Buck Hales

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" the voice of The Wizard intoned. But still, Toto defied the order and bit him on his ankle. The truth was revealed to them all: yes, races are timed by people, not computers. Ever get the feeling that runners have no idea what goes on behind closed doors after the race? They finish the race, their tag is pulled, and they WANT THEIR RESULTS! All they care about is having the awards ceremony NOW. They don't realize that over 1100 people crossed the finish line of three separate races in about 1.5 hours, yet they think results are done by magic-- by the Wizard. Well. the wizards were hard at work, and the results came out pretty darn fast (30 minutes) for all three races, but what do the wizards hear? whaaaa whaaaa whaaaa. The same people who record their birth date as 4/5/98, who scrawl their name illegibly, neglect to fill in their sex or age, and who can't tell that D and E are between D and G in the alphabet, yet insist that results be done promptly and accurately should be forced to endure the process the wizards go through to generate those flawless results. One Wizard, Barb, input data off the myriad of dissimilar entry forms, and spent the better part of two weeks entering the data. Another Wizard, Karen, collated the internet entries, input the data, removed the duplicates, and spent some 12 hours in the last days before the race doing last minute entries. And this Wizard stayed up until 2 AM 4 nights in a row configuring the network, trouble shooting the faulty RS232 lines, doing data entry, collecting the internet entries from the web server, printing labels, printing lists of names in alpha and numeric order..... And not getting enough sleep. Sunday dawned bright, cool, no wind. a perfect day for a race. 408 women, 608 men, and 115 youth milers crossed the finish line. Two new course records were set. The networked computers enabled us to generate the awards in record time. The overall winners took home their cash. The age group winners took home their plaques, and the Clydesdale award winners brayed with glee as their awards were given. Everyone was happy-- especially Toto who got to sink his pointy little teeth into the Wizard ankle. Now, all the Munchkins, the Flying Monkeys, the Wicked Witches, the Good Witches, and yes, Dorothy too, can visit the web site, and look at all the results-- within hours of the finish of the race--- while the wizards get to sleep at last.