Has anyone else noticed that more and more races are NO entry on the day, which for someone as badly organised as myself can be a real nuisance.
Are race organisers so confidant of full turn-outs that they don't want runners like myself who only decide the week before that they are actually going to run a 20 this week as opposed to a half?
I don't feel that I'm alone on this because of the lengths of the queue for all the races that I do go to.
Of course some might look on it as a cheap race, who wants another medal anyway!
What do any race organisers think?
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e.g.. the Brass Monkey half-m has 1,200 places and sold out in 9 days this year.
Get yourself organised {o:
It makes sense for the organiser to know the number of runners in advance so they can get the right number of t-shirts, mementos, water stations, loos, etc.
Trithlon seems to be even worse.
A fair number of races that have allowed enteries on the day are filling up to their race number limit before the day in my area so if you want to do these races then you need to send in your entry and plan to do them beforehand.
Everybody who turns out on the day to manage and event is there in a volutary capacity and without them we'd have no races at all - many races struggle to get enough volunteers to cover all the required roles. Personnally, I would always rather there was an additional marshall out on the route somewhere instead of someone sitting back at race HQ frantically trying to enter the details of all the late entrants into their results processing system.
This perspective brought to you by a family man with no option but to enter races in advance before his weekends are 'booked up' for him with other 'necessary' duties.
So why are you racing? (This is not a damning thing, just a question to ask yourself.) It may be that for you racing is a sideline to the running and therefore not something you want to stress about. Is is the social occaision of the race you want? If so, then a club run may be just as social. Or is there some other explanation?
In terms of organisation, as others have said, late entries have many problems: those of predicting how many late entrants there will be - especially for supported longer races; the necessity to have multiple people handling those entries; and so on...
As a race organiser, late entrants and people wanting to enter after the closing date cause more expenditure of effort than I am prepared to put it. Remember, we don't do this as a full time job, on the whole, we have day jobs as well.
Its not that I don't want you in my race, but, given a choice between satisfying someone who has entered in advance and guessing whether you want to run or not, I'll spend my time satisfying the committed racer. Isn't that what every racer would want?
I'd never organise another long race with entries on the day. I'd only organise races with entries on the day for short, fun races, with no prizes/trophies, etc.
You are, of course welcome to organise your own events with entries on the day, if you don't like it.
djb
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I entirely agree with you, as a race organiser, that people like me are a pain, and if your race is over-subscribed then a no entry policy is fine. And no I really don't want to organise a race, I can guess what a thankless task it is.
However I still like to enter on the day, and , as I said before, I'm not alone in that.