Quick reminder. The online entries for the 2017 Ballycotton 10 mile road race open today Wed 7th Dec at 2pm. Once the first 1000 are gone, the second batch will be available at 8pm.
If you are not a member of an athletics club or have not done all four of the 2016 Ballycotton Summer Series then you should enter today.
If you are a club member or have done then series, you can enter on Thursday and Friday.
Entry link is here ... https://register.primoevents.com/ps/event/Ballycotton102017
Wednesday Updates :
2:09pm...Entry website is unable to handle to traffic levels. Keep trying.
2:25pm...Website back but not taking entries. Poor performance. The Primo events website should be able to handle the traffic volume.
4:07pm...Pretty dismal performance by Primo Events. It's not like it's the London Marathon it's dealing with. They seem to cope fine with small races but can't handle a surge in traffic. The second batch of 1000 will open at 8pm and it is usually easier to get in then.
5:55pm...Update from the organisers... Following on from Primo server difficulties at 2pm, the problem now seems to be rectified and the first 1000 places have been filled.
The second allocation of 1000 will open at 8pm this evening.
All queries regarding online entries to Primo at: info@primoevents.com
It looks as if the surge at 8pm caused problems as well.
The entry procedure is outlined in this previous post.
83 comments:
Non-club runners get to enter online on Wednesday. Those who are members of a club can also enter on Wednesday as well as Thirsday and Friday. If they are any way sporting though they will not enter on Wednesday. They are fully entitled to but it would be greedy. Please give non-club runners a chance.
14:05 and it appears the website has crashed, trying for 10 minutes and no luck with loading.
Site still crashing anyone get to enter?
Why? Because they are too mean to join a club ? Who pays for the insurance for these races except the athletes who are members of Athletics Ireland
did anyone actually manage to get in? system crashed and burned at 13:59...
Trying for 25 minutes on three devices and no success. Ran every one of the last 10 years. Very disappointing. Will try again at 8pm.
If there is only a limited amount of entries available and the site handled selling all those entries in the space of 20 minutes or so I don't see how it is a poor performance.
Different story if the site crashed and nobody could enter. Granted a 503 error message is not as user friendly as say a spinning icon telling you you are in a queue which eventually bottoms out saying it is sold out but the site did what it was suppose to do.
Registration instructions didn't even give a link!
Website is showing "REGISTRATIONS ARE NOT AVAILABLE.The event is closed"
I got to enter my details 3 times but server error before payment screen.
Bring back postal entries!
45mins of frustration!
Ballycotton Running Promotions really need to do better. Same story last few years.
Really is a joke
just got registered at 14.54, kept going to time out, use f5 after time out error to refresh if that helps anyone, Carol
I got as far as ..'congratulations we have reserved a place for you and then the whole registration just hung up assuming as it died or shut it down..guess that means we all try again later
entry is easy .. join a athletics Ireland club .. no hassel at all then ...
Oh dear not very good, i actually managed to enter credit details after about 10 attempts and then failed,
Got as far as entering my credit card details.. clicked submit.. and then nothing... wtf?? in or out?
Just registered after 1 hour of constant trying.
Just registered after 1 hour of trying.
Was 1000 allocated spaces actually sold or did the website crash for everyone?
Two spelling errors in Primo Events link. Should be 'travelling' not traveling, and 'apologise' not apologies. Very unprofessional on their side.
Their registration process is extremely poor. Even now at 15.10, you can enter registration process, add name, address and further details and when you press continue, it is then it crashes. First time I tried at 14.15, got as far as payment before it crashed. Not fit for purpose.
I got as far as entering my details only for the site to crash again on me. very poor performance from Primo
Male/female option is throwing an exception, same problem when i tried registering for Charleville last summer, quickly sorted then.
Working now, just went through!
It is back up anyway. I was able to register at 15:15
I got in after 70 minutes.
Keep trying I had entry accepted at 15.20. there was a problem with the site but it seems to be functioning now. I was trying since 14.00.
just got in
I just entered a friend told me it was closed I hopped on and got two tickets - the booking process is awfully slow but now in. Next I have to find my runners. Also the Madrid Half Marathon for next year so deffo have to up the ante....
This was by far the toughest year to reg on line. 1 hour 30 min before i made it to payment.
I work in IT and I have never seen a 503 error as much as i did today :)
got in a few minutes ago at 3.30, despite an error message on the payment screen. keep trying lads. Ironic that Primo Events logo is "Registration Made Easy"!
