Posts Tagged rant
Another Weekend in Stockholm
It’s still doubtful that we’ll be able to leave again on Tuesday, but there is hope, since the Swedish airport authority said that they may allow flights into and out of Arlanda tomorrow. Furthermore, the BBC weather maps predict the volcano ash will pass to the south of Norway and Sweden by the beginning of the week. It’s a better than nothing chance that we could leave, but I’m not holding my breath. Furthermore, the air crews and aircraft all have to be in place by Tuesday.
Yesterday, we took a trip to the Vasa Museum, which houses an absolutely massive wooden warship. The ship was built by Sweden in the 1600s in its fight against Poland and sank as soon as it put out to sea. It was recovered in the 1950s and restored over a 20 year period before being placed inside the museum.
I’ve seen plenty of wooden sailing ships at home, most were very small, but the Vasa is a giant. Its size was probably part of the reason for its downfall — the prevailing argument is that it was too top heavy and did not have enough ballast. From the keel to the top of the mainmast must be well over 100 feet: the ship seems like the Spruce Goose of its time.
Last night I went out with more stuck conference attendees to a bar near the waterfront. The average price was about $10/pint, but “pints” here are a noticeably larger 0.5L (16.9oz), not 12oz as in the United States. The place I went to had a large selection of beers, but not too many I hadn’t heard of.
Today we went out to the Royal Palace, meeting up with Alexandra, but this time we saw the changing of the guard, toured the insides of the palace, and the crown jewels. Interestingly, the woman operating the ticket office commented on my William and Mary ID, for it seems the concept of royalty has a different meaning in places that have monarchs. The changing of the guard involved a military marching band playing a few songs and marching around. The Royal Apartments were ornate, but were no Versailles, although a room in the Royal Palace was modeled after the Hall of Mirrors. The Treasury, which contained some of the crown jewels, was most interesting, with a guide explaining the historical significance of different crowns, maces, and orbs.
Since Alexandra was also stuck here with a canceled flight, we walked back to the train station to see if she could get a ticket back in the direction towards her school. She estimated the travel time would be about 30 hours. The train station in Stockholm was packed, with the ticket office handing out numbers to those who wanted to purchase tickets. The line was probably several hours long, so we just left. More than likely, trains towards Copenhagen were sold out for several days. It’s fortunate that Europe has the rail system it does, for if air travel was stopped in the United States for more than a few days, it would be much worse.
Later, we went back over towards where the Vasa museum was to find the zoo. We circled around it but could not find a way in. Finally, when we reached the entrance, it was 10 minutes from closing. We walked back along the waterfront and I headed back to the hotel.
While I was out today, I ran into several people from the conference. I saw one guy from the hotel who mentioned that he knew of people heading south into Spain or Morocco to fly to South Africa and then catch a flight from there to the United States. I ran into some others from the University of Illinois in a grocery store who predicted the winds would shift just in time to allow their Thursday flight to leave.
At this point, we will wait and see what happens with our scheduled Tuesday flight. If it doesn’t go, then we will probably start to think about alternatives. A group from the conference is considering chartering a bus to Madrid, but their airspace has been closed intermittently and I’ve heard the hotels there are booked solid. There is also a ferry that runs from Denmark to Iceland: we could take a train to Denmark, take the ferry to Iceland, and fly back home from there. Surprisingly, Iceland’s airport is allowing flights to and from the United States.
If we do consider finding an alternate route home, we will have to consider the costs of leaving a city that we know well with residents that speak good English and are pretty tolerant of foreigners. We also have to consider the probability of something else going wrong when traveling overland long distances, connecting on different trains or even buses. Bus and especially rail routes are extremely packed because of all that’s happened, with many being sold out for days. By the time we travel a week and a half to get home via land and sea, the airspace may have opened up anyway.
At this point, time is starting to pass. I haven’t done any work and I really should, at least to keep my mind off of being stuck here. My adviser and I may go to KTH to find an office and get something done. At the end of the week I am supposed to meet with my fiancee and the pastor for our wedding but I might not be able to go. I wonder what would happen if I were stuck here for months or even for the rest of my life (I’m sure this won’t happen, but I am thinking hypothetically). However, my sister has lived abroad for quite some time, so I’m sure I could adapt like she has.
Stockholm: CPS Week
While my Stockholm trip to attend CPS Week has gone well until today, I suddenly find that my travels are far from over. Thanks to the ash cloud ransacking the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, Sweden may become my new home for awhile. I really seem to be a marked man when it comes to air travel.
