RunningAHEAD - Topic: Isn't there a point to PRE-REGISTERING!?

cewickbe

posted: 10/6/2008 at 12:28 AM

I ran a 5K about 2 weeks ago which I had pre-registered for well in advance. It was a small race - only 170 people total. The pre-reg form asked for my shirt size which was Med. So imagine my surprise when I picked up my race packet that morning (right on scheduled time) and was told that they only had Larges or bigger left. WTF?? Isnt that one of the reasons you are asked to pre-reg?? Who dropped the ball on that one? It seems pretty petty, I'm sure, but honestly! The shirt was hideous regardless. Then, after the race, an announcement was made that those who didn;t get the shirt size they asked for could shoot an email to the director and ANOTHER one would be made available for them in a few days. Wouldn't they lose money on that? People would then have 2 hideous shirts! I took a pass on that offer...... Am I being too bitchy about this?

Large Old Runner

Old, Slow, Happy

posted: 10/6/2008 at 6:40 AM

Quote from cewickbe on 10/6/2008 at 12:28 AM:

Am I being too bitchy about this?

I don't think so. If you pre-register, you ought to get the size you need. I have been to races where they get me a shirt off the pile even though I pre-registered. So far, I have always gotten the size I wanted. I think I'd be upset if I had to take the wrong size.

NateFromRI

posted: 10/6/2008 at 8:06 AM

I think you're dead on with this. The t-shirt choices many races make is inexplicable. The running community skews toward the small side, so there is no reason they can't anticipate that smalls and mediums should outnumber the large and XLs in their stock. My girlfriend would never forgive me if I didn't mention the lack of women's shirts... even the men's smalls don't fit her so I end up with two shirts from every race we do.

-------------------------------------
5K - 18:25 - 3/19/11
10K - 39:38 - 12/13/09
1/2 - 1:29:38 - 5/30/10
Full - 3:45:40 - 5/27/07

waytogo

posted: 10/6/2008 at 9:37 AM

A couple of races I've pre-registered for listed Small as a choice on the form, but they didn't even order any Smalls. I don't get it.

Ennay

A Saucy Wench

posted: 10/6/2008 at 9:44 AM

I just wish there was some consistancy. Last year's PDX marathon shirt fits me perfect. "Nike Dri-fit" or whatever. Medium. So I ordered another medium this year. Nike Dri-fit. It is HUGE. What size I order is a total crap shoot. One of the races I was out forgot to order smalls even though we were pre ordered so they were going to mail them to us - we started looking at the leftover mediums and there were 2 sizes of mediums Confused

Some were a good 2 inches in all dimensions bigger than others.

I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets

"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7

Yorkshire

posted: 10/6/2008 at 9:52 AM

My company sponsored a team to run in the Susan G. Komen race for the cure last year and they ordered the team shirts in their usual "mostly S/M/L". As it turned out, they ordered women's t-shirts by mistake and not only that they ran small. When I went to pick mine up (I'd ordered M), not only did the L not fit, but the XXL was tight across the chest - still I guess it was for breast cancer awareness...

Roses Revenge

posted: 10/6/2008 at 9:54 AM

In a race in the summer of 2007, they ran out of finishers medals because so many people registered on the day of the race. Those of us in the back of the pack had to wait until they got more in. They took numbers of the people who didn't get a medal and supposedly sent an email when they were available, but I never got it. Seems like if they were going to take numbers down that anyone who registered that morning should wait and those of us who registered weeks in advance should have got ours at the finish. I've been lucky with t-shirts. Rose

Marathon Maniac #991 Half Fanatic #58 Double Agent #22 It's a perfect day and I feel great!

JakeKnight

posted: 10/6/2008 at 10:01 AM

Quote from cewickbe on 10/6/2008 at 12:28 AM:

Am I being too bitchy about this?

Honestly? Yeah. It happens a lot. At least in 5k races, especially in charities. If it bugs you that much, you're going to be frustrated a lot. I don't run for the crappy shirts. I rarely wear them. So the fact that I was stuck with an XXL at last years Habitat for Humanity Turkey Trot (even though I registered in September) ain't no big deal. It just means if I ever turn them into a quilt, that one will be awesome. If its an expensive, for-profit race ... or a marathon ... I think you might be more righteously bitchy. In this case, I'm impressed as Hell the race director offered to actually get you the right shirt. I've never seen that happen. Usually you'll take your XXXL and like it. By the way, a lot of races will have a "no shirt" option. You can run cheap if you skip the shirt. Just go win a trophy. Way better than a shirt.

