2017 Registration and Qualification Changes

[John Garner]

Here is the summary of the 2017 registration changes that I posted to the Incline Club Newsletter

--john

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Registration for the 2017 Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon opens on March 11th at 8am Mountain Time. The full details are available at http://www.pikespeakmarathon.org/

Links to the registration form will be posted on the PPA/M website early next week.

For 2017, there are a number of changes to the registration process. Hopefully they make the process easier for most runners.

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Changes:
1) In the qualifications section of the registration form, recent (2014+) Peak Veterans DO NOT need to indicate the year, race name, link to results, or qualifying time. Just check the box saying that you completed one of the races in the past 3 years and I'll take care of the rest.

2) For runners using a 2014+ BTMR as their qualifier, #1 applies to you too.

3) The cutoff time for a runners using a full marathon as their qualifier is now 6:00:00 (up from 5:45:00).

4) Like last year, if you have completed the Pikes Peak Ascent or Marathon in the past 3 years, your Pikes Peak time(s) will be used for wave seeding purposes. I will not take into account any outside race results (like some of those all downhill marathons everybody uses as a Boston Qualifier).

5) The exception to #4 is that I will automatically factor in your 2017 Garden of the Gods 10M result and bump you to a faster wave if your GoG time produces a faster estimated time than your other qualifying times.

5b) The exception to #4 and #5 is if you can show that you are competitive for a top 20 overall spot (not age group or masters), then you can request to be bumped up into Wave 1. In that case, contact me via the Registrar Contact form in June or July to plead your case.

6) Ask me about #6 on the 12th. :-)

7) You can now use an officially recorded split from a longer race. For example, if you ran Ironman Boulder and your marathon split from that race is under 6:00:00, you can use that result as your qualifier.

You can use a longer race provided that your overall time is still under the cutoff. e.g., you ran a 50K in under 6:00:00, you can use that result as a qualifier. We will not adjust the time to account for the longer distance.

9) If you opt to use #7 or #8, odds are you will end up in a "slower" wave than you should. Run the Garden 10M (see #5), convince me that you are really fast (see #5b), or just be happy that the rules were relaxed and you didn't have to go and sandbag a half or full marathon as a qualifier.

10) You can now opt to register for the Garden of the Gods 10 Mile and/or the Summer Round Up Trail Run when you register for the Pikes Peak Ascent and/or Marathon. Registering for those races along with the PPA/PPM will not jeopardize your PPA/PPM entry if you miss one of the earlier races.

11) Like last year, to register for the Double, simply check both race boxes on the race selection page. There is no need to register for one race and then start over and register for the other.

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2017 Cutoff Changes:
For the Pikes Peak Marathon, the cutoff at the summit will be 6 hours after your assigned wave start time. The cutoff for the Ascent will remain 6:30:00

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2018 Changes:
In 2018, recent (2015+) Pikes Peak Ascent Veterans who wish to enter the Pikes Peak Marathon must have an ascent time of 6:00:00 or faster. Recent Pikes Peak Marathon Veterans will not be impacted, even if their pre 2017 summmit time was over 6:00:00, as long as they finished under the 10:00:00 cutoff.

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Wave Jumpers:
Runners starting before their assigned wave will be DQ'ed before they even hit NoName. You won't find out until you check your results, and it will suck when you discover that you did all of that suffering for nothing. To make things even worse, your name will show up here: http://thetcr.com/results/ppa/2016/#DQ   Don't be that guy.

[Mark]

So I passed one of these dq'd guys (1008) during the ascent last year and wondered to myself if he was going to get a finishers medal at the summit. Is this true John? It sounds like they will if they don't find out until checking the electronic results.

[John Garner]

This is one of those cases where it sounds easy to do but the reality of the matter is that things get complicated really quickly and you need to pick your battles very carefully.

It is even worse than you fear. They get a medal _and_ a jacket. But at the end of the day when their friends go and look at their times on the site, the truth is revealed.

The folks handing out the medals and jackets have no idea if somebody was DQ'ed or not. They don't have tablets with real time updates from the timing table. More importantly, they are volunteers, and I don't want to put them into the position where they are almost guaranteed to get into an argument with an irate runner.  I've seen that happen before and it is just a bad situation on every imaginable level. It is a lot easier to just tell the volunteer that if somebody crosses the finish line with a bib on, hand them a medal and say congratulations. The timing crew will address it later.

When one of the runners we DQ'ed for starting early at the PPA came to me during the PPM last year, it got a bit heated to say the least. I was the timing coordinator and by that time I had already double checked her times, verified that we didn't miss anything, and verified that the equipment was working. Darrin (the lead timer) had done the same. We also passed the information on to the RD and he agreed with our finding.

There are a few cases where we initially DQ somebody but overturned it once we double check things. In another case, it took the RD a week of looking over race photos and interviewing other volunteers to make sure we got the right guy after an incident at Barr Camp.

We are looking for ways to at least get the word over to the folks handing out the jackets with instructions to have the runner talk to the timing table. This is a lot easier for the PPM where we are just 20' away and I can call over the Manitou PD for backup if needed, but such a setup is just asking for trouble during the PPA when the timing crew is 20 miles away from the folks handing out jackets. But even then I don't know if I want to deal with an irate runner at a finish line while I'm trying to make sure that everything else is running smoothly. The job is already high stress as it is.

[Rhyno]

I am just curious as to the reasoning behind the shortened ascent time in the marathon?

[John Garner]

Over the last few years, it became apparent that in increasingly larger number of folks turning around after six hours did not make it to the finish line in time. This requires a lot of extra work on the part of the race organization keep track of them and make sure that they made it down to town safely. Even worse, for many of them the finish line would be closed and the aid station packed up by the time they hit Manitou Ave.

The folks who turn around after six hours are tend to be very tired and then discover that they are also very time crunched. They start to take more risks in terms of their speed in their effort to traverse the distance before the 10 hour cutoff.

Each year there are a few folks who can get to the top near the old cutoff and then have no issues cruising down to the finish line with more than enough time to spare, but they are the exception and not the rule. The majority of them don't make it.

[Rhyno]

Thanks for replying.  I thought that might be the issue as I did the ascent in 6:25 last year and missed the finish line cutoff by 9:28.  I know where I messed up and could have made the cutoff even with the slow ascent.  Guess I'll get to training for that ascent!! Looking forward to trying again this year!

[jemahon]

Wow!  The registration changes made registering easier than ever before and it is only 5 days since registration and half of the Ascent entrants are already in the confirmation list.  Good job John!

[John Garner]

Thanks. I wanted to make it easier for everybody, especially the veterans. As a bonus, I could use the data and pivot it into the database Matt Carpenter created for doing registrations and tracking historical data back when he was the registrar. 

As of right now, 699 are still on the todo list out of 2666 registrations. So about 75% of the way done (not counting the slots that have not filled yet).

With any luck I'll be done those in a few days.