Day 1: Saturday 4/10/2010
When I arrived in Norfolk, there was a mix up at the ticket counter – the web check-in boarding pass I printed the day before was invalid and it took some work for the ticket agent to print a new one. When we arrived in Chicago that afternoon, it was a very long trip from the B concourse island to the international terminal. We had to go under the ramp, into the main terminal, and take a train to the international terminal, a good 15 or 20 minutes. Fortunately, the terminal was not busy and we were able to check in at the SAS counter without any issues.
The TSA agent checking my boarding pass at the O’Hare International Terminal commented about me being from Virginia; she said she had never been there. When I travel to other parts of the country, I always get interesting comments from the locals about me being from Virginia. In Palo Alto, a waitress commented that it was cold in Virginia, when at the time I remember it was really much warmer at home than in Silicon Valley. When in Gloucester visiting an old roommate, I got a comment from his neighbor that I was from “Virginny.” I’ve also heard another Massachusetts resident (who attends school at William and Mary) refer to “Virginny,” as well. Hollywood always portrays Virginians with thick backcountry accents when the reality is nothing of the sort. Some have the Tidewater accent, but it’s unnoticeable to the untrained ear.
Also, there were no restaurants in the O’Hare International terminal: 8 bucks for a pre-made sandwich. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long until the Stockholm flight departed. I noticed that nearly everyone waiting was Swedish, for there were no blue American passports that I could see. Once on the plane, I realized we lucked out on the seat assignments and got extra legroom since we were just behind the premium economy section.
On the flights, my adviser and I talked about the direction of my career in school and afterwards. Placement at a faculty job would probably require more time in school, perhaps up to another year, while a research lab may require less. It’s all about gaining enough experience to do what you want to do. It was interesting to talk to him about the possibilities since he has experience in both industry and academia. Both have benefits and drawbacks and there is no way I want to close the door on any particular track just yet. Just this week I talked with some other students in our department about the time required to complete a Ph.D., and those Master’s students involved in the discussion were wary of spending years in school to graduate. I would not be opposed to spending another two years in school as long as I worked hard enough to get some good papers published in the hope that I could get a good faculty position at a research university. From the looks of it, I have plenty of time to think about it and decide.
Day 2: Sunday 4/11/2010
As usual, I didn’t sleep much on the plane, only short bouts of 10 or 20 minutes. The sun came up quickly and the clouds parted, giving us a view of jagged mountains and snow and little sign of life. Before landing, the ground was covered up again by thick fog, which we soon descended into.
Though it was 7:30 in the morning, the airport was almost completely deserted. Immigration and customs was a breeze considering we were the only flight arriving at the time. A high speed train took us from the airport to the Stockholm Central terminal; a speedometer read well over 200kph as trees and buildings flew by. I doubt any train at home travels anywhere near that fast. From the train terminal, we took a subway two stops until we were near the hotel. One thing I found odd was that the subway tickets had to be purchased from one of several convenience stores surrounding the subway entrance. In the subway terminal, there were no ticket machines or windows and no signs indicating where tickets could be bought. Instead, we had to ask someone at the entrance looking for freeriders where we could purchase tickets.
The city was mostly deserted, though it was a Sunday. Stores were closed and nearly nobody was on the subway or walking around on the streets. Even the school where the conference was to be held was nearly empty of students with the library closed. Weatherwise, the day started out cloudy but later the sun came out, with temperatures in the lower 40s – pretty much a December or January day at home. It’s a good thing I brought my heavy coat.
The hotel had a room available as soon as we arrived, which was surprising since it was only 9 in the morning. My adviser and I slept for a few hours and then headed out in the afternoon, exploring Gamla stan and the area around the conference. We walked by the parliament building and the Stockholm Palace, taking a ton of pictures.
To me, it seemed as if everyone was pretending that the weather was nice. People at coffee shops sat outside at tables, wearing winter coats while being punished by the wind. Others stood in lines at ice cream stands, despite the 40 degree weather. Plenty more were out running and biking. I suppose weather can be much worse in Stockholm.
The crowds picked up some in the afternoon, but there were few restaurants around our hotel so we settled on a Mongolian BBQ place. I’ve been to similar places at home, but in the brief time I’ve been here there wasn’t anything interesting that caught my eye. Just the usual McDonald’s and a few other places labeled “American Grill,” or “Steakhouse.” I travel thousands of miles to get away from American food, among other things, but it seems I can’t escape it.
