Race Report: Berbee Derby 10K

Location: Fitchburg, WI
Date: 11/22/2012
Time: 9:00 AM
Weather: 50 degrees, 10-15 mph wind from the south, beautiful day

Time: 41:00
Overall: 103/2073
Division: 22/134

THE COURSE

The Berbee Derby has become a Thanksgiving Day tradition for Vanessa and I. Typically we have to drive to central Illinois for Thanksgiving with her family, so prior to our 2 1/2 hour drive, we get a "quick" run in. In years past, I ran the 10k and Vanessa ran the 5k, but this year, since Vanessa is training to run the WDW Half Marathon, she also ran the 10k. 

WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

If you've ran a Turkey Trot or a similar race on a holiday, you'll understand the atmosphere of the race. A lot of families (like ours) use it to start off a long day of food and family events. Typically there is a lot of laughter and abundant amounts of smiles (at least prior to the run).

Also for this year, they basically reversed the course from previous years, which removed a long and steep hill from the end of the sixth mile. This helped for the last mile, but based on the winds of the day, meant that the one long and somewhat steep hill ended up being run into the teeth of the wind.

WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE

For the most part, this is an excellent run race. They do a great job handling parking, which is disjointed due to the start being in a business park. They always have plenty of port-a-potties, though this year they didn't announce that they had moved about 3/4 of them over near the start, so unless you walked down there, you would have spent about an hour in line waiting for one of the 10 in the previous location. (Thankfully we heard the announcement saying that there were more, and did our quick warm up job to race over there before the lines migrated over there.) This year they also did something new that I hadn't seen before. Instead of assigning numbers out ahead of time, they assigned you a number when you picked up your bib and packet. They used a bar code reader to scan a bar code on the bib after selecting the participant on a computer. Perhaps that slowed down the bib pickup just slightly, but I have to think it saved them a lot of time overall. 

Since this is the "What wasn't so great about the race" portion, and all I've done is praise them, you might be slightly confused... Well, the start of this race has always been slightly crowded. The start has always been on a two lane street, but not a typical residential two lane street, I'm talking one with enough room for parking on each side (probably for diagonal parking on each side). The problem? They use half of that. They fence in the runners for the 10k and the first two tenths of a mile you're fenced into that half a road width. I'm sure the reasoning behind this is the amount of mats that the timing company has. They likely don't have the setup for 40' of timing mats. Alright, what can you do to fix that issue and not affect the race?

Waves!

I'm guessing they got tired of hearing this same complaint from a large amount of participants, because they tried to implement waves this year. They had three separate waves for both the 10k (A, B, and C) and 5k (D, E, and F). Only problem? I have no clue how they determined the waves. Vanessa was never asked for times when she registered, which for some races isn't a problem if they have results from previous years for you, which they would for both of us. But Mitch, Vanessa's brother, wasn't asked when he registered the night before the race, and he's never run the race before. All three of us ended up in wave B. When we got to the starting line, I looked into wave A and immediately said to myself, there's no way I'm starting in wave B. There was an obvious hodge podge of people with varying abilities, not the typical breakdown by ability.

Instead of my continual rambling, I'll offer my ideas for a solution to their issues. (The immediate one would be talk to the Crazylegs organizers, you've become probably the fourth largest running event in Madison (based on my thoughts, not 100% sure though) behind Crazylegs, Madison Marathon, and Madison Mini-Marathon.)

1. Find a timing company with enough equipment to use a wider starting line.
2. Figure out the courses so that they start and end at the same point. Seriously, if you need help with this, call me. For the 10k, get rid of the new little loop through the residential area between mile markers one and two. Make that difference up with an out and back on Lacy Rd (kind of like what there was previously, but have the turn around in the road). Everyone is spread out enough at that point, you won't need to use the second (eastbound) lane of Lacy Rd.
3. Smaller waves. How big are Crazylegs? 200 or so (at least at the beginning). How big are yours? 600-700. Throw in the difference in widths of starting lines (and the course thereafter), your triple the size waves make no sense. Cut that number at least in half, no matter whether or not you can accomplish number one. (Also, enforce the waves, there were no breaks between the waves, no ropes, nothing.
4. Start the waves one minute apart (tops). From what I think the announcer said, the first wave started three minutes ahead of the second wave. Why? It can't take that long for the entire wave to pass the starting line. If it does, that's an issue in itself. Crazylegs starts 30 seconds apart, that should be enough for you as well, especially with smaller waves.

OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS

In the end, I was very happy with my race. Could I have ran a few seconds faster had I not been impeded for the first half mile by the crowded course? Sure, but I wasn't going to break 40 minutes (my PR is just under 40 minutes, I think 39:56, but the Shamrock Shuffle doesn't have their results from 2007 any longer on their website), so it's not like I feel robbed of anything.