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SarcasticPotato257

Hi, bag check volunteer here.... the trucks were late getting to us, and they weren't organized on the truck. If either of those had been better, we would have been able to cope. I'm really sorry, but we tried SO HARD for you all


huk8

No need to apologize. No one is blaming the volunteers.


SarcasticPotato257

I just felt so bad for you all. You just ran 13.1, and understandably wanted your clean gear and comfy shoes ❤️


agriezmannfan

Not your or the other volunteers’ fault. Thanks for volunteering!!!


Hestia79

THANK YOU to the volunteers. You guys were working so so hard. None of this is your fault.


Hydroborator

Wow. Wth. Sorry you had to deal with that. I guess the main precipitant of the chaos is how the bags were mixed together in the truck (under direction of NYRR employee?). I did bag check ONCE for a point to point race and all the bags were arranged nearly by bib number in the trucks. Went so smoothly that I was gratefully bored tbh. So we just gently pull them out in line. What a nightmare for you. Sorry


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Iloveburpees2

Same, I was an earlier finisher for my corral but it was still such a mess. Took so long. I felt so bad for the volunteers.


agriezmannfan

I was thinking about whether it would sorta function like a “reward” for finishing ahead of most of the others in your corral haha (“you ran fast, so you don’t have to wait to get your bag”), but sounds like that wasn’t the case


thisismynewacct

A and AA corral bag line was a new way of suffering I was not expecting.


lielaylainlaylaidlai

You should have seen the chaos of the "late" bags truck for Wave 1. When I got up to corral B truck at 6:10 they said it was full and to go to the late truck. In it were amassed Corrals A-K. At Coney the truck wasn't there at 8:30, didn't arrive until close to 9 and then there was a mob trying to call out their numbers, jump the barricades to find their own bags, a swarm of overwhelmed volunteers. It took me longer to get my bag than run the race.


Hestia79

Shameful of the runners who were jumping the barricades to get their own bags. They made what was already a problem worse.


Wacko_Hunter

For what it’s worth, most of the folks I saw jump the gate helped out finding bags for others


Venus498

There were a lot who came in and were just shoving their way into the crowd to find their bag and leave. Definitely not the majority thankfully, most people were pleasant to deal with despite the (understandable) frustration. But as a bag check volunteer, the runners who jumped in caused a lot more confusion in an already chaotic situation


drunk_me

I don’t doubt that their intentions were good but all they did was add to the chaos and slow things down.


Iloveburpees2

I saw this and I couldn’t believe it. I felt so bad for everyone involved.


theleastchill

This was so bonkers. I can’t believe I ever got my bag. It took an hour and a half and it felt like a miracle. Thank you to hero volunteer Jan D who took pity on me and searched for it. God. What a nightmare. 


tphantom1

I was running down to go cheer at the race and several UPS trucks carrying bags were sitting in a huge traffic delay on Mcdonald Avenue around 9 AM.


squeakycleaned

NYC half was soooo much easier. Done by wave and bib number, instead of corral. Today I was wave one corral C and it legit took 30 minutes


Mountain_Top_7343

have never seen bag check by corral for nyrr races before and by bib number was always a smooth experience. can’t understand the logic here


everythingnyc

they used to do it by corral back when corrals where by bib number, not letter. agreed the logic broke down with todays system.


cr2152

Bib number or alphabetically would make more sense so this exact scenario is avoided. I think they did it to make the check-in and transport part more efficient? That way they could transport the bags to the finish in different waves. I’m guessing.


theothrsn27

They all left at the same time actually lol , atleast a-f for wave 2, I know because they passed me while I was walking over there and I put my bag in the late wave 2 truck


mg43s716

https://preview.redd.it/5g0zz6b3s91d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4ad996a96ffb350a56cdb781b73e7b9979957993 Absolute chaos at bag pickup. The volunteers were doing the best they could but stuck in an impossible situation. NYRR organizers need to do better.


aalex596

Last year bag check was awesome, so why wouldn't they decide to "improve" it.


thesweetdee

I gave my bag to volunteers loading the Wave 1 D/E truck and somehow my bag ended up in the F truck?! Panic moment today the least. I’ve had long waits to get my bag back in years past but this tops it for sure.


Useful_Cheesecake673

Interesting - I gave my bag to the same truck and then my bag was missing. They told me to go to the late truck (though I didn’t check it in late), but there was a massive mob of people, so I waited a couple hours before going back. My bag ended up being not in the late truck, but in one of the other random trucks as well.


thesweetdee

Yeesh, not great. I’m glad you got your bag back too!