Day 3: Monday 4/12/2010
Though sleep was better than the previous night, I still had trouble. I almost never sleep well on trips since it’s always hard for me to adjust to new environments. I got up before 7AM and went out for a run beyond the university where the conference was, noticing there was a large park I could check out, so I headed that way and was surprised. City blocks now packed with commuter traffic and sidewalks packed with people suddenly gave way to a vast forest with tons of dirt trails. Plenty of other people were out running and biking.
I tooled around on the trails for awhile and headed back. I was surprised that traffic would stop even if it looked like I was about to cross the street. In addition to the trails, there were large paved paths with marked lanes for bikes and pedestrians. Sweden seems to have solved the bike path problem so prevalent in the United States. By making the paths wider and by separating pedestrians and cyclists, cyclists can cruise the bike paths without having to dodge pedestrians. In the city, sections of curb separated bike lanes from vehicle traffic, also decreasing the chance of a bicycle accident.
On Monday, there were a handful of workshops; I attended one on “Cooperating Objects,” which appears to be a new buzzword in the embedded/sensor networks community. A few people spoke about event detection and machine learning, with ideas similar to my research. There were easily several hundred people, much more than at previous conferences I attended, people from all over the world.
At the reception Monday evening, I met Alexandra from Romania, who attended school in Slovenia. It was interesting talking to her, considering that we are from very different and faraway places, yet we work in the same field. We hung out quite a bit between breaks throughout much of the conference and through her I was introduced to a few others from Eastern Europe. At school, it can feel very insular with few people to share your work and ideas with, but at a place like this, everybody is doing the same thing, and they come from everywhere.
Day 4: Tuesday 4/13/2010
Tuesday was a long one. I was up at 6:30 to run, with plenty of daylight. I explored a different part of the park than before, but ended up by a factory. I’m still surprised at the number of trails in the city.
The plenary speaker seemed to be more of a biologist, speaking about human and animal brains as a control system. There were quite a few talks in IPSN about machine learning and/or event detection so it was interesting to see others’ approaches to similar problems. Later on, there was a poster and demo session which lasted until nearly 7:30 at night.
During the poster/demo session, I met a guy from the University of Utah which had concocted a sort of “x-ray” vision with 802.15.4 radios – I remember reading about this on the internet a few months ago. Link quality between radios would change due to people moving about in the room, and with enough links, the moving people could be localized. Apparently, his paper based on this was rejected mostly because nobody believed it.
Day 4: Wednesday 4/14/2010
On Wednesday, I hit the motherlode for trails when out on my run. On previous runs I seemed to hit dead ends – running into roads, office buildings, or even factories, but today I found a trail that took me out to the rest of the park. There were plenty more trails and open space by the time I had to turn around. It was also sunny right from the start instead of morning fog.
The IPSN tracks were pretty interesting, again with a few on event detection and machine learning. One group took a twist with a technique I used in my paper that I hadn’t thought of. I also went to the CPS conference sensor network track, but didn’t really see too much differences compared with the typical sensor network research.
Day 5: Thursday 4/15/2010
I ran again in the morning, out to all the new trails I found the day before. Unfortunately, the clouds returned. At the conference, my adviser’s adviser, Jack Stankovic, was the plenary speaker. During his talk, he used the example of a storm in Chicago as a reference to real time job scheduling. The next day, I was supposed to return home via Chicago – hearing about any airline problem in Chicago was the last thing I wanted to think about. This example eerily foreshadowed the problems to come for my return flights (through Chicago).
There were a few other sessions in the IPSN track that were interesting – at least one other event detection paper that was related to my work. Then, in the afternoon, it was time for my presentation. Since I was in the sensor networks track of RTAS, most people were in the concurrent IPSN track, so I didn’t get a huge audience.
Just before the presentation, I found out about the ash cloud coming from Iceland. One of the other people in the room mentioned about flying back through Chicago the next day, as were my adviser and I. He then mentioned something about maybe not getting back, and that’s when I found out about the ash cloud causing a huge mess in the UK and northern Europe. It was headed to Sweden next.
With this on my mind, it was my turn to present. I thought I did reasonably well and finished on time, except that I rearranged my slides just before the presentation and wound up having a backup slide placed ahead of my last slide, causing me to skip through it.
