Now we know where Sacto events are — but where’s the sked?
Organizers of track meets owe athletes some basic information. Like: when is their event? At the World Masters Athletics Championships about five weeks away and the National Senior Games coming up in two weeks, this basic info is still absent online. But Sacramento worlds has posted a list of where your event will be held (since they have several venues). See it here. (A letter to entrants from Matt Robinson said: “The final event schedule with day, location, and time will be posted on wma2011.com in early June.” At the NSGA site for track, visitors are told: “We apologize for the delay, we are in the process of finalizing the details for the Track & Field schedule. We hope to have it available online by May 27th.” Today is June 3 and no sked. But minutes after sending an inquiry, I got this reply from Senior Olympics Competition Director Sean Gomez: We are working around the clock and it should be up soon! Thanks for your patience.”
36 Responses
We spend much money on airfare, timing is everything, Sacto Worlds owe us a sked asap!!! I need to buy my air ticket, but need to know my start time on 20K Race Walk the 16th of July since I plan to fly home that same day..
Thanks for the Blog on this Subject Matter
It blows me away they can never get this done in a timely manner. Especially when NSG entries closed so long ago. Thanks Ken!
I read through the updated manual and it looks like the marathon is at 5 AM, which is actually kind of nice. Challenge to get coffee and a taxi, but I’ll take it for the cooler temp 🙂
Tommy,my guess on the RW would be probably in the am around 7 or so, but that’s a guess. I’m in both.
Interesting that my 10k(m45) is at Sac State and my friend (m50) is at city 2 days earlier. Might skip the 10k if the timing is bad-don’t want to run in the heat 2 days before the marathon. I’m encouraged by the marathon start time that they are trying hard to have the distance events early, which is appreciated by this Olympic Peninsula cool weather runner/walker 🙂
Don, I assume you are not being facetious. The marathon starts at 5 AM? Yikes. Back in the day when I was a decent runner (19:48 for 5000 at age 39), it seems to me the rule was to complete your pre-race meal 3 hrs before the competition.
That would mean a 15-minute pre-race meal would start at 1:45 AM. Of course, I will not be running at Sac Worlds. 5:00 AM? Think of the logistics for runners and officials, not to mention those carrying the lamps to light the course or at least the warmup area.
Peter,
The 5am is not really much that of a problem, from what I remember back in 1989 when running the Honolulu marathon that was about the starting time. Pre-race calories can be liquid. With Sacto I think the issue will be eating is overrated, but drinking underrated ( because of heat lotsa liquid).My .02
M50 SHOT A is listed twice on 2 different dates (11th and 13th with finals on 12th).
M50 Throws Pent is listed twice on the same day (16th) at 2 venues (Sac State and Sac City)
Often kidding, but not here! 🙂 Unless it’s a double typo (see following quote). It’s a smart move, as if some of runners might be out there for 5 hrs which puts them at 10AM-and the heat. A 7AM start would put almost all the runners finishing past 9:30. It’s before the transit starts running though 🙂
Competition manual page 14:”Step 2d: Marathon: Because of the early start at 0500, marathoners need to pick up
their marathon packets by close of the TIC at 1800 on Saturday, 16 July. There will
be no packet pick-up on Sunday morning. Transponders can be picked up any time
the TIC is open from 8 July through 16 July.” ………..
• Marathon:
Because of the early start of the marathon (0500 on Sunday, 17 July), all
athletes must check in and collect their transponder/timing chips by Saturday,
16 July by 1800 at the LOC Service Desk at Sacramento State. Check-in at the
venue involves validating the athlete’s race number and making sure that the
transponder is operational.
Long hurdlers may have to make some adjustments to travel plans. The number of entries for the some of the long hurdle races is much higher than in previous championships. It looks like an extra round for the M50, M55, and M60 age groups have been added. They will take place a day earlier (8 July) than what is in the schedule that has been posted on the website.
be very glad the marathon starts at 5 am – it will be cool then – lovely and cool but by 9 am it starts to heat up.