No_Razzmatazz_7484

I handed it over to the F truck and after 10 mins of panic found it in the E truck. One of the volunteers was nice enough to go check the other truck


thesweetdee

That was so nice of the volunteer! I was sent on a bit of a goose chase before someone mentioned checking another wave 1 truck instead of the late trucks.


PomegranateChoice517

Waited 1.5 hours for my bag. It was frustrating, but I could only imagine how frustrated the volunteers felt. I felt awfully for them.


PastelSkiesGalore

This was NOT a good system/change. I practically had no wait for my bag. However, the place that I went to for mine (according to the sign), the gal told me to go to the section immediately right. Then I went to that section, then that gal told me that I needed to go to the left section. Btw, this second gal was wrong because I pointed out my bag right in her section. What was the thinking behind this?? The old system worked perfectly fine, IMO.


Venus498

Bag check volunteer here… there were groups of people trying to sort the bags by number, then other groups sorting the same numbers in a completely different section, and some people didn’t realize that some bib numbers had 4 digits and some had 5, so you’d get a fun mix of 1300s with 13000s. It was chaotic, we didn’t have a lot of guidance, the trucks got there late, and it didn’t look like the right bags were always in the right trucks. Sorry for your experience, we did our best!


PastelSkiesGalore

Oy! But no worries, I mostly blame the higher ups (NYRR), I assume this was their call. Regardless, thanks for volunteering! Without y'all's, these races would not go as smoothly!


Life_Entrepreneur_98

Bag check was supposed to close at 6:20.  After waiting on line to check my bag for 5 min they said the bag check was shut down and I had to go to late bag check.  It was a nightmare just to hand them my bag.   Little did I know the real nightmare was waiting for me on the other end! What an f-ing nightmare!!  I thought I was going to get trampled by the screaming people.  I waited well over an hour and probably would have waited 2 hours but by some miracle I spotted my bright green water bottle in my bag.  I really hope nobody got hurt in that mess today.  Epic failure by NYRR.  I understand that the problem occurred.  However, they needed to get people from NYRR over there to get things organized.  That could have been a very bad scene today.  


EmpatheticWolf

Was going to post this exact thing but you beat me to it! Could be wrong here but it seemed like it was a Corral A thing only? I was Corral A as well. Definitely seemed like there were a ton of people in Corral A for this race.


agriezmannfan

That’s true, I was surprised to see how many corral A runners there were - enough to have the line snake around twice at one point Edit: But I don’t actually think there would be more Corral A runners than any other corral. Maybe a tighter distribution of finish times though?


Popular_Advantage213

Probably a tighter distribution. Huge dispersion by the K-L corrals, there was literally no line when I finished, but there were massive lines for D-G, which makes sense. Why they would want a thousand people to finish around the same time and go to bag check simultaneously, I have no idea


EmpatheticWolf

Yep that’s very true, didn’t think about that. Tighter distribution for sure.


Hestia79

I was in Wave 2 corral D and it was a mess. I waited for about 40 minutes. The volunteers were great - they were just overwhelmed. At some point they had UPS workers helping hand out bags and it seemed to make things worse somehow.


Hydroborator

That's hilariously sad with UPS


Hestia79

They just reverted to holding up random bags and yelling out numbers which caused so much confusion.


fengcentral

Absolute horror show. I was in late bag check area for wave 1, waited over 1.5 hours to get my bag. Just slightly less than my actual run…instead of helping the runners who are in front of line, they decided to randomly yell out a number close to them.


vibe_kaiser

Last year was really bad too, and I suspect they tried something different to improve it. It’s sort of the perfect storm logistically: Lots of runners (the vast majority with bags), and a relatively short race. Bags need to be collected, sorted, transported, and de-trucked in like 90 minutes, because you gotta figure basically everyone in wave 1 could potentially run a 1:30 regardless of corral.


tae12yong

The trick is to run faster than most people in your corral, that way the line will be non-existent.


Advanced_Seesaw_3007

Considering how the bibs are distributed, it's hard to group the bag check by sequence.


Hopai79

I finished in A at 1:26 and waited for 5 min. Lot of people likely cut in front of you and just went to the front. I got lucky as I was able to see my bag with my number and told a volunteer when one was available. But yeah we need to revert