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2008 Sydney City to Surf Entries Are Open
I received an email from the organisers of the Sydney City to Surf the other day to inform me that the entries are about to open for this year’s race. I’m not special, all 50,000+ people who entered last year also received the news. I’m planning on entering again this year which will make it my 20th City to Surf. The 2008 City to Surf which will be held on Sunday 10 August. My running this year has been on the improve after a few years of fairly lacklustre performances. I’ve run a good Canberra Marathon and a reasonable Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon so I’ll want to aim for an improvement on last year’s time. Last year was my first sub-60 minute C2S since 2002 so I’m going to have to try to keep the good times rolling. But I want to talk about the start of the City to Surf which has always been the biggest issue most people I talk to have with the event. I know a lot of runners skip the City to Surf because of the start preferring to go for a run by themselves than battle the crowds to get a time that doesn’t reflect how they’ve actually run. The organisers seem to be willing to tinker with different options to try to get everyone away quickly and fairly. I’m in the first wave of runners so this is where my concentration lies. In the first wave you’ve got anyone who has run a City to Surf before and has completed the distance in a time of under 100 minutes. Preferred runners get to start right up the front but the qualification time is around the 54 minute mark. Those of us who barely miss the preferred start section are lumped in with runners who finished the previous year in any time up to 100 minutes. So there are thousands of runners who run the 14k up to 40 minutes slower than me…and they all seem to think that they should start at the front of the pack. Last year was an improvement on previous years because the first wave was broken into two groups but I believe they’ve still got some work to do. Splitting the first wave into 2 groups is a good start but I believe the corrals should go further and break the times down into even smaller groups such as sub-60 minutes, sub-75 minutes, sub-90 minutes etc. At least that way you’ll get runners of a comparable speed starting together and moving along at roughly the same speed. This means there’s less chance of running into each other, the start clears more quickly and, most importantly, you get a lot fewer pissed off runners. Virtually every other major race that I enter has moved to chip timing with the chip able to be laced into your shoes. The pressure of getting across the line as soon after the gun goes is completely taken out of the equation by the addition of these chips and you can run confident that your time will more accurately reflect the effort that you’re putting in. Okay, providing chips for 50,000 people might stretch the contingencies a fraction, but surely it’s the way these big runs are going to have to go.
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City to Surf
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May, 2012
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