Race Copes With Stragglers Deadline Is Friday For $10 Bloomsday Registration

In the diligent clatter of hands over keyboards, the whir of computer hard drives and the exhalation of paper from a printer, there is a lesson in human nature unfolding at an ad hoc data center tucked into a downtown basement.

The lesson: When it comes to deadlines, Bloomsday runners are a bunch of dawdling procrastinators.

Friday - read the lips of race founder Don Kardong - Friday is the deadline for mailing early race registrations, which cost only $10.

After Friday, all late entrants will be whacked across their racing toes with a $25 entry fee - the penalty for being a laggard.

“Most people will mail their registration on the 12th or 13th,” said Rand Palmer, the duke of data for Bloomsday registration.

This week, 700 to 800 entries are showing up in the mail daily. On Monday, the arriving mailbags will bulge with 7,000 or more entries.

“We will have 20 people working 12-hour days to enter all the data and double-check it,” Palmer said. “Everyone’s a procrastinator.”

And though the army of Bloomsday volunteers does its darnedest to make sure every name is spelled correctly and every runner is put in the right group, some errors creep in.

“The earlier you get it in, the higher likelihood you’ll have it better checked,” Palmer said.

Bloomies can be guaranteed entries will be more thoroughly checked than they were last year, when the software to handle the 50,000 or so records seized up with a stitch in its side.

“It was scary. It was to the point where we were wondering if we could do it or not - you just can’t give out race numbers,” Palmer said.

Bloomsday officials had to bugle for help from Gonzaga University’s Computer Science Department in handling all the entries. With the help of 73 students, teachers, another 100 volunteers and a lot of pizza, the job got done.

Palmer didn’t want to go through the insanity again. Within weeks of the race, Bloomsday’s board of directors met to plan next year.

No more fancy software. This year, it’s just a Microsoft Access program. Last year, the system was routed through the World Wide Web. That also got nixed. The server is in the same room as the terminals where volunteers tap in entry forms.

“It’s working great. A lot of the volunteers say it’s easier than last year,” Palmer said.

So far, 12,500 people have entered. That’s about 1,250 ahead of the same time last year.

“Either there are more people entering the race or people are getting them earlier,” Palmer said.

All the data-entry work is done by volunteers, about 70. More than half of them will work 40 hours or more. It is a devotion to an event they love.

Glenda Lindsay has volunteered for 19 years, but only in the last few has she been doing data entry. After retiring from 40-plus years at US West, Lindsay got bored and started working part time at Costco as a food demonstrator.

But when Bloomsday comes around, she asks to be taken off the work schedule for 2-1/2 weeks so she can volunteer every day for four or five hours.

Then she runs and walks the race.

“In our family, Bloomsday is as big as Christmas. If not bigger,” she said.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

Entry forms

Bloomsday entry forms are available at Safeway stores locally and in Seattle and Montana. They also can be found at area Big 5 stores, Snyder Bakery outlets, U.S. Bank branches, MSC Premera Blue Cross and Holy Family Hospital.

Online registration and race information is available at bloomsdayrun.org.