Nov 1, 01:19 PM by Kimberly | Santa Barbara Half Marathon
Posted in Running
Yesterday, I decided to walk today’s half-marathon. It went pretty well. I’m still recovering and will have a full report after I take stock of the carnage. One interesting thing happened during the event though: I was walking along by East Beach Grill, keeping the oncoming runners to my right, and a female lead-out cyclist coming in the opposit direction yelled at me and my group to stay to the right. She passed me, and I yelled back, “No. You’re wrong. We need to stay to the left. You’re telling the people the wrong way!” She came back and told me we needed to stay to the right. I told her that she was wrong, that I’ve done the bike lead out before, and the race instructions say to stay to the left. She must have realized she wasn’t going to convince me, so she biked away. We continued along, and heard people say things like “now we’re supposed to stay to the left??”
Yes, you need to stay to the left. Not because I’m anal retentive, but because I remembered what happened when I did the bike lead out. I was the lead cyclist for the top woman runner. It went fine until we passed East Beach Grill on the way back. We were keeping to the right, per the instructions I was given. We managed to cross the oncoming runners and get off Cabrillo and onto the bike path. Then I look across the grass to my right, and see some runners running parallel along Cabrillo! They didn’t know the course and didn’t see the cone and the markings on the street because of the oncoming runners! My runner didn’t need me anymore, so I signaled to her not to follow me, and I made my way over to the street. I told the runners that the course is over to the side. They asked me what to do. I said I didn’t know but to just make their way over somehow. I go to the turn off, and saw that there is a rather short high school girl manning it with a flag. I asked her to stand out in the street and point people to the right way, and tell people to stay to the left, but she didn’t really care. I tried to go back along Cabrillo and tell people to stay to their left, but by then, it was too late to change everybody, and more people were running back along Cabrillo.
I don’t know how many more people missed the turn off that year. In my head I have a name for what it was (a bunch of people all screwing up together) but this is a family blog so I will not say it. This year, I don’t know how many people missed the turn or ran into other people having to make their way across the stream of oncoming runners. When will they get it together?