I hope the x-c and 5k for the old ladies starts around 7 am – 8 am latest – I do not mind getting up very early to eat and warm up if I can then compete when it is about 60F.
The race walks are likely to start pretty early – but otoh – maybe some will be in the evening – although not too late unless they are planning to put lights out on the rw course.
Well, Mary, it’s going to be a wild thing; that’s for sure. Last year on July 17 (the date of the marathon) the high was 96, and we definitely want to escape that heat. My primary concern is with the foreign athletes.
If you are from Madrid, Spain, for example, you may have an image of Sacramento that does not quite fit the reality. You get up at 3:30 AM, approach the front desk at your hotel, and in your best English request a cab. Maybe si, maybe no, who knows? And maybe your eventual cabbie can’t find the marathon starting area.
Thad Wilson, thanks for pointing that out about the long hurdles in the “intermediate” (M50, M55, M60) age groups. In this case, will the imagined gentleman from Madrid know about the change or have made the right travel arrangements?
Randy Wilson, I hope they get the schedule straightened out for you throwers.
Same concern here. Can I assume the 5k and 10k are at night and fly in day-of-race? Probably, but I’m not going to bet the $150 change fee for a flight on it.
Good Morning,
I am going to nsga track and field in Houston;even
though they say have patience,we are working round
the clock to get it done.What have they been doing
for over a month or two?It is only about one week before the 50+ begin competition and still no
schedule out..they had the schedule on line for
about two hours then took it off because of mistakes
they made.Just when will the schedule be ready?
The day of the meet????They are causing a few
frustrations for competitors.
I guess the best plan for running the marathon at 5 a.m. is to arrange for a cab and buy some breakfast snacks the night before the race. It will be cool aned comfortable at that hour and probably easy parking too, LOL!
NSGA is a “Mickey Mouse” organization. Kinda makes you wonder what they use our entry fees for….would it be hiring a professional staff to run things ???
Thad–thanks for the heads up. I was going to fly in on the 8th and miss my event!
hey Randy double check that shot schedule…did you maybe see the women’s qualify schedule for the 13th? They don’t have a break in the list where mens 50 starts and women’s 50 begins. Same with the pent..Womens is at Sac City! Good luck!
With the marathon slated to start at 5am – perhaps the WMA will be providing shuttles from the various meet hotels and the dorm to the marathon course. Public transportation is not likely to be available and the taxi drivers probably like to sleep in. I am waiting for the WMA staff to surprise all of us and provide shuttle buses to the marathon course. It is not like they have to do it over the course of the meet – it is just one very early morning event.
The rest of the early morning events will be later and most likely when public transportation is available or taxis are running.
Buena Suerte Sacto participants,our heat index has been above 100 the last 8 days. There’s talk about the track events starting either 3AM or 8PM
En Houston, Senor? Hace mucho calor, muy caliente? It’s steaming in Houston?
Pedro
Asi es Sr.Pedro=That is correct Mr.Peter
Yep, hot in Houston, between 96-98F. You definitely want to compete early in the morning or after 7pm.
Tip for those renting cars in Sacto (to make those early morning starting times):
The WMA site says you can get a special discount from Enterprise. True, but I was able to find a cheaper car through Alamo by enrolling in Alamo’s free frequent renters club. So, shop around.
The questions led me to look deeper. For the Marathoners trying to get to the start of the race, its not at some far flung location. According to the map at http://wma2011.com/images/inner/venues/Marathon%20Course.pdf
its just on the other side of the campus from the track–and you will be using the road that surrounds the campus. I would not plan on driving to the start of the race. From the picture there, it looks like only about a 200 parking space lot adjacent to the start, and you can probably bet the LOC will be using a lot of that space for the “O” part. The probable parking lot you will get directed to is the same big lot used for the stadium. Plan on a half mile walk to the start. Folks in the dorms will have it better than that.
