Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
Maximal 400s at the track this morning. Why do they hurt so much ?
Morning
i had some money taken. i applied for swimming, rowing, track, marathon, white water kayaking, football.. and beach volleyball
the amount they have taken, including shipping costsd - just happens to add up to the beach volleyball total. so its 4 tix to the mens and womens semis of beach volleyball on a tues night at horse guards parade! wil be a good laugh, but still it's all a bit of a joke.... another guy at my work applied for >£3,500 of tix, and he got £216 taken. seems to me that most people are getting zero events, or 1 event regardless of how much they applied for, so doesn't feel all that random.
anyways.. some v big months training going on there from Gobi/Padams as usual - although they are looking even bigger than norm!! Gobi - i don't know why having never done them, but i can imagine.
I got my 2nd consecutive 250 mile month in May, after 60 in Feb and 30 in March due to travel and hip injury. So feel like i'm back at it
. 6 miles easy done yesterday, no problems really, just tight hammies still, so i'll go for 7 today! Think i need to bang out a few consecutive 300 mile months though to have any chance at A race.
thanks for the pre marathon hydration tips as well, i'll remember some of those.
Now before CRAB comes on here to remind me that I should expect no special treatment amongst millions of applicants, I can accept that (despite being a London taxpayer).
I can also accept the fact that hardcore fans will mostly be absent. Often the way with big events (a bit like club runners who can't get a look in at VLM, or the season ticket holder who can't get to the cup final).
I can even accept the enormous corporate quota. Having spent most of my working life at IMG & Coca-Cola, I've seen from the inside how this works. Great if you are in, not so if you're out. I personally know loads of people who will be there on huge corporate jollies who have never heard of Bekele, Isinbayeva, Gay or Idowu.
No, my real beef - and where my schoolboy hero Seb Coe should hang his head in shame, and which he will surely come to regret - is the ludicrous system in which institutions with enormous buying power (ie touts and agencies) will have applied for millions of pounds of tickets with the sole intention of selling them on at vast prices. I guarantee there will be a public outcry at this by next year.
I am really sorry to read on here about the ticket fiasco. Friends here are true sporting fans and it's clear this has been an almighty muck up. I didn't apply in the end, mainly because I couldn't afford to tie up the cash in my bank account! Stupid system 'eh?
We can still watch the marathon for free though? Think that's what I may well do.
Beginning to be able to do easy runs again. Progress!
'Come and join in the biggest jamboree ever.'
'Be a part of it.'
They said. Well I looked into the volunteer thing but you know what? Six weeks off work isn't that easy for most. I've applied for a lot more tickets than I could afford and got none. So they wanted 6weeks work from me for nothing or me to pay hugely inflated prices to see anything? That's equitable and inclusive. I guess my involvement will be from the comfort of my sofa. That's pi$$ poor. I was always an Ovett man anyway even before he got into bed with Hague - allegedly before Christopher Myers didn't ;o)
Bunch of @rse*.
Hope this post hasn't blown Secret Squirrel's cover. I don't think Morocco Mole lurks ;o)
As you were.
* this relates to the ticketing fiasco not William Hague's sleeping arrangements.
i'll definitely be interested in seeing what events come up in this "second chance" saloon... as i'm also inclined to believe that people who have applied for events which are NOT over subscribed have still got sweet (pardon me CRAB) F all.... although i guess now that i got 1 event out of my >£4k applied for, i won't get to apply for any of those though.
no tickets for me either.....
nice 10k'ing last weekend, well done all.
I enjoyed the early Monday morning sub-3. Legs have felt fine afterwards. Nice article in the Independent
Nope - none for me either. Gobsmacked that my a dull morning in Athletics didn't come off, and simply can't understand how on earth my rowing application could be full.
Bollocks to the Olympics then. I'll go on holiday instead.
oops - not sure how that post doubled up - not even on iphone! delete.
Maybe we should all print t-shirts of Ovett's thrilling 800m win in Moscow...
I also just don't understand the economics of corporate entz, and it strikes me as laziness rather than greed. I've been to the Cup Final, a Grand Prix and to Wimbledon, and at all three I am sure that thousands of people would happily have paid more than my entry cost, even without the champagne. And would have cared - the only pleasure I got from the Cup Final was of depriving one of Chelsea's loathsome fans from a seat.