Why is there such a panic every year about getting into ballycotton when there are plenty of other races on the calendar? I know it has a lot of history etc but still...
Absolute joke in fairness... Same as last few years. You would think they would be expecting that rush now. It is a cheap race at 15euro but please we will pay more for proper registration system...
Cutting corners here makes this event so unprofessional...
It the Ballycotton 10 for heaven sake, you clearly have no comprehension of how popular the race has been and still is. There aren't many online registration systems that could handle such a rush of connections. So, no we won't pay more for another system to enter the race because your frustrated. They only moved to an online system because so many people were too stingy to pay for a stamp, I'd happily go back to that at least it gave a bit a work to postmen :) Well done to the first 1000 who got in, try again later anyone else and if you don't get in hard luck try again next year, but if you not willing to join a club your life could be easier. Just remember this old race is 40 this year, it run by a good club for the love of running and the clubs have kept it going through good and bad times.
They can keep it... Farce again
If you wanted to waste a hour of your life. trying to sign up to this was the way to do it. what a disgrace.
Couldn't get in earlier, got as far as filling in payment but didn't get confirmation. Same this evening, 35 mins trying and still haven't been able to complete it.
Last year was much better, wasn't it? Maybe time for a different registration company to be given a crack at it next year!
Bloody joke get as far as card details and crashes...cop on registration made easy!!!!!!
Trying for 40 minutes now! I give it one more try and that's it! Plenty of other runs available....
Is it full
502/503/504 Errors , Bad gateway , Server unavailable , something else , something else...
Got to register my name/address etc a few times , as good as it got
8.43pm i am done
Primoevents - What a jokeshop
I can't get through
is it closed now
Entries now closed!
Now saying sold out? Friend getting that the event is closed, anyone else?
PATHTETIC REGISTRATION SYSTEM...WOSRE THAN TICKETMASTER
I have submit payment sitting there for 40 mins...do I wait ? Will it eventually complete or will I try restart
Absolutely gutted.
Woo hoo! Done!
I failed to enter! Suggestion to organisers ...... first two days of entering should be confined to club members and those who ran the four five-mile races and the third day for everybody.
I registered at 3.07pm. Really shoddy from Primo imo. Reflects very badly on a brilliant event. I'm fortunately I can work flexitime but what about people who can't? Must be a better way. It's not rocket science!
Primo Events -- what a disaster ? !!!
(and it's not even the first Primo disaster)
After 30 minutes of trying, and entering details, it got stuck twice at the Payments page.
It eventually gave me :-
Congratulations!
We have reserved a place for you in the Ballycotton '10'. Please take your time and ensure your details are correct.
followed by a blank screen, which shows NO DETAILS whatsoever.
So now I have no idea of whether it took my entry or not.
I guess there will be a lot of people heading for the Post Office tomorrow ...
It told me entries closed 10 mins ago and just registered now,only took 4 mins so keep trying
I could have run EIGHT miles during the time wasted trying to enter !?!
Great race. Such a pity the entry procedure is such a complete farce. It must be apparent to all that Primo (ironically with the tag line 'Registration made easy') do not have the required technical expertise or equipment to manage the entry process. On three occasions this evening, I received "Congratulations. A place has been reserved for you..." I then completed the first registration page, accepted the terms and conditions and hit the green continue button. On each occasion, I got a 504 Gateway time-out. This is simply unacceptable. I will not participate in this farce again. Thanks to all the volunteers and organisers who made the event so special. There must be a better way forward and Primo is not a part of it.
Primo Events are giving the Ballycotton 10 a bad name. Tried for an hour today and hour tonight only to be thrown out at various stages. I got past the entry page and submitted detail more than 10 times tonight. Queuing is fine but crashing after entering credit card details is just poor performance. I feel bad for the hard working volunteers being misrepresented by the sub-amateur performance of Primo.
