The race results: what went wrong?

by Tom Atwood
Race Director

When I think about Saturday’s 13th running of the Mud Mountain 5K, I am reminded of the old, bad punch line: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?”

The race itself went perfectly. A record turnout. The 5K Started on time. No injuries or heat-related problems. The fun-run was fun. There was plenty of water, free fruit, and energy bars at the finish line.

But when it came time to announce the results, the winners of the race, and the top finishers in each age category, things seemed to fall apart. What happened? It looks like several events combined to produce initial race results that were flat-out wrong.

First, several runners crossed the finish line--and were timed--who either did not register, or did not have a race bib (like #94 in photo above). The tags from those bib numbers are used to record results, and when they are out of order or some are missing, it throws off all the results.

It also appears that in the crush of almost 500 runners in the chute, some of the tags got shuffled.

Fortunately, we also use a backup method in the chute: literally writing down the number of each runner so we can cross check those numbers with the tags from the bibs. Since it soon became clear the tags were not correct, we switched to the backup, handwritten numbers to, in effect, score the race the old-fashioned way: by hand. That will be completed by this evening and the final, official results will be posted.

None of this is an excuse, just an explanation for those of you who might be curious about what happened. Again, as race director, I apologize for the delay in getting the final results, which will be posted later today on www.mudmountain.org.

Needless to say, we are already looking at ways to prevent this from happening again at next year’s Mud Mountain. And we hope to see you there!