Worst run race you've done

1. A several miles short bike course
2. Ran out of t-shirts
3. Ran out of water on the run course (it's in August, so no big surprise it was hot)
4. Poorly managed T area so that I had to leap over other racers who finished before me and were allowed to mill about transition.  Also poorly designed that it was so tight.
5. Bike in/out went over a curb
6. Ran out of water at the finish, fortunately a fellow BTer noticed and grabbed the last one for me

marathongirl11 - 2011-06-21 8:54 PM This is totally off topic, but......is your kitty really sitting on your bike seat like that!?!  Too cute!!  That's the best avatar I've seen yet

Horrible aero position though.  You really need to work with him on that.

apicek - 2011-06-21 8:17 PM

marathongirl11 - 2011-06-21 8:54 PM This is totally off topic, but......is your kitty really sitting on your bike seat like that!?!  Too cute!!  That's the best avatar I've seen yet

 

Horrible aero position though.  You really need to work with him on that.

Pffttt.... Aero isnt the issue, you should see the cat swim! Now that needs help!

worst race every was an overnight relay i did. ive done a bunch of these but this one was poorly managed.

tons of runners running on the wrong side of busy streets, having to cross the rd to get to the exchange area to hand off, 1 runner was hit and badly injured, and the next day 24 hrs later, we get to the finish, and the "beer tent" was just a place where you could bring your own beer and drink it... not BUY it. what a bummer ... then in the food line we were only allowed to take 1 hamburger or 1 hot dog, not more. NO beer and not enough food for runners whove been living out of car for 24hrs? come on now.

Lame. The world is my "beer tent."

CapTex this year was one of the worst ever. 

The complete screw-up on the swim for the pro field. 

A large percentage of the athletes who had registered and to re-register at packet pickup since their info had been lost.

Tons of people put into the wrong catagory or wave.  This played into the timing debacle where they gave up and canceled awards since they had no clue what anybody's time was or who had won anything. 

To top it all off judging from their posts on their FB page post race they seemed to think they had produced a completely successful event. 

My first tri, an off-road one in Vietnam (anyone who did it would know). I was 11th overall, second woman, and received no award. But they gave awards for the top 5 guys plus first masters. (I'm a woman over 40.)  My friend DNF'd in the Oly (I did the sprint), course officials never noticed, she told the director she cut off a loop of the bike course and they should DQ her, and they still gave her the first place award. Another woman, who actually did the whole course, got nothing.  Everyone I know won something in the post-race drawing, except me. Boo, hiss! I know it's all about participation, but somehow..... I felt a little gipped!

Second place goes to an "adventure run" put on by the same company. 15 km (there was also a 30 km) in triple-digit heat, only one water stop, route marking so bad everyone got lost, no separate prizes for women (again), promised picnic lunch was a garbage bag of sandwiches that gave several of us food poisoning.

Wrost race I've participated in: was the Hell Run...I did the Super Hell course, they never put a map up for it.  There were NO volunteers on the course in case someone got hurt (it was an obstacle course with a technical trail run) The obstacles were half assed or missing in some areas. Only one water station..where they were more interested in throwing water in your face then handing you a cup to drink. And the course was marked wrong, it was short. And to top it off we had to pay to park.

Wrost Race I've run: Nike Human race.  They started it in Austin at 5or 6 when it was still like 95 and searing hot! I got pulled 3 miles in for heat exhaustion and had to have 2 IV's.

Worst Race I've volunteered at: Cap Tex Tri this year.  It was run so poorly..I could write a very long critique but bascially it was horrible.  They lost half the registrations: ppl had to re-register and they got re-registered wrong in soe cases.  The packets were not complete (no arm bands, no swim caps, wrong swim cap, no wrist bands to enter transition, broken timing chips, or no timing chip or multiple timing chips, no way to check the timing chips, no info tent. no real volunteer info.  timing was way screwed up, awards were almost 2 hours late, the awards were missing or checks not signed, or the wrong award amount because the bike shop providing the g/c got tired of loading them and cut checks, but didnt seperate the amounts.  they were missing place medals, we never found them while i was there. we had to call the awards ceremony (ppl were not nice, cant blame them but i was just a volunteer, got called multiple names in several languages. Ill never race this event, this is the 3rd year in a row they have had major complications and they do nothing to fix it.

Only good part of that day was I got to put andy potts medal around his neck!

My worst was in GA at one of the Calloway Garden Triathlon. It was billed as Olympic but was definitely short.

Transition:
A portion of the parks parking lot was closed off for transition. They had the entrance/exit marked. They had racks. There was no assigned racking order or location. It was "rack wherever you want" thing. Several folks racked their bikes against the curb, against trees, on the racks, laying on the ground, etc.

There was no area for the relay participants, they just needed to be in the transition.

Anybody could enter/exit transition as they wanted. There was no supervision over who was allowed. I feared my bike wouldn't make it through.

Swim (measured 1100yard):
Wave start by age group. Not a problem, except that the waves were ~30 seconds apart and started older groups first. No disrespect, but the younger studs were running over EVEYRONE.

Bike (measured 18.6mi):
The race started an hour before the gates opened. This would've worked great but the race was late starting. By the time I was on the bike, traffic was coming into the park. Not only were we dodging other bikers, pacelines (drafting was not enforced), negotiating 18 90* turns on the double loop, but now we were fighting cars who were attempting to get into the parking lot beside the transition. It was a cluster. Sadly one person was escorted out in the back of an ambulance after a volunteer directed a car to turn infront of a cyclist.

The volunteers were constantly shifting us from the right lane to the left lane on the roadway for no reason.

Toward the end of the bike lane, the volunteers STOPPED all traffic around the transition, so then the bikers were flying by parked cars trying to get to transition.

Run (measured 5mi):
Very crowded as an out and back on a 5' multi use trail. Poorly marked. 1 Water stop at the 2.5mi mark.

I will not do that race again.

Sounds like this years CapTex Tri race is the winner of the "Worst Race" award.  My sister did this race and it is my understanding that in the race packet you got temporary tattoos for your body marking.  apparently the temporary tattoo numbers my sister received didn't match her actual race number. 

Why do you guys think this race had so many problems?  Too many participants?  Not enough volunteers?  Do they try to get too creative with technology? 

I don't live in Texas, but I just happen to know two people that did this race and both had issues that shouldn't happen.  Crazy.