As many of our members would be aware, Athletics Victoria asks participating athletes to complete a short survey following our major events to share their thoughts about their experience – what we did well, what we can do to improve.
We read your responses carefully and use them in several ways, including:
- Discussing ways in which we can make immediate improvements for the next event.
- Viewing the responses in a statistical format, as a separate event, but also adding them to previous responses to enable us to identify trends in athlete satisfaction, which helps us to understand why they might occur.
Sometimes, the responses are topics we have addressed previously, and quite often, your opinions are split close to 50/50, with no clear way forward that would suit everyone. Splitting the male and female races at Lakeside is an excellent example of that; some of you like it, some, not so much. If there are many responses with the same feedback requesting improvement within one survey, we know this is an opportunity for improvement that we can address quickly.
Other times, we see from your responses that the reasons behind some of our decisions are not clear, and for the last couple of seasons, we have published responses to some of your most frequent questions or comments. We want you to know that we are listening, and we also want to take this opportunity to explain some of our decisions and share the limitations we face when planning a major event.
There were several responses from the recent Lakeside:5 event which fell into the above category, and as a new and very popular event, we thought it was a good time to respond to some of your thoughts:
We’d really prefer you didn’t hold this event on Mother’s Day. Why did you do that? Couldn’t you do it on another day?
This was quite possibly the biggest takeaway from the feedback from this event, and trust us – we know! We tried very hard not to clash with both another major event, the Mother’s Day Classic, as well as the special day for all the mothers in our lives. To explain the process of securing a date for this event, we must apply via a ‘Call for Dates’ process with Parks Victoria before the end of the previous year. The first Sunday in May is unavailable to us, due to a long-standing booking of a memorial run/walk. We requested May 2 or May 9, but we were unsuccessful due to the risk of traffic disruptions from road closures on a Saturday. Ultimately, we had little choice but to swap the weekends of All Schools Relays at Princes Park and Lakeside:5; luckily, the City of Melbourne (Princes Park) was flexible enough to let us do that.
We can do our best to apply earlier in future, however at this time of year soccer holds priority at Lakeside Stadium, and we also must await their calendar release to factor their dates into our planning – they are very kind in sharing the venue when they can.
I’m concerned that entry numbers were down this year – especially in what is meant to be a ‘running boom’.
Our entry numbers rose by 70 from last year – an excellent result. We did shuffle some of the divisions into other races to spread the numbers more evenly, giving athletes more room at the start line. It’s possible that this is what made the fields look slightly different.
We’d like some more toilets – could you hire some portable ones?
This is a common talking point among our athletes and AV staff regarding the best way to proceed. All three toilet blocks within Lakeside Stadium (which has a capacity of roughly 12,000 patrons) were open on the day, as they have been for the last few years. We published a map of those toilets on the Lakeside:5 event page and made announcements on the day to guide everyone to the toilets on the other side of the stadium. We do understand that there are a lot of athletes wanting to use the bathrooms at the same time (and there seem to be fewer cubicles for males than females); however, we encourage athletes to make their way to another toilet block if they feel the lines are too long on the northern side of the Stadium.
The start gun seemed very quiet – can’t you use a ‘proper’ one?
For this event, we use an electronic starting gun used at track events. While it is a little quieter than a traditional starting gun, the Lakeside:5 is a race that begins in a residential area, early on a Sunday morning. We would not maintain a permit to hold this event if we disturbed the Sunday morning peace of Albert Park residents, although we do feed the audio through a set of speakers so that athletes along the entire start line can hear.
We’d love to have both a ‘gun’ time and a ‘chip’ time for this event.
Both times are available for the Lakeside:5. We publish the ‘gun’ time in the main race results. To see your ‘chip’ or ‘net’ time, please click the ‘athlete’ tab in Results Hub, and search for the athlete’s name, beginning with the surname.
My ‘net’ (chip) time is the same as the ‘gun’ time. I know that’s not right – I started a fair way back in the field.
Occasionally, that does happen, and we understand how frustrating it is. One thing we know from our friends at Tomato Timing is that when an athlete activates their smart watch at the start line, it’s usually by holding their forearm in front of their body, blocking the timing chip, which is situated on the back of the bib on the athlete’s chest. We’d encourage athletes to do this either just before or just after the timing mat so that the net time is accurate. This applies to athletes finishing as well – Tomato Timing spends a little time after each event adding correct times to athletes with no result, which is why results are sometimes delayed.
It seems logical to use the ‘net’ time as the official time, rather than the ‘gun’ time – a lot of people start back from the finish line. Can we do that?
The Lakeside:5 is run on a certified course, in accordance with World Athletics Rules, meaning athletes can use their times for world ranking points. World Athletics Rule 19.24.5 states:
Note: The official time shall be the time elapsed between the firing of the starting gun (or the synchronised start signal) and the athlete reaching the finish line. However, the time elapsed between an athlete crossing the start line and the finish line can be made known to them, but will not be considered an official time.
World Athletics Rules of competition can be found here.
We’d really love to run all the way around Albert Park Lake. Can we do that?
Unfortunately, the Lakeside:5 is held at a time of year when many other sports are being conducted, especially on the opposite side of the lake. Road closures in that area would significantly impact those sports, making it unlikely we would obtain a permit to run the entire circumference. As it is, Lakeside:5 is a very, very fast course, and one that Athletics Victoria is very proud of.
Can you share the results of these surveys, along with the changes made in response? We never hear from AV on what is done with the information provided.
We hear you! In the interests of transparency, we do our best to provide survey responses where we feel it is necessary – for XCR, that’s once or twice a year. Those responses are then emailed to each athlete who competed at the event in question. We also publish a short ‘explainer’ at the launch of each XCR season. You can find this year’s article here.