Sunday, March 1, 2015

USATF NE 10 mile championship

Here are my thoughts on the USATF Grand Prix race that was held last weekend at the Amherst 10 mile.

For the most part the race itself seemed to go very smoothly (at least from my perspective).  Sadly the performance of USATF NE was again lacking.  I found a USATF official and when I asked who and where the USATF race liaison was, I was told there was no liaison.  This was very disappointing as I was assured at the GP meeting last year that there would be one available at all GP races.  I volunteered to cover any GP that did not have a liaison and was told my help was not needed.  My other gripe with USATF has to do with the bid summary (which is what people depend on when choosing the series races).  The 10 mile bid $6000 for team money yet the summary sheet listed $9000.  If you voted based solely on how much team money was up for grabs you may have been mislead. 

On to the race organization which was great!

Plus:
New slightly faster course (no tight turn early, and an easier final mile)
Well marked (miles, turns)
Plenty of water/Gatorade
Quick number pick-up, plenty of volunteers
Hot soup and treats after
Friendly volunteers, including the guy still handing out water at 2:15 PM
Promptly posted results on the wall
Results and pictures posted on website by that afternoon
 
 
Minus:
Tight start (narrow road is still better than the old start)
Some trouble with traffic at one turn (around 6 miles) but nothing major
Late start – 12:05, perhaps they announced why but 15 rows back I couldn’t hear anything
It looks like the team scoring was not done by rounding all times (shouldn’t affect results but could)
 
 
 

3 comments:

ClaflinFamilyAssociation said...

I was the USATFNE liaison. I had emailed and checked in with the Race Director prior to the event, we had pre-screened the entry list to debug as much as possible before the race to speed up results, and discussed the cancellation policy (posted on the website). You asked the wrong person about USATFNE. Lisa Doucett

Anonymous said...

That's right, Lisa was the race liaison. Tom Derderian(race founder in 1975)

double-d Mountain runner said...

Great to hear their was a liaison. Too bad it wasn't clear who that was. Perhaps in the future USATF NE will consider posting this important information? If USATF NE's own officers don't know who it is, it probably wasn't clear to concerned athletes.