Primo Events are giving the Ballycotton 10 a bad name. Tried for an hour today and hour tonight only to be thrown out at various stages. I got past the entry page and submitted detail more than 10 times tonight. Queuing is fine but crashing after entering credit card details is just poor performance. I feel bad for the hard working volunteers being misrepresented by the sub-amateur performance of Primo.
lads 9.12 and i just got registered. keep trying and good luck.
role on Ballycotton missed it last for the 1st time in 10 years due to injury and the season wasnt the same without it
Was told numerous that my place was reserved only for the site to crash repeatedly. What a complete shambles! So much for technology making life easier, at least with the postal entries you didn't have to waste hours trying to get in. I'm sure I'll run ten miles a lot quicker than the amount of time I wasted trying to get into this race.
what if everyone runs 9.9 miles and then stop before the finish line .same thing as this,lol
Absolute disgrace. An hour today and 2 hours tonight and nothing but errors. I can accept that this is beyond the control of Ballycotton Running but Primo should not be used again following this debacle as it is giving Ballycotton a bad name in the process.
Got in at 9:20,having turned off device at 9:10 but decided to give it another go.Switched on and got straight in.
Interesting to see how many of the 2000 were club runners when there was no need for them to try
Here it's not all that. A farce of an online entry coup led with cueing for a few hours to fight through people who are obviously in the wrong projected finishing time area.
There are a few other 10 milers with easier entry and better set up on the day. Not trying to bad mouth the event or its excellent volunteers it's just become the victum of its own sucess. Too many runners competing for space on a small road, very similar to the online entry ironic really
Absolute and total farce. We complain about high prices of Commercial races but this is as BAD. Here they keep the price low and they get poor quality entry service...
Much as they can try on the day, it will never take from Yesterdays fiasco and it is not the first time...
Called Primo Events and gave them what for. They were contrite but it's of no use after the fact. They use offsite web services so it's obvious they haven't enough bandwidth capacity to handle the rush of requests. This can be solved I'd say by Primo Events paying more for a server that can handle more requests. I see that they also have a deal with Athletics Ireland for some events. I wonder how they managed that?
I spent a couple of hours yesterday trying to get in at 2 and 8pm and then gave up having seen the quota filled page appear after both deadlines. Yet while away from my desk I saw the Register button appear at around 3.15pm. I tried 3 times to register from my smartphone but all my info was wiped when I pressed continue. Then late last night a friend texted letting me know he got in at 9.30pm. I eventually booked a place at 10.15pm. This is pants.
There's a lot of disappointed people out there and what about the non tech savvy public who might have been running this race for decades? Disaster.
The entry profile has now been skewed, those who dutifully waited and eventually gave up at 2 and 8pm and didn't get in have been replaced by those who checked at times outside the deadline. That's some way to alienate the core runners who travel far and wide to make this a special day.
PRIMO EVENTS +44 2892 66 33 88
Let them know how you feel.
Ballycotton Running Promotions, what are you going to do about this?
Ah lads. The reaction here is amazing. Primo take 100s of 1000s of entries every month and year and the system works excellent. I know the company and they are small and built from the ground up. They are not some big multinational. They started at a time when some much needed competition to the online entry offerings were needed in Ireland. Online entry was for years was monopolized by run Ireland and active who never introduced enhancements to their system and became more focused on harvesting your personal details by making you register for the company before signing up for events. Primo are highly responsive when you have queries and are forever adding additional features and enhancements.
Technology breaks down. Load testing is a very difficult thing to test for. You can set up events on primo without their input so maybe they were not given a heads up. Do we even know if Primo were informed of such a surge on the day so they could prepare? Maybe it was service providers of Primo that let them down?
If any of your children make the brave move into starting their own business or developing something I hope you support them a bit better than you are here instead of telling them to pack it in whenever they come up against some adversity.
The profit on an event like this for primo excluding taxes et is probably les then €800
not sure why anyone would want to enter this race? always an issue registering, even when it was postal - why bother?? have to be in to Ballycotton early on race day, run the race and then wait around to get out - its half an hour from the City and you are out all day - Just do mallow, better course and better race day experience also in my opinion better value - only slightly more expensive but no hassle and you get more than a mug at the finish
To the last anonymous poster - I hear what you are saying but did you have the experience of trying to get an entry yesterday?
But sure, any fiasco can be excused. It's patently obvious that PRIMO are not fit for purpose to accommodate a large on-line surge. There's nothing personal about this. It's just not fit for purpose for this particular task. Simple as that.
no I didn't - I've done Ballycotton 5 times previous and always found the entry procedure a pain, I haven't been for 3 years now, plenty of races on offer with no entry issues and an easier race day - forget Ballycotton.
it is always worth whatever it takes to run Ballycotton 10. All other road races in Ireland are pretty much the same kind of experience, except maybe the city marathons. Even with those big races in Phoenix Park, there is nothing extra special about them. The Ballycotton 10 is different. It is very special. Having said that, it should be easier for non club runners to enter. I understand the quota, but it should be hassle free.