Public transportation . . . this is California. I’ve done a documentary on our absence of public transportation. In California, you are a nobody without a car. On our best day, public transportation is merely a token to take care of the nobodys. And at 3 a.m. there is nothing. The bus system says it starts at 4:30 a.m. but the closest it comes to the start line is about half a mile away and the first bus in the morning arrives well after the start of the race. For the interest of anybody else, there are no busses at any time, ever, that really get close to the track. And the light rail does not serve Sac State.
So in short, if you aren’t staying on campus, you better make your arrangements in advance. If the LOC doesn’t do the job, maybe someone else can book bus connections to take some of the (approx 300) marathoners from the major hotels to the start. I would think the LOC would do that, but based on their publicity, I’d be wrong.
For the rest of the folks arriving at the track for early morning events on Friday the 17th, I’m going to wonder out loud how anybody is going to get their car across the Marathon course and into the parking lot. Steeplechasers, that probably means you. A 7 a.m. steeplechase start, with a 5 a.m. Marathon start, every runner will still be on the course.
Unless I’m reading a different schedule, what is posted is a May 3 pdf of slightly more specific dates than the original posting. So what have they been doing for the last month?
From the moment the registration closed, I could go on line and see how any event shaped up. Its all there, computerized for them to digest. They were obviously able to come up with the schedule revisions, based on entry data in 5 days. OK, this is a volunteer crew. People have full time jobs and are just doing this on the side. And they are making such a pittance, they can’t afford to hire anybody who knows anything about computers to crunch this data in an efficient way.
My curiosity gets the better of me sometimes; I took on the challenge of laying out a sample heat set up. Manually downloading the information off the public website, working with a crude program sold by a company from Redmond, WA it took me about 40 minutes to lay out the heats for the hardest event, the 100. 93 heats (on a 9 lane straightaway), almost 8 hours of track time, with 6 additional age divisions not needing a trial–going straight to final.
While the 200 might be about the same, most events don’t have that many competitors and will lay out even quicker. By that logic, we have 25 basic events. That would probably be one long day for one marginally competent person at a computer. With the data properly fed from the the database, that time would be reduced significantly.
Heats are the only variable. Most finals would already be predetermined based on the needs of the meet, theoretically planned years in advance. Maybe some extra quarterfinals would need to be added to the schedule in events with an unpredicted large field. So WMA and the Sacramento LOC, please explain: Why is this process happening so slow?
All this builds up to the giant question for those parties to explain: Why did we have to register for a July meet in April?
Thank you for your advice, information, and insights, Andy. I will let the others digest what you have had to say, as I will not be competing in Sacramento.
In terms of having to register in April for a July meet, the two major rationales one would normally expect we could call verification A and verification B.
Verification A: Did the entrant, let’s call him Roland Bannister, really run the 1500 in 3:42.77 at age 50? But my impression is that the times/distances are not checked, and thus this verification would take exactly 0 hrs and 0 minutes for the entire meet.
Verification B: Is Mr. Bannister, in this case, really 50 and does his entry look right (other than the time)? I suppose this could take some time, but is this all that big a deal? And after all, the closing dates for the Penn Relays this year, a far bigger meet than Sac Worlds, were in April for an April meet. Oh, well.
Mr. Hecker I have found light rail service and bus service to Sac State University. If you go on the
http://infoweb.sacrt.com/ website you can put in the address of the hotel that you are staying at and the university and it will guide you to several options for transportation. I realize that the service does not drop you off at the door of the stadium, but it close. The is a light rail stop, three blocks from the warmup track behind Sac state campus. It’s the 65th/university stop on the gold line. You walk about three blocks to a path under a rail overpass and come out right across from the warmup track. Several of the hotels in Rancho Cordova are right on the rail gold line. Others in the Cal Expo area by the mall can catch a bus down Howe street and walk a couple of blocks to the stadium. I realize that this does not help for the early start times of the distance races, but there is a choice run in the heat or set up a cab in advance. There is no way that the LOC can accomodate everyone with everything. It would cost MILLIONS of dollars and in the end WE would lose the chance to compete.
