Aloha Athletes,
We’d like to congratulate everyone who toed the line this weekend. This is a very difficult race, and most of you trained extremely hard. Unfortunately, we had to make some very hard decisions in a very short span of time. I hope all of the runners we pulled from the trail understand that we did so with their safety in mind.
To help you understand our decisions, please remember: it wasn’t very long ago that most of us were looking for Are, and Rob was driving Are’s parents around the Peacock trail looking for their lost boy. When it comes to safety on this course, we’d much rather disappoint our runners than look into their parents’ eyes and explain why we didn’t take proper precautions.
To recap what happened–when we were told by Security at Dillingham that gates had to be locked at 10 p.m. and that we had to leave the premises, the following quickly ensued:
1. Determination was made about who was on the course and where.
2. We then developed an absolute cutoff to get down from the 3 way at 9 p.m.
3. The race at that point was completed and cancelled.
4. We called Joel and told him to hold all runners so they could be transported back to the start / finish. There, runners could retrieve their cars and leave premises as requested by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center via Dillingham Security.
As the evening unfolded all runners were held at the respective aid stations. Once all runners and pacers were accounted for, the decision was made to move the runners closer to the finish line in anticipation of the ‘all clear’; however they were to travel down as a group.
Many who we held / pulled off the course at Long Road would have finished the event. However they did the correct thing and chose to listen to race officials and evacuate the course and/or head back up Long Road with Joel to await the all clear. Had they selfishly continued on, it would have created a larger burden on the tracking of the runners. These folks all did the correct thing.
At 9 PM, the race was officially done. Although several runners did cross the finish line before the original cutoff of 2 A.M., they did so after the race had been cancelled. The same opportunity to finish was never afforded those folks at long road.
Our 100k results will show “DNF” for true DNF’s. Those pulled from the course will receive a “ROCBRCODTTE,” which is short for "Runner On Course But Race Called Off Due To Tsunami Evacuation."
This was a very hard decision to make, and we did not take any of it lightly. We know this will upset and/or disappoint some of you and for that we apologize.
Rob Lahoe
Larry Inouye