Following my presentation, my adviser and I locked ourselves in a discussion room in the university library and proceeded to call the airline reservation number to get a new booking. The earliest we could get was the following Tuesday, over four days away. Weather reports stated that the cloud might stay for days or weeks. I walked back to the hotel and extended the hotel reservation until Tuesday while in the lobby other conference attendees scrambled to adjust their plans.
At the very least, I’ll get to see more of Stockholm and Sweden, though the weather isn’t supposed to hold up. Fortunately for this week it has been fairly warm and sunny. We’ll have to take it day by day to see if the ash cloud will dissipate enough to allow us to go home. If Tuesday comes and goes and there’s no sign of the cloud letting up, it might be worth a try to head south via train or bus through Denmark to somewhere where I can fly out.
Quote of the week: “Imagine there’s a storm in Chicago…”
My trip to Stockholm for CPS Week has been great, until today, when everything went sideways. The sessions were interesting, I met new people from everywhere, and my presentation went well.
Then came the unwitting harbinger of doom in the form of an example by this morning’s plenary speaker, Jack Stankovic. In his presentation, he spoke about airline scheduling as an example for real time assurance. “Imagine there’s a storm in Chicago,” he said, continuing on that airlines will have to cancel flights and rebook passengers.
As soon as I heard that, I knew I was in for it. My adviser and I were supposed to head to Chicago tomorrow on our way home, but now there’s an ash cloud covering much of Europe. We are rebooked to return Tuesday, but the eruption could continue indefinitely. Everyone is scrambling to rebook their flights and extend hotel reservations, but if this continues, we may be better off swimming home.
In the meantime, I’ll at least get to see more of Stockholm and Sweden.
Bike races and “my tax dollars”
Whenever I read “my tax dollars” in a letter to the editor, I know immediately that the writer cares nothing about the common good. Such an attitude is completely contrary to the whole purpose of taxes. In a recent issue of the Virginia Gazette, someone angrily wrote in about how a bike race completely disrupted their life, pillaging their time and money:
Why are bike races allowed along Lightfoot and Fenton Mill roads? Bicyclists were running at a break-neck 25 mph in a 55 mph zone.
I was at this race last weekend: a lazy Saturday morning in the middle of nowhere couldn’t be a better time and place to have a bike race. It’s so unfortunate that the author was driving one of the three cars that travel those roads every day. The race was not a closed course, so I suppose the author/driver didn’t have the patience to quit speeding and drive carefully, especially with police around as escorts:
Who pays for those police cars? If the bicyclists pay for them, I hope there is a hefty fee to cover the gas and wear and tear on vehicles that my tax dollars bought.
The author of the above statement is living proof of why a police escort was needed in the first place. When I’ve been on the bike, I’ve been accosted countless times by people like this. Such a person sees the road as his or her personal space: all others must bow down before them. How dare cyclists use a road paid for with “my tax dollars.” It’s not like the cyclists don’t pay taxes, either. Indeed, the registration fee for the race probably included pay for the police, which is one of the reasons bike races and triathlons are so ridiculously expensive. Of course, the letter continues with the obligatory bike path comment:
Bicyclists cry for bike lanes then don’t use them, there’s a $50 million path to Richmond that they don’t use.
I’ve already visited on how “running at a break-neck 25 mph” on a bike path is extremely dangerous to pedestrians, but the author’s emphasis is less on safety and more towards the “$50 million.” In the end, the money arguments aren’t really about misuse of “my tax dollars,” but more about everyone else just being in the way. Can’t we all get along peacefully?
Running Shoes and Marketing Hype
Today, for the first time in years, I went to a brick and mortar running store and bought new shoes. Until this winter, I had been wearing the same make and model shoe for years. I wore the same shoe for most of my college running career and continued to wear it afterwards until I hurt my knee. Then, sometime after my knee surgery and before I started running again, the manufacturer discontinued the model.
I searched for a replacement, preferring to buy online since it’s easy to find the same shoe online for 30-40% less than in a brick and mortar store. From suggestions on Internet forums, I bought a similar shoe from an online retailer made by the same manufacturer. However, the new shoe felt like running in sandals compared to the discontinued model. It gave me no stability and very little cushioning in the forefoot.