E-mail: eric.fuller.mail@gmail.com
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Ringmaster

posted: 10/6/2008 at 10:43 AM

This happens to me a lot in local 5ks. My husband's wardrobe is starting to look like he's running a lot of local 5ks. Between getting a shirt that neither one of us is going to wear, I'd rather get a shirt that one of us can enjoy . . . and every once in a while I see him mowing the lawn and remember, oh, yeah, that was the race where the ten year old passed me the last tenth of a mile . . . I'm getting used to it. And I've never been offered the right size post-race.

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Heb. 12:1b)
Mile by Mile

Mr Inertia

Suspect Zero

posted: 10/6/2008 at 12:07 PM

Might not have been the race's fault. My last marathon sold out months in advance, but still ran out of my shirt size. Their claim was that the printer had screwed up. No way to verify that, but it's certainly possible.

Trent

Good Bad & The Monkey

posted: 10/6/2008 at 12:13 PM

Quote from NateFromRI on 10/6/2008 at 8:06 AM:

The running community skews toward the small side

Not true. Among runners preregistered for the race I direct, we have more L than S and a whole load of XL and XXL requests. Consistency? I have had a sample shirt run large and then the actual printed shirts run small. And vice versa. If the RD actually cares (I do), s/he may at least warn you when it turns out that the sizes are not true. Most RDs probably don't care. And what JK said: if you are paying $85 to run a for profit marathon, you should rightly expect a shirt that is so fancy that it will cook your dinner. If you are running a local 5k, be happy with whatever you get. Unless the 5k costs $45. In which case, find a batter 5k. And JK, very few races, in my experience, offer a shirt-free option and price point.

I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.

Poor baby

Lank

posted: 10/6/2008 at 12:15 PM

The shirt has a hideous design, according to you, and you wouldn't wear it even if the size was correct. The shirt you received was one size too big. (The horror). The RD stated you could email him/her and receive the correctly sized shirt in the mail in two weeks. It's been two weeks and you still aren't over it. Something else must be going on here.

"Good-looking people have no spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we're smarter." - Lester Bangs

dallas

Hoodoo Guru

posted: 10/6/2008 at 12:54 PM

Yes, shwag is important and promised shwag should be delivered as promised. I ran the local big 1/2 marathon. One of the giveaways were these green plastic slip on sandals. But registration was up and a couple of thousand people didn't get them. Not a big deal, except they were featured rather prominently on the race web site and promised to all finishers. So people were justifiably disappointed. In the grand scheme of things is a wrongly sized race t-shirt a big thing. No. But for a lot of runners, the t-shirt is the prize. If you promise, you ought to deliver.

The tangents are moot.

goat

Finder of good newts

posted: 10/6/2008 at 2:58 PM

If you care about it.. I think the big thing is to provide feedback so they can learn to run a better race. If they give you a crappy answer to your feedback - don't do the race again. Earlier this year I volunteered for a Big Brother/Big Sister sponsored race... It was the first year for BBBS to sponsor the race and most of the people doing the actual work were not runners. Mostly it was well organized (pancake breakfast? smooth as silk), but we had the shirt problem. It didn't help that we didn't get our shirt giving instructions until after half of the folks had picked up their shirts. (basically we were supposed to size everyone up one - with only children getting the smalls and kid sizes) I was amazed at how many people wanted to switch sizes from what it said on their bibs... that sure didn't help! We quickly ran out of smalls and children's sizes.. Some folks were pretty irate! As a volunteer, I provided feedback and offered to help before the race next year to set up pre-registered bags with proper shirt sizes. Hopefully they'll take me up on it. If not, I'm afraid after people get burned 2 times, they may never come back. That's bad for everyone.

It's hard to look down if you don't go up

spaniel

Feeling the growl again

posted: 10/6/2008 at 3:11 PM

I keep a list of "black-listed" races that I run once and will never again for whatever reason...poor organization, unmarked course, unprofessional behavior, short/long course etc. I have found that those who don't care to do the basics of race planning decently well, don't care about the result either. I chalk it up as experience and don't give them my entry again. Over the years I find that this behavior is self-correcting as few of these races make it more than a couple years because they tick off too many local runners.

"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand

I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills

Isn't there a point to PRE-REGISTERING!? (Read 1036 times)