Cork BHAA Macroom 5k Farce

Gambas

I paid a visit to Cork last week and entered a 5k in Macroom organised by the Cork BHAA. The pre-race organisation seemed pretty impressive - about 700 entrants but loads of yellow bibs on the main street, barriers and clock in place for the finish and the race started without an unreasonable delay. The only thing I found odd was that I wasn't asked for my category when registering.

The course itself was a nice run. Except that I had splits calculated based km's, seeing as it was a 5k race, and took a bit of time to realise that there was no km markers and instead there were mile markers. Not the end of the world but having the first marker a third of the way through the race made things tricky.

Then came the finish line... the clock was by general consensus about 50 seconds out. I hoped the BHAA would be able to factor this into the results. It took about 5 mins to filter though the chute and have your number taken.

All this I can live with. At the end of the day, so long as you get the results sheet and it has accurate times and placings on it then the rest is minor details, right?.

But the results have been posted (after 3 or 4 days) and show the times and places of just 140 the 700+ entrants. It looks to me like they are BHAA members. The rest of us 500+ entrants might as well not exist. It is over a week now and no indication that they will ever be posted.

No km markers, clock wrong by about a minute and no results. What a farce.

EauRouge79

Sadly, this is becoming the norm with Cork BHAA. This year has been a disaster.
To many mistakes.

Its pretty much a week before you get the results available for any of the races, and at that stage most of the runners have lost interest.

BeepBeep67

Ran this race last year and found it to be very well run on a nice but challenging course and excellent value. I had checked when registering if I could could enter as a master and was told I needed to be a member of Cork BHAA, which was fair enough. No issues with the the time or finishing for me. Pity if they've let their standards drop which would be quite unusual for Cork based races.

eliwallach

EauRouge79 wrote: »

Sadly, this is becoming the norm with Cork BHAA. This year has been a disaster.
To many mistakes.

We're all prone to these.

eliwallach

EauRouge79 wrote: »

Sadly, this is becoming the norm with Cork BHAA. This year has been a disaster.
To many mistakes.

Its pretty much a week before you get the results available for any of the races, and at that stage most of the runners have lost interest.

This is the norm with the BHAA in Cork.
Stop whinging.

Gambas

eliwallach wrote: »

This is the norm with the BHAA in Cork.
Stop whinging.

It it ok to whinge when the vast majority of competitors don't get their result for a race.....ever?

EauRouge79

eliwallach wrote: »

We're all prone to these.

Prone to mistakes, yes of course we are, but are we not meant to learn from these?
There are to many mistakes at the finish line of races in relation to timing and queuing.

eliwallach wrote: »

This is the norm with the BHAA in Cork.
Stop whinging.

Ill have a whinge if I fancy it.

Delayed results are bad enough as most other races have these produed within 24 housrs, not getting acknowledged as a finisher at all is entirely unacceptable.
Whilst its not an issue for me as I will have my own watch. Some of the less experienced runners out there look forward to seeing the list of finishers/times and placings.

I brought a "new to running" work colleague along to 2 recent races John Buckley 5k and Macroom 5k having told him how good an experience he would have in a properly organised race.
In the 1st one he didnt even get to the finish as the queues were back up beyond the finish line. In the 2nd he hasnt even seen a result.

All of the above being as it may said numbers have increased and he BHAA run the races themselves very well in terms of marshalling on course and volunteers, the routes are also well varied in terms of distance and venues.
Something however needs to be done to at the end of these events to sort this mess.

rom

I have been to many BHAA Cork races where they only give registered results. So I registered . Must say I like the rough and ready nature of the races. It can be funny at times but they get much less wrong than some races that cost much much more. I generally accept my watch time for these as it could be weeks for results at times but got to love the grub afterwards. I personally would love to donate my time and skills in helping to sort out this issue for the BHAA is Cork. The new website this year is a big improvement but results need to be sorted out. If someone from Cork BHAA is reading this PM me and I can help you get a results DB going for your needs.

Burgman

Clearly, organising a race on a voluntary basis is, literally, a thankless job.

Voluntary race organisers put in a huge effort to getting things right. When a race is over, it is hard to muster up the energy to keep working on results the next day.

The Dublin BHAA now has chip timing and it seems to be working very well now. The queues at the finish are gone and any discrepancies are investigated quickly. Maybe Cork BHAA will go down this route at some stage? I'm sure there is a very large financial investment involved though.

You say: "Something however needs to be done to at the end of these events to sort this mess." While I don't dispute your right to whinge, have you ever considered doing your bit for the community and helping out at a race? There are never enough helpers.

You also said: "Prone to mistakes, yes of course we are, but are we not meant to learn from these? There are to many mistakes." Finally, in the spirit of learning from mistakes, I agree that there are indeed too many mistakes.

rom

Gambas wrote: »

I paid a visit to Cork last week and entered a 5k in Macroom organised by the Cork BHAA. The pre-race organisation seemed pretty impressive - about 700 entrants but loads of yellow bibs on the main street, barriers and clock in place for the finish and the race started without an unreasonable delay. The only thing I found odd was that I wasn't asked for my category when registering.

The course itself was a nice run. Except that I had splits calculated based km's, seeing as it was a 5k race, and took a bit of time to realise that there was no km markers and instead there were mile markers. Not the end of the world but having the first marker a third of the way through the race made things tricky.

Then came the finish line... the clock was by general consensus about 50 seconds out. I hoped the BHAA would be able to factor this into the results. It took about 5 mins to filter though the chute and have your number taken.

All this I can live with. At the end of the day, so long as you get the results sheet and it has accurate times and placings on it then the rest is minor details, right?.

But the results have been posted (after 3 or 4 days) and show the times and places of just 140 the 700+ entrants. It looks to me like they are BHAA members. The rest of us 500+ entrants might as well not exist. It is over a week now and no indication that they will ever be posted.

No km markers, clock wrong by about a minute and no results. What a farce.

You jumped the gun. They have posted all the results just the registered first. http://www.corkbhaa.com/pages/results.html

Gambas

rom wrote: »

You jumped the gun. They have posted all the results just the registered first. http://www.corkbhaa.com/pages/results.html

Better late than never is about the best that can be said. Thanks for the heads up.

EauRouge79

Burgman wrote: »

You say: "Something however needs to be done to at the end of these events to sort this mess." While I don't dispute your right to whinge, have you ever considered doing your bit for the community and helping out at a race? There are never enough helpers.
.

Hi Burgman,
As its happens I do take a days holidays from the day job to do a 10 hour shift sorting admin for the same local race every year. Im not a member of a club but started doing this a few years back.

Good to see that the results are up for all at this stage. Hopefully something can be organised by the BHAA to get these results issues sorted and we can move on.

eliwallach

The BHAA forgot a decimal place for one of the non-reg runners.......This sort of thing just can't continue.



:rolleyes:

Hard Worker

The Cork BHAA are a great bunch. They put on some good races at a very reasonable price. Their main problem is that they should be organising BHAA races and not open races.