I've never seen such moaning and groaning by so many anonymous commentators. I too spent a few hours yesterday trying to register ,so what,it's hardly the end of the world. Luckily I succeeded in registering but I could just as easily failed to do so. Well done to the organisers of the race for the effort they put in. Volunteerism is the backbone of community and unappreciated by so many and often by those who never volunteer to help in their communities. 2000 places were offered and 2000 places were filled, even if the process ran smoothly it is a bit of a lottery anyway. First world problems ha! In short, get over yourselves.
join a club and theres no panic. just logged on with my phone and was done in 3-4mins.
I have run ballycotton a few times and am doing so again next March. I have to say I really dont get the huge hype that surrounds it. Regestration is, and always, was a pain,its a pain to get in and out of the place on race day, you have to take a mud track from an overgrown field where yourbag is dumped to the strart line and there is a sort of like it or lump it attitude from the organisers as they know they'll get the numbers anyway. I know it has a great history but I really dont get what all the fuss is about
People need to forget about Ballycotton, I gave up years ago, do it once, move on, if any other race/event had these issues they would be slated - it's a nice race but not worth the effort, Dungarven and Mallow are much better options. Why overcomplicate the entry - fair enough reserve a place for those who have run the summer series but after that open the entry and once full close it, forget the postal option, unnecessary.
I must say the Ballycotton 10 organiser(s) are embarrassing themselves too much by staying loyal to Primo Events. They are a great company but I won't be expecting races like the NY Marathon be looking for their services. I don't like the way there is only a quota for the runners with no club. People are entitled to enter a fun run even if they have no club. Ballycotton 10 is not a championship road race - though it should be. However, organisers are entitled to make any rules they like. Wish they keep the entering more simple. It is kinda like they are putting far too much thought into it and making it too complicated to work smoothly. Some moaners might disagree but if I was an elite athlete this is the race I'd like to win more than any other race in Munster. That run of wins by Sergiu Ciobanu was awesome. The only good thing about him not running last year was it allowed someone else to win. The honour of winning Ballycotton 10 is even better than running for Ireland. Not better than running in Olympics though! The only two races I rate better than Ballycotton 10 are the Dublin and Belfast Marathons. If I was to give it more thought I might actually rate Ballycotton 10 higher than the Belfast Marathon.
With reference to Primo Events, they handled the entries last year and it was much better. Based on last year, there would have been no indication that the online service would be so poor this year so it's not the organisers fault.
As for providing a separate entry for club runners, the clubs put on a lot of local road races thoughout the year. None of those races would happen without the voluntary effort of club members so it's only right that they be given an opportunity to enter one of the most popular races on the calendar.
The same applies to those who did the Summer Series. They supported the Summer Series so they are given an extended entry window in return.
John Desmond is right, there was no problem with Primo Events last year.
http://corkrunning.blogspot.ie/2015/12/ballycotton-10-entries-open-today-tues.html
Why not change it to a lottery system to avoid all the hassle? Everyone that wants to enter gets pre-registered and 2000 names at random from that registration are then selected?
At the heart of all of this: It's a great race, organised by people who are truly passionate about athletics. Interest and participation in running events waxes and wanes over time. We are now in a moment with high participation which is great, but we must understand that this demand is new and that these events have been running (pardon the pun) for many years (40) without registration issues. Ballycotton has always been different, it's fun to try and get in, train hard and give it your best shot. I agree with previous posters, winning this event means something. Mark Hanrahan breaking the 50 last year was pure class. Noel Berkeley storming home in 46 odd must have been a joy to watch, he's truly the king of Ballycotton and on that course gave us some of the greatest road racing performances in Ireland. This is a road RACE, always was and so it should remain. I've run Ballycotton 4 times and coveted the top 100 shirt and have always come up a little short but that's the challenge. You bring your best performance here and race. There are many fun runs and charity events available but this isn't one of them. There's space for all levels here but let's not forget that this is a road race and one with a great history that is testament to the organisers and volunteers over many years. I'm looking forward to training well and giving it my best shot on the day, whatever about IT issues we all encountered.
I am not annoyed with Primo Events IT problems as maybe it is once off and we all make mistakes. I am very upset though with the rudeness and arrogance of those at Primo Events.
Post a Comment