name was drawn on the lottery date.
Anyway, I'm in! Now it's really time to start training. The weather has been awesome lately and doesn't show any signs of getting worse through late next week so I'm gonna be hitting it hard the remainder of this week, this weekend in the 5K, and through next week.
Apparently, it was just in the nick of time, too, as the race filled up just a few minutes later. Some of our other friends were unable to get in and they were accessing the site at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if this system of registration is scrapped next year in favor of a lottery. It only seems fair since plenty of people still wake up early on a Thursday or Tuesday morning to try and register only to be shut out by the computers. It would be much more convenient to set a deadline to send lottery entries in by, with a credit card number, that would be charged if your name was drawn on the lottery date.
Anyway, I'm in! Now it's really time to start training. The weather has been awesome lately and doesn't show any signs of getting worse through late next week so I'm gonna be hitting it hard the remainder of this week, this weekend in the 5K, and through next week.
back to square one
So they just posted on the Pikes Peak Marathon site the process to remedy the botch registration from last week. Looks like I've got to re-register now. The races that were less than 50% full which is all of the Triple Crown of Running spots and Wave 1 of the Ascent will pick up where they left off. The Marathon and Wave 2 of the Ascent (which I will be running) are set to start a brand new registration on Tuesday March 13th at 6 AM MST. I guess they decided on that time so as not to interfere with any other registrations starting at the same time. I hope the hardware over at active.com can handle the rush.
The message from the directors stated that no races were between 50% and full so that means both the marathon and Wave 2 of the Ascent were full before they shut things down. Myself and a couple friends at work will be trading information and registering for each other if something comes up next Tuesday morning.
The message from the directors stated that no races were between 50% and full so that means both the marathon and Wave 2 of the Ascent were full before they shut things down. Myself and a couple friends at work will be trading information and registering for each other if something comes up next Tuesday morning.
active.com fallout
The fine folks at the board of the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon had an emergency meeting Thursday night to discuss the epic mishandling on the part of active.com during the registrations yesterday. They still don't have a resolution for the problem, but I hope they can get something figured out quickly. The board is to be commended for taking some extra time to listen to competitors and put some thought into the situation instead of just offering up a quick solution based on a knee-jerk reaction. I'll be fine with whatever they decide. I just hope it's something that doesn't upset too many others.
There were talks of lawsuits and other nonsense on the PPAM forums today. That is just absurd. I realize some people plan entire trips around this race, but threatening to sue the directors would be a fruitless and frivolous endeavor. I know there are a lot of people still in the dark about their registration, but I'm sure that the board will come up with a solution that takes into account all the possible situations that folks are in right now. Whether already registered, registered multiple times, or just didn't even know that the registration was halted and still got through after others quit trying, I think the race directors will come up with an equitable solution. You can't please all the people all the time, but hopefully they can figure out a way to please most of the people some of the time.
Good luck to the directors and to all the runners!
There were talks of lawsuits and other nonsense on the PPAM forums today. That is just absurd. I realize some people plan entire trips around this race, but threatening to sue the directors would be a fruitless and frivolous endeavor. I know there are a lot of people still in the dark about their registration, but I'm sure that the board will come up with a solution that takes into account all the possible situations that folks are in right now. Whether already registered, registered multiple times, or just didn't even know that the registration was halted and still got through after others quit trying, I think the race directors will come up with an equitable solution. You can't please all the people all the time, but hopefully they can figure out a way to please most of the people some of the time.
Good luck to the directors and to all the runners!
active.com sucks
Active.com is a website that a lot of race organizers outsource the tasks of registration and collection of fees to. The Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon was no different. However, with the shotgun registration process that is in place for the PPAM, apparently Active.com wasn't prepared for the traffic all at once.
A buddy at work notified me at about 7:58am this morning that the registration had opened. I browsed on over and started the process. I knew after the first button I clicked on the page that things were messed up. It took a considerable amount of time for the next screen to show up. All totaled, it took me about 25 minutes to register for the race. When I got a receipt via email, it said that my card had been charged the $95.55, but the "Registration For" section of the receipt was blank. WTF? I then tried to print a receipt on the Active.com site. Everytime I clicked that link, it lead me to a blank page.
About 20 minutes after I had registered, I was finally able to print out a copy of the receipt and waiver. A couple guys at work also experience difficulty but finally managed to get registered in just under an hour.
As the day went on, the PPAM staff updated the website and eventually called off the registration until they could sort out the massive screw-up they had on their hands compliments of Active.com. For a website that many race organizers use, you would think they have their act together enough to accept registrations from a couple thousand people in an hour. It's a pretty monumental IT failure on their part and I hope another system can move in and take over where Active failed so miserably.
As of now, I'm in the race. The Board of Directors for the PPAM is having a meeting tonight to discuss how to fix the botched registration. I hope my entry holds and they open it again for the remaining slots left. I think it would also be cool if Active.com would refund my $6.30 processing fee that I paid to fight with their website this morning for a half hour.
Stay tuned for more!
A buddy at work notified me at about 7:58am this morning that the registration had opened. I browsed on over and started the process. I knew after the first button I clicked on the page that things were messed up. It took a considerable amount of time for the next screen to show up. All totaled, it took me about 25 minutes to register for the race. When I got a receipt via email, it said that my card had been charged the $95.55, but the "Registration For" section of the receipt was blank. WTF? I then tried to print a receipt on the Active.com site. Everytime I clicked that link, it lead me to a blank page.
About 20 minutes after I had registered, I was finally able to print out a copy of the receipt and waiver. A couple guys at work also experience difficulty but finally managed to get registered in just under an hour.
As the day went on, the PPAM staff updated the website and eventually called off the registration until they could sort out the massive screw-up they had on their hands compliments of Active.com. For a website that many race organizers use, you would think they have their act together enough to accept registrations from a couple thousand people in an hour. It's a pretty monumental IT failure on their part and I hope another system can move in and take over where Active failed so miserably.
As of now, I'm in the race. The Board of Directors for the PPAM is having a meeting tonight to discuss how to fix the botched registration. I hope my entry holds and they open it again for the remaining slots left. I think it would also be cool if Active.com would refund my $6.30 processing fee that I paid to fight with their website this morning for a half hour.
Stay tuned for more!
