Entering Races Online

Have finally caught up to speed technologically and am looking to enter some races Online now, although completing that entry form is often a delight, the wait to get the details and number back and thus confirmation you are in, is not!

 Can anyone confirm that the race organisers still send you your race pack in the post?

 How does this work when often organisers ask for a stamped addressed envelope? Do they suddenly take on this expense, or does taking the entry through the Online manner somehow save them money?

 Also, I understand there is a little fee for processing this that goes to Runners World, of about £1.50 to £2, but I suppose you take out the normal stamp, stamped addressed envelope and paper charges which might just even out?

 I did see a race that is £10 entry...yet is still £10 through Online. Why hasn't the mark up applied to this one?

Any pros and cons? Is the entry safely encrypted like any buying through the net sites?

If anyone is a online enterin guru, please lend me your experience!

ta

not had a problem with online entry and enterd loads of races this way ,You normaly get an e mail to confirm and all but one race has sent my race pack out to me , the only one that didnt sent me an email with all the info i would have got in the pack and told me to collect my number on the day witch i did with no problem

  

Try looking at the organisers' own websites - they often have on-line entry and without the RW mark-up.

Nearly all races will send your number and info out to you.  They'll absorb the cost, I guess, because they know more people will enter if they can enter on-line.

There's a mixed bag re-mark up. Some do, some don't and as noted by Wilkie, some do their own on-line version.
Advantages: No chance of entry being lost on the post, confirmation e-mail and if there's no pack sent youu have the e-mail to take to registration on the day. Legibility, your name will always be correct (I write like a dyslexic spider on speed)  Satisfaction of knowing you are in. RW site guaranteed safe
Disadvantage: Marginally more expensive.

Entered everything from local to international on-line and no probs to report.

From the other side.

When you set up races you have the choice as to who pays the RW fee - the runner, the organiser, or split it 50/50.

After having set up the race details in RW diary, its quite easy to add the online entry.

In the past we have sent out numbers in the normal way. For the last two races we have said collect number on the day, and the race instructions will arrive by email.

This has actually caused more problems recently. Lots of people can't enter their email address properly, and unlike postal addresses there is NO redundancy in the spelling. get one letter wrong and it just doesn't deliver! Further our website hosting co also have changed their t&c so I can't bulk email all entrants from our hosted website address, so I have had to open a googlemail account to send out race details. These can't be a PDF attachment as its too big, so it went in formatted text. Hmmmmm. Grrrrrrr. Anyway, people seem to have got it now... except those whose email didn't bounce, but didn't arrive in the right place either...

On the up side, yes, Names etc are easier to read. For the organiser its a mixed blessing. On the up side lots of people seem to enter. On the downside, its more work and I'm not sure whether more postal entries turn up on the day compared to onliners or not. I think it would be an interesting hypothesis to investigate...

WE don't do our own online version yet, as processing costs are still there - it would be about 50p per entry on a normal race - and then if you want a super-whizzy swanky system you can expect to pay about £50 more per year for hosting - i.e. your own SSL/TLS certificate and a static IP address... There are other companies who will sort out online entry for you for cheaper... Not sure how well they work, but we'll see in the future perhaps...

DB2 do you have an e-mail address confirmation box? The enetering e-mail address twice usually solves that bouncing bit unless by some miracle they get their own addy wrong twice

The entry system uses a pretty secure system - it uses a Thawte certificate to validate the identity and you can therefore generally trust the site as much as you trust Runners World itself. It is a 1024 bit RSA key, which is generally considered good enough for now, but some people are now using 2048 or even 4096 bit keys... The 128 bit key for main comms are good enough for session keys for the next few years at least...

As always with online purchases, you have to be on your guard and ensure that you really are on the RW site and not on a look - a - like; and then take normal precautions of checking credit card statements and keeping an eye on where you enter the CC details - i.e. not in a public place with people looking over your shoulder...

Stray Celt,

Not as far as I can see on the RW system, but then I didn't write their system, just use it... and this doesn't stop people copying and pasting the wrong address from one box to the next!!!