Why do shoe companies insist on changing their shoe lineup every year? There isn’t a shoe model that either doesn’t get changed or discontinued on a yearly basis. The shoe that treated me well for so long was suddenly gone. I probably bought 15 or 20 pairs of that model, and what does the manufacturer do to reward me for my loyalty? They hang me out to dry.
There’s no functional reason to update, discontinue, or introduce new running shoes with such magnitude and frequency. Some research indicates people are better off without running shoes. However, shoes are generally made to accommodate a small handful of biomechanical differences in runners. With these differences identified, each manufacturer should make a shoe that successfully addresses these problems for most of the population and let things be. With the current cycle of drastic shoe changes, either running shoe technology is so terrible that the manufacturers are constantly scrambling to find shoes that work or human evolution is taking place at unprecedented levels.
Instead of producing something consistent and functional, shoe companies care more about generating marketing hype surrounding their products. They want consumers to crave the latest running shoe with its biodegradable materials, patented cushioning materials, and futuristic looks. I don’t care how many proprietary materials the shoe is made out of or what the shoe looks like, I only want it to keep me from getting injured. Every shoe I’ve ever bought goes from mostly white to a dirty, muddy mess in a matter of days, but as long as it keeps me in one piece, that’s all that really matters.
The constant shoe updates also force me to buy from a regular retail store since I have to try on several pairs to find a new one that works. Sizing changes from model to model, so I’m wary of buying a new pair without first trying it on. Retail stores mark up prices as much as 100% of what they paid the manufacturer, so it’s easy to find an online retailer who charges far less than the suggested retail price. Going to the store today, I’ve found that what was the $80 shoe five years ago is now the $100 shoe. Some shoes are nearly $200. All of them wear out in 300-400 miles, so what exactly is it that warrants the extra cost?
Running shoes shouldn’t be any different than a household appliance. Shoes should be something that do their job faithfully and can be replaced at the end of their lifespan with a model that performs exactly the same way.
Quotes of the week v.2
Here’s some more stuff that piqued my interest over the past week. While I find most comments on the internet to be extremely immature, the Slashdot moderation system really makes the good comments float to the top, producing a lot of good insight. I have to say that whoever came up with the Slashdot moderation system had a real stroke of genius.
Executive Compensation
Slashdot recently covered a story of a Sun employee commenting on the golden parachutes received by executives as their failing company was acquired by Oracle. Debates ensued in the story comments as to whether or not greed and apathy drives executives to place little effort into keeping their businesses afloat, completely disregarding the interests of employees and even shareholders. It reminds me of this Ambrose Bierce quote which I remember being narrated by Leonard Nimoy in Civilization IV:
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
One of the commenters of the story gave a blunt analogy:
To make it easier to understand and to make a more basic explanation, let’s replace “money” with “food”. Let’s say that the executive in charge of Sun has a machine that makes food for thousands of people. He runs the machine so poorly that it breaks down, and thousands of people no longer have access to the food it provides. In the process of breaking the machine, he manages to engineer it so that the very last time he runs the machine, it makes enough food to feed him, his family and his friends’ families for a couple hundred years if they manage the food he created properly.
It sure seems that executives certainly have the opportunity to obtain massive individual profit with little responsibility. Hopefully, for each story like this, there are hundreds of executives that run their companies well and think about their employees when making decisions.
Show me your papers…
In another Slashdot story, users commented on the heavy-handedness of Verizon blocking internet access to a popular website. Verizon alleged that a denial of service attack originated from the domain of the blocked site, which prompted comments that such attacks could be construed as terrorism and must be thwarted by corporations and governments. While I can’t really argue against the actions of Verizon or governmental involvement in stopping DDoS attacks, one commenter posted the following in response to increased governmental involvement on the internet:
When I was a kid it was popular to point to various things in the USSR like the inability to travel freely without “showing your papers” as evidence of totalitarian oppression. Here in 2010 “showing your papers” is as American as apple pie!
Oddly, I agree with the concept of this statement but not necessarily in the context of the internet. Air travel comes readily to mind. Nothing screams “show me your papers” more than flying. International travel is even worse, with arriving travelers powerless to stop searches of their computers and other electronic devices. What was once fun is now excruciating now that I’ve got to remove my shoes, take half of my stuff out of suitcases and into plastic bins, shuffle through metal detectors, and fumble for my ticket and ID. It really dampens my enthusiasm about going to Sweden in April.
