Rant about this race organizer’s direction on race
registration! Just capitalizing on the
running boom in the Philippines, I see?!
As planned, my next race would be the Rexona Run and New
Balance Run this October and November, respectively. I ran these 2 races last year and has
contributed to my love of running.
Last year’s Rexona Run I was able to beat the 30-minute
cut-off to get a keychain, yup, a KEYCHAIN!
But its not just an ordinary keychain, that symbolized the determination
and hard training I did to reach the cut-off time. I can still remember running with the
side-stitch just so I can reach it. It
was satisfying.
The New Balance Run – I upped it by running a sub-1 10k
(Soleus-time). Again, proved that hard
work really has its moments. I also won
a raffle, a NB shirt worth P2,195!
Well-worth it, and here’s when I bought my NB Minimus shoes that made me
more inclined to running.
To give back to these runs that made me the 6min/km runner I
am now, I planned to race them again, this time the HM. I’m preparing as hard as I can – with the
recent Milo HM, I already have an idea on how it will go (Rexona Run has the
same route). And this September has
proved to be a good training month for me.
BUT the race organizer decided to mess it up by making the
registration process inconvenient. There
is now a separate registration date and race kit pick-up date. WTF?
The organizer would like us to spend to go to the registration site, and
spend and possible take leave or mess up one day of family time to claim the
kit! Imagine thousands of runners
getting together in two days to claim their kits?!
Here’s more, the online registration, you have to buy
“prepaid cards” to be used to register online!
Plus, go to the pickup site to pickup your race kit. Takes out the convenience of “online
registration”, right?
We have noticed the increasing fees in race
registrations. We understand that there
are increased costs in operating races and venues when the participants are
huge, but to totally do nothing to deliver the kits to online registrants and
to prepare the race kits in registration sites?
This is just too convenient for you!
You really are maximizing the profits, no?
Anyway, I won’t let this race organizer ruin my passion for
running. I will still train and run
races. Not just this organizer’s races
(or until he decides to invest a bit to make it convenient for runners). I registered to the Domination Run on
November 24 for a 21k run, and it only costs me Php700 + Php150 for shipping-
this is still much cheaper compared to this organizer’s rate.
In the end of the day, runners just want to run. We won’t care much about the organizer and
their raffles and loots, we want what’s fair for our time and money.
