Run backhome
The Pier to Pier race was a little more hectic this year.
Entries before the race were quite a lot up on previous years. We'd only expected about 700 finishers, compared to 653 in 2007 so that's what we initially catered for and we ordered in 740 fleeces.
But by April it was apparent that we were going to far exceed that number and, at the last moment, the decision was made to add another 100 fleeces to the order to give us 840. Surely we can't get that many finishers!
How wrong we were!
By the close of entries we had 832 runners, that's 27% up on last year.
Ah well, everyone must've entered early and we'll not get so many on the day so at least it'll be easier to do the late entries.
Wrong again!
Late entries went through the roof. Even though we had to drop the fleece for all entrants on the day (we just didn't have enough to go around) we still got a huge influx of runners with 158 entries on the day, 46% up on last year's late entries. I was still typing them in as the runners were finishing!
It turned out that we just about hit the race limit of 1,000 entrants and we actually turned away prospective runners because we ran out of race numbers.
Conditions on the day were quite good. Cool, slight breeze from the North East (that's almost from behind) and the showers were either side of the run so the run itself was dry (as far as I know) and the Sun even came out for a lot of the time.
I have few reports of problems:
1) we have 10 duplicate numbers in the race results so if you don't appear there then let me know your estimated time and number and I'll see if I can sort you out.
2) The evening before some vandals put a brick through the window of one of the minibusses. Fortunately, they didn't pinch the 900 bottles of water and 840 bags of crisps that were in it at the time!
On the positive side, I'm told Mars Bar/Crisp/Fleece distribution went very smoothly and, despite the numbers, we managed to avoid the big queues of previous years.
The fleeces appear to have gone down well, even though they are on the large size for some.
Those that entered on the day, and therefore did not qualify for a fleece, should have been targeted at the end for spot prizes. We had beach towels, flasks, watches, t-shirts and woolly hats so hopefully most went home with something and weren't too disappointed at not getting the fleece.
Here's a link to a few pictures of the race.
Now our main problem is how to top that for next year!
I might amend this report after the de-brief of Wednesday when I find out what really went on!
See you all next year!