Lowering the bar in Virginia schools
Virginia legislators have been desperate to get more Virginians into their public universities, even at the expense of revenue and quality of the student body. In the article, one legislator commented that he knew of several students with 4.0 GPAs that were denied entry to Virginia public universities. Well, when you loosen the grading scales in primary and secondary schools, there are going to be more students with higher GPAs.
I find it amusing that at one end, Virginia Beach students are whining that the grading scales are too strict and prevent them from gaining admittance to college. At the other end are complaints that too many 4.0 students are not admitted to Virginia colleges. Instead of high school students working harder to get into school or doing something that sets themselves apart from other 4.0 students, the prevailing wisdom is to just lower the bar. Fortunately, it appears as though the attempts to force 75 percent in-state enrollment is halted for now.
Those condescending liberals…
A piece written by a UVA politics professor argues that liberals are much more condescending than their conservative counterparts:
American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.
From postings on the internet, musings from friends, and from stuff I’ve heard around my college campus, I agree that liberals seem to be increasingly intolerant of any dissenting opinions. Everyone just drinks the Kool-Aid and can’t reason independently of news columnists or political party leaders. Nobody tries to understand all sides of an argument and understand the reasoning of the opposition.
Another citation from the Grammar Police
Here is a link to another blatantly obvious error that should have been caught. Work with spelling errors really comes off as sloppy and greatly hurts the credibility of the piece. If the author wasn’t able to catch this, how am I to know that the information presented isn’t erroneous either? At least this time the author gave credit to his sources.
Infographics: How reliable are they?
With the social media flood comes a torrent of infographics, most of which focus on presentation instead of information. It reminds me of the “mediaglyphics” in yet another Neal Stephenson novel: The Diamond Age. In the futuristic novel, mediaglyphics are used by corrupt governments and broadcast media to inform and entertain a mostly illiterate population. Infographics aren’t much different: they blast the reader with colorful line graphs, maps, and pie charts to present an implicit and oversimplified argument.
I’ve found many of these infographics to be packed with spelling and grammatical errors. For example, try to find the error in this visualization of U.S. debt holders. With enormous font sizes and few words, any spelling or grammatical error really stands out. Such easily identifiable problems make me question the integrity of the statistics (and implicit arguments) these infographics present. Where did the data come from and how reliable are the sources? Many infographics do not provide references, so how am I to know that it isn’t just some ten year old kid making this stuff up? What if multiple sources produce conflicting results? In such cases, it’s almost guaranteed that the infographic creator just picked the result/data that best furthered his or her argument. Lastly, what information is not presented? When reading an infographic, I always wonder if I am seeing the whole picture. With so little information actually presented, I have no doubt that most of these infographics leave out plenty, especially stuff that hurts the creator’s argument.
I admit that infographics pique my interest in a subject to which I haven’t given much thought. However, with minimal content and questionable integrity, they may be no more than chartjunk.
Road Races: Less Passion, More Money
Last weekend, my girlfriend ran the Rock N’ Roll half marathon at the oceanfront despite admitting that she barely trained for it in recent months. Afterwards, it was as if she could barely walk. “Why run it?”, I asked. Apparently, she paid $90 for the entrance fee and decided that the money to go to waste. So, what happened here? Why did someone force herself into doing something that she clearly would not if the cost was less? Increasingly, races are organized to make money, not to provide competition and/or enjoyment among the participants. It appears to be part of a larger trend to care less about making a difference and to care more about the bottom line. It isn’t about doing what you love, it’s about doing anything you can to get some green. When the dollar signs loom larger than passion, you get unprepared runners suffering through 13 miles to recoup their costs.
Years ago, the biggest road race in the area was the Shamrock marathon and 8k with a modest entry fee. The turnout was smaller, but the fastest finishing times were still comparable to today. Recently, the local running club handed over control of the Shamrock to a for-profit company. Volunteers were replaced by paid staff. Prize money for elite finishers was increased. What was a well organized regional race was turned into a full blown production with all the frills. Consequently, entry fees skyrocketed. The hype induced a similar increase in turnout. However, the fastest finishing times also only showed marginal improvement.
