Akron Kids Duathlon - Duathlon

The other kids went out pretty hard as one would guess.

Daddy said I did a really good job. I was hard for me to run fast with the bike and get it up and down from the adult rack. My lowest wheel was a full 10 inches off the ground.

Since I did not go out hard on the first run I was stuck behind a lot of riders on a down hill part of the couse and lost fell behind the first two riders. They really did a good job on the bike and it would have been hard to keep up with them if I was close enough early on to try.

It was a little bit hard to put my bike back on the rack. Some kids did it the right way and some just dropped off their bikes.

I did not run this fast as I could have because it was a lot shorter than I expected. I waited too long to run hard and just barely passed the girl in front of me.

Light run and stretching.


Overall I had a lot of fun at this race and want to do more next year. If I could do the race again next week I think I could do much better.


These comments are from Max's Mommy and Daddy.

This was by far the worst event I've ever participated in.

1) The triathletes had a longer run from the lake to the transition zone than the duathletes had as their first run. The tri kids did not come close to swimming 100 yards. More like 50 feet plus a good run up a steep hill.

2) Shannon Kurek provided the prerace instructions and was very hard for all the parents to hear. The kids probably heard fine. The parents in the back twice asked him to speak up. He did so the best he could but was still hard to hear. One obnoxious lady in the crowd was being very loud with her conversation with a loud man and goofing around with her toddler. We TWICE asked her to please be quiet so the parents could also hear the announcements. She ignored us both times. We would later see her get in the way of some kids during the race in order to encourage her child. After the race we found out that she was one of the HFP workers (curly red hair and loud).

3) All racers were done by roughly 11:45. The first round of incorrect results was finally posted at 1:10PM. But many children, including Max, were not listed.

4) Results were posted again at 1:30PM and Max and a couple other kids were still not listed. Here is where it gets crazy:

5) We followed the entire race closely. Max tied for third overall. (Even as Max neared the transition zone the HFP volunteers themselves clapped for him and yelled “you’re in third place”). So after results came out, we gave my kid’s name to the results guy; he says my kid is not even listed. He checked the triathlon results, not listed there either. Then asks me, (we kid you not!!!) to "estimate our kids finishing time and he would award based that time". We did not know Max's time because we did not stop our watch until a couple minutes after he finished. The results guy insisted that we just guess. He prompted us with; “21 minutes???, 20 minutes???”. We continued to inform him that we could not, should not, and would not guess. We then informed him that a girl basically tied Max tied for third overall (he and a little girl crossed the line together). He then proceeds to look up her time and announces that if Max had that exact time Max got 5th in his age group. Yes – 5th! We naturally explained that if he tied for 3rd overall then he could not be 5th in age group. He regularly interrupted us when we would mention Max's overall placement with "were not awarding overall placements today". We finally got the logical point across. He then looked at the results again told us Max was third in his age group and handed us the 3rd place trophy. Well that could not be true either as we pointed out since the second place overall finisher was a girl and the kid that tied Max for 3rd was also a girl. Though we did not know it at the time, HFP had numerous triathlete finishing times in the duathlon results. Additionally, the tri times were all wrong and much faster than the actual tri finishing times. So the guy handing out trophies was bumping the kids down in ranking due to the wrong tri times skewing the results. At the time all we knew was that the winner was a 9 year old boy, second place was a girl, and third place was 9 year old Max; therefore Max was 2nd in his age group and should have the 2nd place trophy. He suggested that the other kids we saw finish in front of Max might have been triathletes. We explained that we knew they were not but that suggestion would only move Max further up in the standings, which we already knew was 2nd place not 3rd in age group. At this point the man was getting defensive. I regularly requested that he stop handing out awards because results that are missing kids are by definition wrong. Others parents gathered to interject comments to the man agreeing that results should be correct. However, the guy just continued to state that "I can't do anything about the times”. We insisted that he was doing something about it, he was knowingly handing out incorrect awards based on incorrect results rather than report the problem. He refused to stop. (typical for HFP behavior that I’ve seen in my interactions with them. They do things there way, and if you are not satisfied, then you are not being reasonable). My wife and I then went over to the timing guys and they too refused to do anything. They said they were too busy with the 11-14 year old race and that “if” the results still had an error they would work that out later. So we went back to the results guy and again explained that we had the 3rd place trophy and Max earned the 2nd. At this point (again – we shit you not), the man rudely took back the 3rd place trophy, handed Max a 1ST place trophy, shook Max’s hand while sarcastically saying; “Wow!! Congratulations young man on winning today’s race!!” He emphasized the word “winning” like a real jerk that darn well knew everyone was perfectly aware that Max hadn’t won anything and that nobody had ever claimed otherwise. The action was clearly done to suggest that we were jerk parents trying to get something that we didn’t deserve. He then looked at us and added that "these events are supposed to be just for fun". I (Dad) shook the man’s hand and added "and Max did have fun, but fun for us is accepting a proper award according to proper results". We then tried for a very short time to get him to replace the 1st place trophy with 2nd but the man flat ignored us.

6) What is the chance Max will get the third place overall award from a company that posted trashy results, and have a history of refusing to respond to inquires about incorrect results?

7) By the way, why would HFP not award the overall winners? That is the single easiest thing in any race to get right. Everything under the sun could go wrong, but one can still record the order of the participants crossing the finish line (especially with small numbers and a short race).

8) On 9/9 the trashy results posted on 9/6 were fixed. Thanks HFP (seriously, I am thankful for results that get corrected - I could have done it in 2 minutes at the race site).

Other things are still incorrect about the results that seem to be right. For instance Max and Haley Black finished in a dead heat, but HFP has Max at 19:30 and Haley at 19:37.

http://www.hfpracing.com/results/results.php?eventid=45&raceid=131

The nerve of HFP. We invest family time and money to best prepare for a race, drive 180 miles to bring them our business, and they treat us like this.

My biggest problem with the whole thing is knowing damn well that HFP could care less about this. They have never cared about their results or how they treat customers. They do everything with an attitude of we doing fine, and if you disagree you’re a goofy idiot.

********** SHAME ON HFP *********

P.S. HFP forgot to charge us for the event and we corrected them. After Max had his full race packet we thought, “we were never charged”. We then went back and told HFP and they were happy to take our $40.