The Un-Race Report
So, how’d my run go?
. . .
It didn’t.
See, here’s the thing. The website where I first saw the race, Run Michigan, and the website where I registered for the race, Active, both have a start time of 8:30am for the race. There is no differentiation between start times for all the runs offered. So, I followed that because, frankly, these sites have never led me astray.
I get to the race site, with my mother in tow (who’d insisted on participating in the 5K walk even though she’d put off registering online for the race, leading me to believe she didn’t really want to walk), to learn that the start time was at 9:30am.
It was a little before 8am at the time.
Ooof. My mother clearly didn’t want to stay–she immediately said that it would be wasting an entire day at the race site, and I had to agree. I had planned my day around an 8:30am start time, and while I could’ve stayed, I had my mother with me who most certainly didn’t want to stay. It struck me that, again, my runs were being compromised by the presence of family, but I didn’t have time to harp on that. I was a bit upset myself–for something that’s been running for 14 years, they weren’t exactly crystal-clear with their start times, were they?
Upon arriving at home, I looked at the run’s website–something I had done, but only briefly–to see that yes, they did have a list of times for the individual runs. However, if you go to the site–www.slxc.com/witch.html–you’ll see that the site needs a major re-haul and is at best poorly presented. Never use font such as papyrus on a website, especially an informative one that’s supposed to be easy to read–honestly, I didn’t take the site seriously given the narrow, playful font. I thought all pertinent info had been provided to the professionals. It wasn’t. My mistake, too, but really, don’t disseminate incorrect information to websites people have come to trust (it’s very hard to argue that trusting Run Michigan or Active is foolish–hell, I used Active to register for my half-marathon, so even Nike’s going with the event granddaddy of them all).
So, I didn’t run. Technically, I’m supposed to run a race tomorrow, but as there aren’t any scheduled in the immediate area, I have to improvise my 10K. I was going to switch today and tomorrow’s runs, but they are now going to be done in their original order, without the benefit of a planned course and chip timing.
Gah. Just . . . gah.
