| August 25, 2007 – The Erase Homelessness 5k/10k is a USATF certified course that is run in Denver City Park. All proceeds benefit Senior Support Services, a nonprofit day-shelter and soup kitchen for hungry and homeless seniors. This is the second year of the race. In 2006 the race offered a 4k and an 8k at Sloan’s Lake. The 2007 race had 102 participants in the 10k and 131 in the 5k. The 5k was one loop in City Park while the 10k was two loops. Entry fee was $25 for early entry and $30 for late entry. The lime green race packet t-shirt came in handy the following Sunday when I used it to clean the wheels of my vehicle. Take a look at the course map: Pay attention to the number of acute angles in the picture. The course was horrible and I assume this course has been used for any race that has taken place in City Park. Not only were there numerous turns but the path became congested as well. For those racers running the 10k the second loop of the course left you dodging runners who were out for their recreational Saturday morning walk/run, along with dodging runners who were still running the 5k race, this forced racers to run off the congested path. Secondly, the race started at 9am; it was feverishly hot! I remember looking at weather.com and noticed that the temperature crept up five degrees from 8am to 9am. August is generally the second hottest month of the year; let’s move that race up to 8am and help the runners out. Third gripe goes like this. At the start of the race a runner asked the race starter if the mile markers were marked on the course. He laughed and said "That’s one thing I forgot to do this morning". Having properly placed mile markers should be key to any well run race. I’ve said a lot of negative things about this race, but let me tell you about a huge plus for this race and what makes it potentially salvageable. This race gave out fabulous award prizes. I won two Broncos tickets (preseason) for placing third even after running a horrible race that day. A few of the other winners received a weekend at Steamboat or Broncos tickets to a regular season game. Bob Kendrick (9 news anchor man) ran the race and later handed out awards. Props to Bob Kendrick. Erace Homeless - here is some free advice. Game Theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in the context of economics. Game Theory studies strategic interactions between agents. I’ m not John Nash, but I do know a thing or two about incentives. The first mistake was not advertising the prizes in explicit detail on the entry form or website. This is where I talk Game Theory and maximizing outcomes. The desired outcome for this race was participation. I assume that’s the goal; more participation equals more entry fees. Here are two scenarios for a race that had twelve fantastic prizes. Scenario one would be to maximize the incentive to draw in fast runners and the second scenario would be to maximize incentives to draw in a large participation. Both scenarios involved imperfect information because the prospective participants did not know what the other participants were going to do before race day. The first scenario was what occurred. The first place through third place award winners for both men and women, received a prize. However, since the prizes were not advertised, the fast runners did not show up. With this scenario, the incentive only appeals to fast runners and will only attract fast runners. Thus, if your goal is to attract fast runners then your strategy would be to advertise the award prizes . For the Erase Homelessness race, I think the preferred scenario would be the second scenario to maximize participation. I suggest a raffle. Let the participants know of the raffle prizes ahead of time thus giving more participants a better incentive to run this race. You could also use a random number generator to select a number before the race, within certain parameters, and randomly award prizes by finished place. A successful race has a great course with top notch organization. The only reason that I would run this race again would be for a chance to win one of the great prizes. http://www.eracehomelessness.org/ |
