Race Results

Well yesterday Amelia and I attended the Whitby Waterfront Races. She ran the 1K and I ran the 5K.

She did great, finished 18/61 in 6:01.

I ran the 5K in 25:31 (gun time) and finished 61/163 overall; 5/17 for my age group and 18/90 for females. This isn't bad considering I stopped at one point and walked a couple of times to catch my breath. I started out way to fast (to try and get space...read why below) and held it together for about 3K then was just too winded, and had to catch my breath. I'm actually amazed I finished as well as I did. Not my finest race though. I've only ever walked in one 5K race and that was my first one ever, that I wasn't trained for. Really the only time I've ever walked in a race is two of my five marathons. Anyway, it's been a rough running for me the last few weeks, so time to kick it up a bit.

Now normally I'm not a complainer at races, at least I try not to, but this time I actually have a few complaints.

First off, people were late arriving to the venue that had to pick up their race kit. This delayed things by about 15 minutes. It was a difficult area to pick up the race kits, single file up a set of stairs so that doesn't help. However, I've attended this race before, and there have never been any problems. I went up at about 10:15 and there was no one there picking up (kid's race started at 10:45), which means that the masses of people that were delayed, showed up after me. That in my opinion, is too late.

Then the kid's race started. While they were out on course, someone told runners to start lining up. So down the course they walked and into the start area. This is the same area that the kid's are going to come running back on. Their finish line. So spectators (probably mostly parents), started hollering at people to get off the course and out of the finish area...to no avail. Finally a race person came out and they "somewhat" listened.

Then we all lined up for the 3 events that this year, they decided to start all at the same time. 5K, 10K and 10 miler. It was a timed event so no worries....that is until they said that it was gun time only and they had no start mat and well that faster runners should be at the front. Well you have a few hundred people all lined up already...that isn't going to happen. They should have announced that first. Told 5K runners to go to the front etc. That was frustrating as well. Took a lot of speed (faster than I should have run) to get around the tons of people starting this race that were going slower because they were running longer events or were just slower runners.

So I cross the finish line and they hand me my medal...the same medal I got last year. This in itself doesn't bother me, a lot of events use the same medals every year. However last year they used said "Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health". I thought it odd last year that they gave us a medal that didn't include any event info on it, and was just the name of the venue. Well at least last year that was the venue, this year we weren't even there.

However later on I discovered them giving out these really nice new medals that said Whitby Waterfront Races on the ribbon, big round finisher medal. I asked who got those and they said 10K runners...which was not true, it was the slower 5K runners that were getting them. What happened was they said...get rid of the old stuff first and then give out the new stuff. So because I was, in the big scheme of things, a very early finisher, I got the old one. One mom was beside me and her son had ran the 5K (quite quickly it seems) so they got the old medal. She was trying to get a new one at least for him. I totally agreed. Went to the box, took the new medal and exchanged it for the old one they had given him.

Amelia's medal was an old medal from the WIN marathon they held in the summer. So for her Whitby Waterfront Race 1K it says WIN full marathon...at least it's a nice medal but really...don't give anything, but giving away medals from the wrong venue or old medals (that weren't that great the first year), that's just tacky.
I'd just as well have it be a no medal event myself.

Anyway, I like this event, will run it again as well as other races in the series, but I don't think that they should let the quality of the venue slip. I do feel that happened this year.