Wrong PPP start times cause confusion

Anticipation for the U.S. Bank Pole Pedal Paddle race is building by the hour. With less than 24 hours until the start of the race, some competitors were unsure as to when they were scheduled ti start, prompting fast moves by organizers

The confusion caused many to call the Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation, trying to figure out what was going on.

It started when The Bulletin published on Friday the estimated times that were posted online months ago to give people an idea of the start times.

Those times were “an approximation of what we think (they might be) — and then at packet pickup, or when the big confirmation goes out to the athletes, then that is the actual start time,” said PPP registration coordinator Carol Nelson.

That didn’t go as planned. When the estimated times were published in the paper, many competitors began to wonder.

“That’s when we jumped into action and notified everybody as best we could and as quickly as we could,” by e-mail, Nelson said.

“Luckily, I got the email saying don’t panic before I found out about the confusion,” Renee Metivier Baillie said.

“I got the email this morning apologizing for the mix-up, and I go, ‘Oh, there was a mix-up?’ Didn’t know about it,” Mark Oberle said.

“I just figured, we’ll figure out what we need to figure out by the time we need to figure it out,” Lisa Luna said. “But now we know what time it is, so we’re good.”

Nelson said they had to adjust, but were able to get competitors back on time.

“It was a little bit of a curveball, but it looks like everything is going smoothly,” Nelson said. “We haven’t had anyone upset at all, so I think we stopped it in its tracks.”

MBSEF had all their volunteers write the actual starts times on each competitor’s packet.

And just in case, here’s the full start-time list for all competitors: 2014 U.S. Bank Pole Pedal Paddle start list