6ft Track - the saga continues

And so it came to pass that another 6ft Track entry day came and went with incident. Not that I saw it mind you. I just have it on reliable authority (from the ‘masses’) that the system was loaded/unfair/broken/fixed(?) or plain wrong.

For the second such year, I experienced no difficulties. Using my steam driven laptop I opened the registration page at 8:55 DST and waited. At 9:00 am I hit refresh and, as expected, was met with a message telling me the system was very busy simultaneously displaying a counter which counted down from 15 to 0 in as many seconds. I let it count down once and was presented with the same screen. Bugger this.

I let it count down three seconds this time then refreshed, repeating the process about half a dozen times before getting the login screen. I entered my e-mail address as instructed, then clicked on the continue button which went to the countdown page again which I, again, refreshed and voila, I entered my information and registered.

Registration e-mail arrived in my inbox at 9:09.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it common for a website to display a ‘busy notice’ when it’s ‘busy’? Weren’t we all expecting it to be busy? Doesn’t this happen when people try booking cheap flights or get the best deals on e-Bay or queue up at the January Sales in London or New York?

I nearly missed out the year before as I was complacent with the entry opening at midnight. I was actually standing by the PC at the time and thought to myself that I’d enter the following morning, even mentioning it to Donna. It was only when I got a phone call from a friend later the following morning that I’d better get on the waitlist quickly if I could as it had filled up. At that point I thought I’d missed out and was surprised when, in the new year, I got an entry offer.

My point is, I had accepted that I’d missed out, that was that. I didn’t go e-mailing the race director or bemoan my ill-fate to the masses ... it was what it was.

Anyway, since then, the race director and his team has moved mountains to make the entry process as fair as possible to novices, veterans and those that should be guaranteed spots (as the RD has pointed out, Kilian Jornet – or for that matter Tim Cochrane, David Waugh or Mike Le Roux I would think - would never miss out on 6ft). Yet, there are still a contingent who think it’s that same race directors responsibility to ensure that people have the right internet connection/browser/hair colour/star sign/whatever to gain entry (none of which, by the way, have been proven to be contributing factors in individuals failure to gain entry).

I miss out on lots of things – two jobs this year for a start, each of which I’d trade, without too much thought, for my spot at 6ft next year.

I’m not trying to be smug here or anything, I just think some perspective is required.