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After the registration fiascos of the past 2 years, I wrote an open letter on how to improve the Beach to Beacon with a few suggestions on how to improve the process (many of which were implemented this year.)
And with this year’s improvements, registration closed once again in record time. Technically, registration is still open for the 1500 lottery entrants, but of the first-come, first-served entries, all 600 of the Cape Elizabeth entries were snatched up in 21 minutes on Friday, and the 4,000 open registrations were all claimed within 32 minutes on Saturday morning.
I didn’t have any personal experience with the registration process this year, as I was out running at Pineland Farms. From what I’ve heard, though, the process wasn’t quite as horrible for everybody as it was last year, although it was still far from ideal.
Many people still had to contend with server errors, although I haven’t heard of nearly as many people thinking they were registered and not actually getting through, or of people getting double billed and/or double-entered.
If you haven’t yet registered for the race and still want to run, there are 1,500 bibs still up for grabs in the lottery. Lottery requests must be received by March 21st, with the winners being announced on the 22nd.
You can register at the race website: BeachToBeacon.org
Blaine. It was as bad as last year. I tried to log on starting at 8AM sharp using Safari on Mac running 10.5. The “register here” button didn’t fully load so I went over to firefox. Multiple times I’d get past the initial screen only to have it spin and finally tell me the server threw me out. Once I got to the point of filling in my name though, I went though ok and was registered by about 8:12. Then I had to register my son Sam (I thought one of the changes was supposed to be multiple registrations). The first time I finally got through to filling the racer information I failed to get to the credit card info before being kicked off the server. Then I got all the way through entering credit card information and I hit send………..server dies. I finally got all the way through and was done with two registrations by 8:32. So Sam must be about the last one registered.
Personally, this is a total cluster f&#k. Who has time for this? I talked to multiple couples last night at a party who started at 8AM and failed to get in. The race organizers need to bag this and do what Mt. Washington does, including the “family and friends” option of all or none get in. They should have switched to a lottery last year. They solved nothing. Sorry to rain on the parade of the organizers but many, many locals are frustrated with the process.
Blaine,
I have to agree with Jeff, Actually I swore last year I would not sign up this year because I was so agrivated…..but my wife wanted to run it again and I have struggled to get her out running….so I went for it and will run with her.
As far as the process goes, the website was not adequate to handle the flow and kicked me out continuously at different stages.
I too thought I was going to be able to register family together and ended up using two computors to accomplish signing up my wife and myself.
In my opinion,It was just as nerve racking as last year, though I can’t complain because I did get in.
I guess the plus this year is that the residents had first dibs (which I agree with) and there is a lottery for those who just could not get through…so there is still a chance for them.
Jeff/Kevin –
From what I’ve heard, it wasn’t as horrible because from what I’ve heard to this point people only had to deal with server timeouts, not with the multiple registrations and thinking they were registered but not actually being registered problems from last year.
I agree, though; this is 3 years in a row and they really need to cut ties with their web host and find somebody that can handle the process, or else outsource registration to a third party.