F.Y.I

Fans of this site, you are on notice. Beginning next month, detailed info will be on beta site, multisportathlete.blogspot.com. For this month, blogs are placed here & then ported over there.

Those who do relay teams & care about splits, forget about sommersports. They have the worst timing I have ever experienced in my entire athletic career (over 15 years). I thought 1 week (last year, trilogy, butter.com) was bad until I did the Huntington tri. To this day, there are still no splits for ANY sprint relay team & they have done a few events since then (nearly 2 month ago).

Look before you leap. Some events have unusual (-ly bad) age group categories or are just fun runs. I got burned a few times this way. Example: In 2003, valentines at track offered normal age groups & I placed 1st age. Last year, I was unable to get race applications, not realizing the reason was conceal the fact they changed the categories & I went from 1st to worst (4th, which is out of contention). I was wise & avoided that event this year; others were too, as I noticed attendance dropped. Another was the boca half. The race application stated age groups & a relay category and indicated 3 deep in all divisions. Once race was over, race director was unhappy with number of entrants & arbitrarily decided to give only to overall, which happened to be members of his racing team, because my partner & I came in second, perhaps by default (seems only that team & us bothered to enter). That's not our fault and I have won in that manner many times in previous races. You don't get many, but nevertheless, they got paid by us for us to participate &, apparently, if more showed up, it would have been awarded.

When I first started running, I barely mentioned the name of the race. Now, I keep records, such as time, place, event, race numbers and sometimes even race applications of events of interest. Example: I have the original ap for the boca race in question & the one for this year, which now clarifies there is only overall. Also, the valentine at track, with normal age groups versus what's online. I tend to plan what I do & where I go, based on certain criterium. The first thing I check for is race conflict. This year I missed my favorite fall fling 5k because of a previous commitment to a series race (always takes precedence). Then, the other factors come to play. If an event is bad enough, I will forego a race for training, a rare occurrence.

See you at the races!