A few weekends ago, during the Adventure24 Adventure Race, I had the task of doing something I had never done. Team throughtprocess.net/Alpine Shop had a great race and had just come in fourth place overall and handed in their passport. As they were standing around the table, they began to explain their route to some others who were hanging around the finish table. As I was entering in their finish time, I watched as the navigator retraced their route to the last few checkpoints. Right before my eyes, I watched as he retraced his route right down a prohibited road. I tensed up as I knew what was likely going to be the outcome. I said, “You do realize that is a prohibited route don’t you”? “What”, was the response I received. After showing them the passport instructions with the prohibited route and sitting back down, I verified their passport (they got all the points correctly). Just to be sure, I went to find a copy of the rules to verify what the penalty was for unauthorized travel. I went back to the table and delivered the bad news. “Guys, I’ve got some bad news; I’m going to have to disqualify you”. Needless to say, they weren’t too happy about it.

As a race director, you want everyone to have a safe race as well as having a great time. I certainly didn’t enjoy basically ruining their day. One important aspect however is that you also have to enforce the rules you create. I hated to DQ them as they had an excellent race and their travel was completely inadvertent. But rules are rules, and if you don’t stand by the rules you create you loose your credibility as a race director. I think we both learned a valuable lesson though. For me, since safety was part of the reason the prohibited route was in there, they suggested I mention if there are any prohibited or mandatory routes in the passport at the pre-race meeting so racers will be on the lookout for them. I think it’s a good idea so I’ve already added it to my list of pre-race topics for next year. For them, they learned that even when plotting on the clock, it’s a good idea to make sure they read the entire passport instructions. An extra 10 seconds of reading would have netted them second place coed elite and likely the USARA National Championship Qualifying spot they were looking for.