The Energizer Night Race Shambles!
Wonderful organization, great support staff, excellent signages, loads of water stations, numerous medical stations, skilled marshals, polite officials and professional accountability. That was everything the Energizer Night Race was not!!!
The run itself was wonderful, to say the least. The thrill of running on the very same track that formula 1 drivers race on was out of this world. But that's about all that was great about the ENR, a race I'm NEVER taking part in again.
I knew there would be some issues with the race, most races don't always go very smoothly. But I thought since they did organize this race last year, the organizers would be more experienced in organizing a marathon but how wrong I was.
I should have realized things were going to be bad when I had to pay the exorbitant parking and then had to be content with no proper signages on what to do and where to report for the race. Never mind, I said, after all, I'm here to run and after slogging it out for 21K and crossing the line exhausted and then standing in a long queue to collect the goodie bag and finishers medal, they decide to shut down the collection centre cos they cannot ascertain if some runners actually did two loops around the track.
And the worst part was they were not even apologetic about the entire screw up. I mean, if some of the runners wanted to cheat themselves and not do two loops, that's their problem but you should have been prepared for something like this when you decided on the route. Having to make runners run two loops in the track without a proper way of distinguishing if they really did was asking for trouble. What happens? Yes, chaos reigned.
I heard people in the 5.5K category was given the 42K finishers medal. How in heaven's name that happened I really can't say seeing as how the 5.5K runners would have come in about half an hour to an hour and it's easy to tell that they're NOT 42K runners. I even heard that the winner of the 21K was classified as coming in 74th placing (shocked, cos timing chips were issued). I don't know if all that are really true or not by chaos did reign and I felt cheated after the run.
Let's just say that I'm not ever taking part in any Energizer organized events in the future and would just stick to running events that are organized by professionals.
But all that said and done, I had a great time with my run. I managed to keep to my goal of doing a sub two hour for my run. I was a little off my normal pace cos I was a little thrown off by the inclines that littered my run, from the outer loop to the inside of the track. While I've seen the track on TV and knew that there would be inclines but the inclines were in reality much steeper than what the darned TV camera's aired during the F1 race.
By the second loop around the track I was already tiring out considerably and was on the verge of getting cramps in my legs at the final 1K to the finish line. But I managed to hold on and crossed that finish line in my targeted time :D It would have been a wonderful evenings event if it wasn't for the lousy organization on the part of Energizer.
I wonder how they're gonna make this right. They mentioned that they're gonna post the goodie bags and the finishers medals but I seriously don't expect to receive anything. No loss I suppose. What matters most is that I enjoyed my run and can't wait for my next race.
From now on, it's gonna be Duracell batteries for me ... LOL!
The run itself was wonderful, to say the least. The thrill of running on the very same track that formula 1 drivers race on was out of this world. But that's about all that was great about the ENR, a race I'm NEVER taking part in again.
I knew there would be some issues with the race, most races don't always go very smoothly. But I thought since they did organize this race last year, the organizers would be more experienced in organizing a marathon but how wrong I was.
I should have realized things were going to be bad when I had to pay the exorbitant parking and then had to be content with no proper signages on what to do and where to report for the race. Never mind, I said, after all, I'm here to run and after slogging it out for 21K and crossing the line exhausted and then standing in a long queue to collect the goodie bag and finishers medal, they decide to shut down the collection centre cos they cannot ascertain if some runners actually did two loops around the track.
And the worst part was they were not even apologetic about the entire screw up. I mean, if some of the runners wanted to cheat themselves and not do two loops, that's their problem but you should have been prepared for something like this when you decided on the route. Having to make runners run two loops in the track without a proper way of distinguishing if they really did was asking for trouble. What happens? Yes, chaos reigned.
I heard people in the 5.5K category was given the 42K finishers medal. How in heaven's name that happened I really can't say seeing as how the 5.5K runners would have come in about half an hour to an hour and it's easy to tell that they're NOT 42K runners. I even heard that the winner of the 21K was classified as coming in 74th placing (shocked, cos timing chips were issued). I don't know if all that are really true or not by chaos did reign and I felt cheated after the run.
Let's just say that I'm not ever taking part in any Energizer organized events in the future and would just stick to running events that are organized by professionals.
But all that said and done, I had a great time with my run. I managed to keep to my goal of doing a sub two hour for my run. I was a little off my normal pace cos I was a little thrown off by the inclines that littered my run, from the outer loop to the inside of the track. While I've seen the track on TV and knew that there would be inclines but the inclines were in reality much steeper than what the darned TV camera's aired during the F1 race.
By the second loop around the track I was already tiring out considerably and was on the verge of getting cramps in my legs at the final 1K to the finish line. But I managed to hold on and crossed that finish line in my targeted time :D It would have been a wonderful evenings event if it wasn't for the lousy organization on the part of Energizer.
I wonder how they're gonna make this right. They mentioned that they're gonna post the goodie bags and the finishers medals but I seriously don't expect to receive anything. No loss I suppose. What matters most is that I enjoyed my run and can't wait for my next race.
From now on, it's gonna be Duracell batteries for me ... LOL!
these moron just never learned, i thought it was bad last year, but this year they managed to worsen it. What a waste of energy, petrol, time and money for this, this was my last ENR race ever, period!
ReplyDeleteBTW, good job on getting the sub-2
Ray - It was a nice run spoilt by lousy organization. The cost of parking alone almost made me faint!
ReplyDelete