Hot chocolate 15 k DC (Read 985 times)

The goofiest thing I've learned is that the 5k cost 45 bucks.  YEEKS.

Some reviews here too.

Apology issued and people still aren't happy.  I'm starting to feel sorry for the RD.  Which I know is easy for me since I wasn't there.    But, some of the calls to action I'm reading on FB (like reversing credit card charges) seem over the top...  I've run some pretty crappy races (none as bad as this, I'm sure).  One year, I remember having two races cancelled on me back-to-back after I'd already registered (which is why I hardly ever pre-register now).  And, although I've been upset, disappointed, etc., I've never felt the urge to report anyone to the Better Business Bureau, contact the local news, or attempt to involve the local government...  What a mess.

(If there was negligence and serious disregard of contractual items in the part of the race directors contractors though (ie. no busses, mis-guided route, ...), I imagine that RAM could receive compensation for the services performed.  If so, I'd be interested to see how RAM handles that with those that raced...)

I think it would be a nice gesture for them to give a refund to the people who were stuck in traffic and unable to run the race.  I feel bad for them.  But, the people complaining about having to walk a mile uphill to the start.  (The horror!)  They're only making it harder for us outsiders to make out what the real problem was (no public transportation and parking issues and having been to National Harbour for a much smaller race, I could see that being foreseeable).

I certainly did not attend this; I encountered their sleazy spamming techniques (I guess they must have spam-bombed every email address they could find for all the local running clubs -- and kept spamming them over and over).

I enjoyed some light entertainment value contacting employees at their subsidiary companies. It was humorous because obviously they were constrained to not say anything bad about ram racing, yet they wanted to help me, and were trying to delicately advise me that ram racing wouldn't listen them either, so they really didn't have any way to contact any humans there.

I have to admit that I was fighting feeling smug last week when I heard people complaining how ram racing decided to add a parking fee for everyone -- smug because I had guessed it was going to be very much about extracting money from the participants, and on the order of a spectacle, not an event for serious runners.

I'm amused that they got everyone to pay money for parking that apparently is free -- that's some nice additional profit, right there.

But I had no idea how spectacularly poorly planned it would turn out - again, as someone who didn't attend, I find it a lot more humorous than the people who did. I hear they did things so ... dumb...  that I couldn't have imagined them.

The stories of putting the slower corrals in front of the faster corrals -- that's pretty funny.

The idea of having everyone in the later race walk through the earlier race course, so it couldn't start -- that's pretty funny.

(But the stories of having thousands of runners run on roads with cars and trucks driving -- that I'm afraid I don't find very amusing.)

Yet the idea that they'd actually give any of the money back -- yeah, that sounds exceedingly unlikely, and pretty unrealistic.

I've also been amused every time I read people complaining about the excuses of non-existent traffic accidents -- can you really still be  surprised to find out they're less than truthful? Is that so shocking still?

I have had close friends run the one in DC and in Chicago (2010 and 2011).  From what they told me the race the RD mentions in Chicago that went without a hitch in Nov was still full of problems and poorly ran.  And I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who organizes a 5k and has 10 of thousands of people without completely blocked roads and is charging $40+.  They seem to give a low quality race jacket and set strict limits on the food you get after the race.  With the poor race bags and general organization, my friends said that on the whole the race is clearly about running up a lot of profit with very low consideration for the runners.  I have no problem with having very expensive races as long as you give out good shirts/jackets, have a cool post race area, run on actual roads.  But if you can't accommodate the people and if you have more than 2 or 3 thousand people you can't have the race on path.  You have to have roads with no traffic allowed at all.  Again for what they are charging and accident on the course shouldn't have been a problem because there shouldn't have been cars on the course in the first place.