For those that want dodgy stats, of nine declarations that I know of, £1,178 has been deducted from £17,310 applied for. Nearly all of them were from people I know to be runners so your chances
of seeing any athletics was around the 15 to one mark. Not perfect maths but it gives an idea.
I'm a bit surprised by the success of selbs mate getting £4,400 worth, but I guess that he applied for the more obscure sports like clay pigeon shooting.
Dull
Just back from two days on the moors reccying the Osmotherley Phoenix, a 33 mile race in early July. First day v wet, second day nice and sunny but quads shot from first day, so slightly painful.
Marathon course doesn't look very good, I think its a big error to not finish in the stadium. Nice sub3 coro, very understated . . .
Selbs nice consistent training there
The Olympic ticket allocation has been a mess. Sorry to read that so many here have ended up empty-handed. The winners seem to have been Corporate Sponsors and people stupid enough, or wealthy enough to gamble big in order to win small. Those who 'bid' sums of money within their means have generally lost out.
Weird thing is that so many people I know are going to Beach Volleyball or Handball matches, and yet I know of only one person going to see an athletics session (two if Dids got lucky). And the Olympic stadium is HUGE compared with the handball or beach volleyball arenas. We kept being told that the public ballot was allocated so many million tickets, but I suspect that athletics tickets were very underrepresented.
I bid £710 (beach volleyball, track cycling, swimming, athletics), and was pretty lucky to end up with £180 (+ £6 postage), which I *think* is two afternoon sessions of beach volleyball. Will look to swap one of these sessions for cycling or swimming (I wasn't expecting to get BOTH sessions of beach volleyball that I'd applied for) but I'm not sure how LOCOG are going to handle ticket registration so it might not be straightforward. I also bought hockey tickets from http://www.dertour.de/olympia-2012/tickets-buchen.html so I can spend an evening at the Olympic Park. Dertour are official ticket resellers, primarily selling to the German market, but anyone from the EU is free to buy. Tickets are first come, first served, so most of the athletics stuff went quite quickly, but they still have tickets left for badminton, basketball, boxing, fencing, handball, hockey, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and many other sports, but shipping costs to the UK are quite steep.
Add the women's marathon (coro - nice work checking out the course!) , and I've hopefully got a decent weekend of sport lined up next year in London. There are still opportunities for many on here to get tickets, either through EU resellers (there are quite a few besides Detours), the 'second chance' application for those who got none, or by keeping an eye out for tickets sold back by punters who got caught up in the excitement and will have second thoughts in the coming months.
EeeezaGOOODboyyyyy!
He's as mad as a brush. He's taken to wandering off when we go walking and running as fast as he can through undergrowth, so I spend much of my free time picking grass seeds out of his fur. It's a little unsettling but he generally stays within earshot and checks he can still see us, although he vanished for a good 5 minutes last Saturday.
I bought a set of clippers having lost patience with trying to find a groomer who's not booked to the end of July. However, there's absolutely no chance at all of getting anywhere near him with them - I suspect he's going to need a general anaesthetic just to clip the hair around his ears.
Loads and loads of fun.
What a mess. Isn't there a second allocation coming up sometime? Anyone know if the running clubs are getting any?
All bought instantly online on first come first served for Athens 2004. Mind you, the winner of the 100m was on drugs so maybe I should ask for my money back. And I got a ticking off for booing Marion Jones while she was warming up for the long jump. I knew she was up to no good!!
Think I might join CRAB in spending six weeks directing the VIP parking in Broxbourne for nothing.
If I get any more disillusioned with 2012, I might release details of how many people are working full time (and many have been for years!!!) at my former employers (big fizzy drink sponsor), on their execution of their sponsorship. It's probably ten times the most ridiculous number you could think would be necessary.
Hail Hail
Tickets - didnt bid for any as the travel and accomodation for those of from the frozen north would probably double or even treble the cost of the actual tickets. However, given that certain venues in Glasgow (and remember - we've got the poor mans equivalent 2 yrs later) will act as training venues, I should get the chance to see some stuff going for free. Also, hoping that I may get some form of corporate thing given my employers. At least I'd care about what I was going to see. Really sorry to hear about all the disappointments for you all though. Yet again, I find myself agreeing with Crab - he is indeed a wise old man.
coro - nice read that article. Was that a well kent face as #45, and you lurking behind #3?