What does the average runner stand to gain by paying $90 for a race? As bad as $90 sounds, it was only the registration fee several months in advance of the race; the fee increased to $110 three months before. So, does that $90 get you better competition? At a smaller (and probably cheaper) race, there may be fewer runners, but the average half marathon runner will still find plenty of people to try and chase down. Is the $90 worth the dry-fit t-shirt or extra junk that comes in the race packet? Maybe the finishing medal is better. Or, maybe the experience is somehow intrinsically better just because the race was expensive. Clearly, the average runner stands little to gain by running in a large scale production-style road race orchestrated by a for-profit company rather than running in a local road race staffed by volunteers. Somehow, people still pay anyway and all the backhanded marketing hype draws them in record numbers like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.
The increased registration fees only really benefit two groups: the elite runners, and of course, the organizers. With increased entry fees at large races, elite runners are often provided with free travel and hotel rooms. Naturally, they don’t have to pay an entry fee while the increased costs to all other participants provide a larger pile of prize money to the elites. That $90 provided by 20,000 participants also does well in providing the organizers with a nice chunk of change. Those who were once volunteers and provided a great service to the community are now ransacking their fellow runners’ wallets for every last dollar.
It’s bad enough that the registration fee is so high for many of these races. It’s even worse that these high profile races don’t even allow registration transfers in case of injury, lack of training, or sudden employer-mandated travel plans. As a result, some strange things happen as people struggle to cope with a significant monetary loss. Some will trade numbers under the table, throwing off the results when a supposed 55 year old blows away the masters division with a near record time. Others who didn’t prepare or who suffered an injury may force themselves out on the course and punish themselves because they want to get their money’s worth. Others still may decide not to run altogether, leaving several thousand non-starts that could have been filled with ready participants.
I could never justify the cost of such a race, even after I had recently exhausted my college eligibility and was looking for races to run. I had considered slapping down a few massive entrance fees to run a few half marathons or marathons. Before I got that far, my knee gave out. It just isn’t worth it to fork over the $90+ for a race several months in advance that I might not be able to run because of injury. To me, it’s not the hype or the junk that comes in the race packet. It really isn’t even about the competition anymore. If my knee were to withstand a race, I would do it only for enjoyment and I don’t think I need to pay $90 to get that. Even if I had to pay for all of my college races, I don’t know if I could justify the cost if I had to pay extortionist entry fees at each one. I can get much more than $90 worth of enjoyment just by running on my own.
When I ran competitively, I only paid for a handful of races, most of them when I was unattached in college. I think I paid $15 for a cross country invitational at UVA, another $15 to run a 3k at George Mason, and about $50 to run the 5k at Penn Relays. That $50 at Penn Relays got me in a race with plenty of competition, including Alan Webb, who ran 13:30. I ran about a minute slower, just barely getting lapped by him at the end, but it was him and the other runners that helped me drag myself around the track towards the end. In that case, the extra costs of the entrance fee and travel may have been worthwhile, but such cases are outliers. Today, I’m no different than the average recreational runner and I don’t have to pay $50 – $75 more and travel hundreds of miles to race when similar competition could be found right where I live. That is, if it’s competition I want.
I consider myself very fortunate to have crossed paths with people who found that satisfaction didn’t always come from making money. I had high school and college coaches that gave most of their time to me despite earning little or no money. I ran plenty of local road races staffed by volunteers who came just because they loved to be there. It was this passion that came from people like these that helped me go a long way with my running career. Ironically, it was from the same people that I realized I could never run professionally. Like someone who forks over $90 for a race, there would be too much external pressure from a sponsor to run through injuries, train harder than I felt comfortable, and to turn a daily release into a daily grind. Money and love don’t always mix.
It appears as though things that were once steeped in intrinsic value are falling to the marketers. Road racing is only one example. Even coaching for these expensive races is now being offered at an equivalently steep price. Those who once freely gave their time and effort are now turning their passions into profit, raking fellow enthusiasts over the coals. Those who may have run for pure enjoyment are now forking over cash to attend pre-race expos, get race packets stuffed with “free samples”, and get hyped with bands blasting music along the race course. It’s one less thing that’s done because it’s fun. It’s one more thing done only for the money.
To Michael X of XXX Towing:
It isn’t my fault that your life sucks, so don’t take it out on me.
Today marks the third time in two months that you have nearly run me off Rochambeau Drive with your tow truck. I don’t appreciate it: as a cyclist I am permitted to use the travel lanes in the same way as you. You are someone who makes a living through driving, yet your level of professionalism on the road is abysmal. While the law may look the other way when killing cyclists in your hometown of Virginia Beach, I doubt a second killing will go unpunished.
I hope you show a little more respect the next time we meet.
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