Live results are promised here.
I’m not in Jacksonville for masters nationals, but my moles are. Here’s a “Day 0” report Wednesday from
Masters Mole 2668g: “Heavy rain and lightning started about 3:45. Packet pickup was supposed to start at 4 p.m. at the track, but at the appointed time, no packets. About 4:30, truck pulled up and boxes were brought in, and pickup started. However, at least one box of packets was missing. Oh well. Also, implement weigh-in was supposed to start at 4 p.m. Nothing. I heard that there was a problem with the weights and measures official canceling. I guess that we will have to show up in the morning with implements. Maybe someone with equipment will be here? Hopefully the “two-hour beforehand” edict will be relaxed, since we were there on Wednesday and they weren’t. Schedule has not been updated from the schedule of July 13th. Nothing in the packets except for numbers and a Jacksonville promotional magazine Most of us took this in stride, USATF-FL at its finest. Hopefully things run better starting tomorrow.”
12 Responses
It was a stingy packet; if every small town 5k in the US can give every entrant a t-shirt, surely a national championship should be able to assemble a respectable goodie bag. This was a joke.
Ran my 1st race Thursday am. The UNF track is great, very fast, and I broke my 800m PR by nearly 5 seconds. Good enough for 4th, but when I went to collect the ribbon promised by the USATF website for 4th, 5th and 6th places, the awards desk personnel looked mystified and said they had no ribbons, just medals for 1st through 3d. Nice bait and switch, USATF-FLA.
The heat here is ghastly; it is simply insane to hold outdoor nationals in the deep South. Organizers did well in providing water and Gatorade, and a large shade tent at check-in, although a shade tent near the starting line for upcoming races would have been nice; there’s room for it.
The adjacent warm-up track is a nice feature, but most of one straightaway is taken up by (unused) bleachers, and no one bothered to clean up the Canada goose droppings all over the track. Still, a good place to do warm up strides, if you watch your step.
Finally, I have no idea what my 400m split was because there was no functioning clock visible at the start line. Nor did any of the roughly 700 officials at the start line bother to call out split times. I’m still glad I came, but I wouldn’t trust USATF-FLA to run an all-comers meet at a junior high.
There was no clock on the track at the NSG track meet either. The officials called out the splits – the score board could have shown the ongoing race but did not. Frankly I think that having timing clock on the track should be a requirement for a USATF Official track meet. I do not expect much from the NSG track meet – and it did not disappoint. The MA Senior Games track meet had a timing clock visible at the finish line – it is a class act – the others – not so much.
JSales had a lot of complaints including about the heat but he did get a 5 second PR. I live in the south and have sympathy for the long distance runners who have to compete but I think for the sprints [and the 800 is basically a long sprint], you can run well when it is fairly hot as it is easier to warm up and stay loose.
looks like 400 prelims postponed until tomorrow….storms tonight.
No postponement of 400 preliminaries, Chuck; everyone will run in the finals tomorrow (Friday) to run sections on time. The 400 preliminaries will not be run again at masters nationals until Grand Rapids 2016.
Very, very, very tough to announce here, as the press box is so high up and the hip numbers are so small that runner identification is very difficult. The field events announcer did not show up at all, but the other announcer helped me quite a bit with spotting. Still, a very difficult day from my perspective.
The heat was absolutely brutal — and I live in Fairfax, Virginia. Just crushing heat.
I know sometimes there is no good choice, but having Nationals in the deep South keeps many people away. I am surprised we do not see more heat strokes. Be careful out there…
I just wanted to give some props to the recent NSG Nationals in the Twin Cities. The throwing events went off flawlessly. Implement certification was expert. The officiating was excellent, and events went quickly and started on schedule. From a thrower’s perspective it was the best run competition I have ever been to.
In reply to JSales, a friend in Jax says:
In picking up awards we saw lots of ribbons and asked about it. The complaint from someone saying no ribbons were being awarded was evidently during a 15 minute period when they didn’t have them. But they have them now. Plenty, they said.
After the meet in Charlotte – a few years back, I swore off track meets in the deep south – well – ok – I might have gone but too close to the meet in France – and the events I wished to run were crammed into two days. Brutal heat is inevitable in the south in the summer – hopefully next summer’s meet in Michigan will be a bit cooler.
The met was very well run, sprints were strictly orgaized but it worked well. I think pigbacking the meet off of the Junior meet works well as it brings in more of everything, tents, officials. As an aside I for one really missed Pete Taylors announcing of the sprints, his knowledge of the athlees and the excitement he generates just were not evident with the other announcer,
whom by any other standard beside Pete would have been fine.
Mary (no. 9), the results are in from AccuWeather, and thus I now have the highs for July 1-25, 2015. With all of our nationals held in July or August, I’m not much concerned with figures for June.
Here are the number of days 90+ and the highest temperature during the 25-day period just completed for four cities of interest:
Jacksonville: 24 days, high of 98.
Oshkosh (2009 championships): 0 days, high of 86.
Bangor (near Orono, the site of 1998, 2002, and 2007 championships): 0 days, high of 87.
Grand Rapids (2016 championships): 0 days, high of 87.
I conclude, Mary, that Grand Rapids will in no way resemble Jacksonville. In a word, Jacksonville was brutal, except for the final day.
Allan (no. 10): Originally, the other track announcer was going to handle all of the track events, but certain “forces” combined to allow me to play a role. He had no knowledge of masters T&F athletes, but I helped him with some tidbits. His style was much different from mine, especially in the sprints.
This meet was my 26th Outdoor Nationals in a row and it was the worst as far as organization. It was obvious they only cared about the Jo’s that were coming to their track the following week. That’s what happens when you have Youth people in charge of a Masters Nationals-the competition was good-the organizational part of this meet get’s a D–
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