Mr. Thomas, I may have been deceived. I pulled up the Sacramento transit system map from http://www.sacrt.com/systemmap/mainmap.pdf
which essentially leaves a black hole for the Sacramento State campus. Yes, during the daytime, the track is about a mile walk from a light rail station.
I am not a marathoner, but I have been organizing running events for well over 30 years. My point in making the bus suggestion is basic logistics. For every decision you make regarding any event, there are benefits and consequences. I think choosing to start a marathon in the oppressive heat of Sacramento at 5 a.m. is a good one, but you need to get close to 300 out of town guests, the majority of whom are just doing the one event, to the staging area that does not have sufficient parking. I think it would make sense for someone to organize a few busses to hit the major hotels and get some percentage of those people to that venue.
We all know the LOC will not be responsible for any local transportation, they made that clear, they have developed their budget accordingly. I’m not asking that they do this for free. But they created the logistical problem that comes with the good start time. They are local and know what resources are available, while a good percentage of their guests, as Peter mentioned, might not even speak the language, much less know where they are or how to get there . . . by 5 a.m. An unpredicted bulge in demand to take close to 300 people to the same location on a Friday morning will swamp the small number of taxis doing the overnight shift in the California capitol. Maybe even the Sacramento hotels that are gouging our guests (by doubling their room rates during the meet) can take their airport shuttle vans and deliver their guests to the venue in the middle of the morning.
They might have already worked this all out. If they haven’t, they should. If they haven’t thought about it, someone should. Putting it up here on a public forum should get some wheels turning.
Headline of this posting by Ken Stone was about Sacramento, but the first paragraph mentions both Sacramento and Senior Games, which will be in Humble, Texas, I believe (doubt that Humble is far from Houston). OK, here’s what I think:
Senior Games: According to Accuweather, predicted high for arrival day in Houston (June 15) is 101; prediction for opening day (June 16) is just 94. Prediction for June 17 is 98. I hope they have shade and plenty of ice.
Sacramento Worlds: I know it’s too late, but why does this meet have a marathon? The approximate dates (July 6-17) for the meet have been known for quite some time. Let’s see, what were the chances during July 6-17 last year (2010) that the high would be 95 or above?
The answer: 50%, or 6 out of 12 days were 95+. Definitely not marathon weather, which is why the start was moved to 5 AM. Personally, if anyone cares, I hate early starts. I would have opted for an 8 AM start and changed the distance from 42.195 kilometers (26.21875 miles) to 20 kilometers.
There’s already a 20k course (racewalk); what’s the diff? Start the 20k run at 8:00 and finish by 10:00, just when it really starts to heat up. Do we really need long races in the heat?
Last time I went to France (Lyon, about 1987) I spoke French all 4 days. They understood me easily; I could NOT understand them (they spoke way too fast for me). Will anyone understand our Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, and Indian guests as they stumble around trying to find the marathon start in the dark?
Will our guests even know how to order a taxi? Search me.
Would also like to see more commentary on events other than the marathon.
Pedro:In the absence of signage,a traveler would NOT KNOW where Houston ends and Humble begins.105F today without heat index
Well, Sr. Panama, at 6:27 PM (Central) today I noticed that the actual temperature in Houston had dropped all the way down to 101 degrees. Interesting choice for Sr Games, which is restricted to age 50+ the last I looked.
Pedro
Will someone (possibly Gary Snyder) be sending out an “all points” bulletine when the time schedule for all days, all events and all age groups be posted? This will be most helpful for people making flights and adjust accommodation reservations.
Pedro:Do not be fooled by Senior games designation.They will be some KICK-CULO RUNNER HERE-IE.B.C.,R.R.,L.S.C.A.,H.G. AMONGST others
As mentioned before it was 105F today in Houston. It is very likely that it will cool down by the time the Senior Games begin. In any case bring an umbrella to protect yourself from the sun and a cooler with ice for drinks and cool pacs.
The Schedule for WMA Champs is posted. See Home Page for the link. All the best of success to all the competitors.
Today is June 8, Meet begins June 16..TO DATE NO SCHED.Maybe we should ALL ASK FOR REFUND ON SENIOR GAMES.
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