Sunday, September 20, 2009

Halfmax National Championship: A Race Summary

So yesterday I did the "Halfmax National Championship" in Oklahoma City. The race was advertised as the national championships for the half iron distance and would be as part of the Redman Triathlon.

We had to "qualify" to get to race in the Halfmax division. I qualified last October at the Longhorn Ironman 70.3. Afterwards, I received an email notification from the people at Ultramax that I had qualified for the "national championships".

So... excited.... I registered for the race! The nice thing about the Halfmax was that they offered an Athena and Clydesdale division - at least that's what I thought. Why else would they have qualifying times and why else would they say they would have awards to the top three in each division including Athena and Clydesdale?

So. Fast forward to race day.

Nothing out of the ordinary leading up to the race. There was the Halfmax division, and then there were general entry slots. One of the race officials emailed and said the Halfmax would be scored separately... and she also told me that they would be awarding to the top three spots in each age group and in athena and clydesdale. The race guide said the same thing... and so did both the Halfmax website and the Redman website.

It didn't happen.

I talked to the Ultramax/Halfmax guy and he said he didn't have anything to do with it... He said they just sold the naming rights to the people at Redman and that the "national championship" thing is just a naming rights thing... and suggested it's not "real." He started off nice (when I told him my timing chip didn't work - he fixed the problem)... but didn't like my questions about the advertisements of Halfmax I guess. Annoyed and having no answers to my questions, he threatened to disqualify me if I kept asking him questions. Wow.

My view of Halfmax = a SCAM to get people to the race.

I'll post more on my race later. The race was good.. and I need to give props to the Redman folks. More on that later.

I'm out... and about to catch my flight back home!

1 comment:

Podium quest said...

Congrats on a great race! I to was digusted by the Halfmax. I wont do any races that that the Halfmax is involved in.

I added you onto one of my blogs to follow. Great blog by the way.

It sure was great meeting you, thanks so much for introducing yourself.

See you at the races.