A Disturbing Trend

What better use of an extra hour than to prepare this weeks blog post early for once? For those of you in Arizona, you get this benefit for free!

This week and next week we will meet at 5:00 with the group run starting at 5:05. We lost an hour of light with the end of daylight saving time but we only move the start up by 30 minutes in order to keep as many people involved as we can. This does mean it will be quite dark by the time the run completes, so be smart, run with someone if you can, and we skip the final cool down walk to shave 5 minutes off the end of our routine. (Another good idea is to choose a shorter run but to do it at a higher intensity to maximize the time available.) Remember that the bathrooms get locked at 5 as well, so arrive before that if you want to get relief right before you run.

A personal story on why I probably will not be there this week (and next?): after a failed attempt to sign Joseph back up for swim lessons at the Y on any weeknight but Tuesday we need to find an open time that will work for taking him ourselves. Naively the only time that works for us will be an early Tuesday night slot that is currently set aside for TRY. I’ll provide an update in the FB comments once I know for sure as I still need to check open pool times and compare schedules.

Since those of you who want to run through the winter will have to soon consider some treadmill running I thought now is the perfect time to share this article on how to make treadmill runs equivalent to running outside. It gives advice on how to get equal effort out of a treadmill run, then gets confusing, then comes around to a surprising conclusion. I am going to make you read it for yourself just to enjoy the circular journey it takes you on. (It is sort of fascinating and it’s my attempt to “amaze my running buddies” as is suggested in the final sentence.)

Due to underestimating the popularity of the “Seneca 7” race, the TRY team missed out on getting in before it sold out on Friday morning. In a continuation of a disturbing trend, the time you have to sign up for these popular, capped entry, races decreases exponentially every year. (In this case it went from a 5 day window last year to about a 1 hour window this year.) This sucks on so many levels that as a natural procrastinator I am basically catatonic. (Damn you, Adam Duerr and all you "Punctual Pete's" out there!)

Do any you have experience with other races that you've done that sell out (either triathlons or popular races throughout the US) and what creative ways they are coming up with to make the sign ups more fair? OK, fair may not be the right concept – but more drawn out? Is there any solution being tested out? All I know of is to switch to a lottery system which has plenty of flaws in its own right. Is there any creative way around this?

Another side effect of this trend is that entry limited races are free to start to raise their prices, because why wouldn't they? The law of supply and demand is clearly out of whack here, so why not crank up the price until it somewhat balances out? If race directors and accountants at the Seneca 7 and the Boilermaker do not raise their prices significantly next year then they must fall somewhere on the scale of “lousy at their job” to “morons”. Every race is in the business of making money. Either for themselves or for a charity. To not take advantage of us participants to make more money just does not make sense.

I’ll work through the example for the Boilermaker since I’m so much more familiar with that one. Two years ago everyone got the early bird pricing of about $35 as it sold out in about 3 days. This spring they were smart enough to raise the price to what had been a mid-process price of $50 and it sold out in a few hours (at a gain of over 200 hundred grand). If nothing changes, then this year it will sell out within an hour or two. If I were them I would raise the price to $100 just to see what happens. At 14,000 runners that extra $50 is well over 700 hundred grand of pure profit (assuming they were already making at least a little money) just by snapping their fingers. If there is any concern about not selling out, then play a game of chicken with the participants and set the early bird price at $100 with some reductions built in for a couple months, then have an inflection point and start increasing the price again as the race day approaches. (So a “V” instead of a straight line increase that we are so used to races doing to increase early entry.) Really, it’s such a good idea that there is no way they don’t start doing something like that soon. And it SUCKS! There is really nothing we can do about it. If the race still easily sells out, then they can (and should!) just raise the price again for the next year. Their sole financial goal should be to find the price point that is just high enough to barely sell out the race. If they get backlash from the running community they can either pump some of that money back into the event or make their charitable contributions more evident. (Or in the Boilermakers case, if they don't actually want the money, they could say, "Here Utica, have $700,000 on us! Anyone still complaining?") Any race that sells out in less than a day clearly does not realize the value of their product. (Does Disney World charge over $100 a ticket because that is the minimum they need to be profitable and to keep you appropriately entertained for the day? Or have they figured out that just happens to be the “magic” price to keep the “kingdom” full to capacity at that point in the year and will raise their price as soon as demand is high enough again to warrant it? Since they are not running some sort of Mickey Mouse operation there, I’m almost positive it’s the latter.)

 This running boom is off the charts right now and we are about to start paying the price for it if we want to participate in the most sought after races. It's a disturbing trend. :-(