May stats
mileage - 269
rest days - 6 inc taper and recovery for Edinburgh
ave pace - 6.52
races - 2
PBs - zilch, zero, nada, feck all.
The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the ticketing situation does look a real mess. In fact, it’s a total, avoidable travesty.
My brother applied for a hell of a lot of tickets, on the assumption he may only get 10%. (He got about 20% in the end). Had he got all of them, he would have then simply sold the unwanted ones back to the official web site next year. Someone on the radio ordered £35K worth and ending up paying £11k.So, if you could afford to carry a big cashflow hole for a year, and placed a massive order, you are probably smiling right now. You’ll have tickets for several events.
I’m suspecting the rest of us who went for a few hundred quid fared a lot worse. Sounds like 50% of people came away completely empty handed (or got BMX!)
Easy to have a moan, but what’s the alternative?Firstly, who’s bloody paying for the Olympics? If it’s central government, then the tickets must surely go first and foremost to Joe Public. If it’s London residents, then first pick to Londoners.
What would have been a fair ballot? Well, it’s normal polite practice to make sure that everyone gets something before offering what’s left to those who want more. It would have been as simple as getting people to list their orders in preference order, and put a limit on how much they would spend in total. As soon as someone gets an allocation, they get no more tickets until the computer has allocated to everyone else. And then it’s onto the next preference of everyone until all tickets have been sold.
Would it have worked in practice? If 1m people opted for the 100m final @ £50, then they will be disappointed, but after working down their list of preferences you’d get something decent eventually. If you have a long list of unpopular sports, you’d stop getting tickets when your spending limit was reached.
OK, the richer will end up with more tickets than poor people, but there’s some element of fairness AND it wouldn’t impact overall sales!!!
Bloody simple – but then they said that about the AV vote and some people couldn’t get it.RB: yup, I'm pinning my hopes on lots of Glasgow tickets in 2014. If my sister evens dares to contemplate moving, I'll cry!
LD: I applied for 8 tickets totalling over £1,000. I thought I was increasing my chances by being prepared to sit alone and sometimes pay up to the middle tier price-wise, but it appears I knew jack sh!t.
Lord Didsbury: right on mate
Joolska: commiserations
I got tickets for the Olympic football being held at Hampden Park (but then again, I'm happy with that living in Edinburgh and all
)
London hotels are a massive extra expense for those living outside London as well.
So if anyone here has managed to get tickets for the events in the Olympic park, I'd be happy to accommodate some guests at MtR mansions. Camping will also be available in our extensive grounds. Free of charge to sub-3 thread peeps of course. The family (female branch) have indicated they will be vacating the area for the duration. I shall be off work the entire time, and shall alternate between spending my time glued to the TV or pressing my nose against the fence of the Olympic park in a sad protest.
So, reckon we'll book a train down and stay in a Holiday Inn. For four people won't be much more than £400 Inc tickets. That's great value to see what is undoubtedly the games' flagship event.
MtR, that's very kind of you, I'd love to camp out in your garden for the duration of the Olympics. Then I can rent out my house for some exorbitant sum.
Joking apart, if anyone does want to rent my house which is within 2k of the Olympic park then let me know. I'll take your money up front and tell you in 2013 whether you've been successful.
Before I read Jools "Loneliness of the mid tier sitter", I was going to suggest that for the athletics and probably other sports as well), all the cheap seats were over subscribed and that there will additional more expensive seats available....but that may not be the case.
I applied for 6 morning athletic sessions, 5 afternoon athletic sessions and 2 tennis day sessions. I've been charged £150 +£6. Can't work out what I've got but there's probably 2 sessions out of 13.
I suppose it's no different from The World Cup, Cup Final or Superbowl, events where the the popularity of the event transcends the popularity of the sport it represents. Although I really don't think that the prawn sandwich brigade are more deserving than I am, there's f..k all I can do about it.
LOGOC are constantly assuring us that there will no market for tickets at prices above the coupon value, but I'm not holding me breath. At best they will end up as part of a corporate package designed to distort or hide the underlying "mark up' on the ticket.
Like most people I'm coming to the conclusion that the unspent ticket application funds could be best utilised in the purchase of a very large TV.
dont appear to have bagged any tickets either !
my ribs just about let me do 13M real slow early doors
this fella should try fitting this round a working day "the Don". looks like a lot of running to me !
what about Yellow Pinkie ?