Stay ahead of the curve

My goal on the days leading up to the half marathon is to stay ahead of the workload curve. This year that load includes entering/downloading race entries daily and then printing/affixing the custom labels to each assigned bib number.  Last night I had a huge pile of paper entries in front of me and as I looked through them I got annoyed for several reasons.

The majority of the entries were from two schools that were entering a number of runners.  The way we handle this normally is the entries are paid for in bulk and then we give the group a code which allows their people to sign up online for free.  Well these groups were not aware of this policy so as a result I had a bunch of incomplete, chicken scratched paper entries to squint at.    The one group didn’t even use our official race entry forms, they made their own and considered it close enough.

This race gets more paper entries than any other race we do all year long.  If you have read my blog over the years you know that paper race entries are one of my least favorite things.  When many people fill them out they don’t give any thought to the ability of others to read their information.  These are the same people that will come find me on race day complaining their information is incorrect (because I couldn’t read it).

This race is paper heavy for two reasons, there are a lot of older, less tech savy people that participate who prefer a pen and paper to a keyboard.  Second, this is the only race where were still charge a premium for online entry.  If you sign up online you will pay roughly $2.50 more than if you fill out a paper form.  Evidently a couple bucks is enough to convince many runners to slap a 50 cent stamp on an envelope and send in a scribbled entry for me to get annoyed with.