As planned, I didn't try to register for the UTMB this year. It looks like it was a quite a mess, with tickets gone in minutes...

The organisation seems to have anticipated such a rush, as they've added a pre-registration step to fluidify the traffic. But they reckon it was so busy they couldn't even access their own database themselves... I let you imagine how easy it was for the runners - F5 is my friend! In the end, they added a small draw to pick up a couple of extra lucky runners. This only looks like a method to calm down disappointed/angry people to me, and not a real solution. It's a shame that such a great organisation on the terrain fails miserably on the registration side.

Using a very basic mathematical function, I forecasted exactly a year ago that the registrations would take 8 minutes. Today, Utrafondus reports they were gone in 7 minutes. Not bad for an estimation! Following the same model would lead to a 2009 registration time of 3 seconds ... but users and servers won't definitively follow the pace :) .

It is clear that there is no perfect solution. But the UTMB organisers don't seem to really try to find a better one: they simply apply patches here and there. Indeed it was clear a year ago that a first-come-first-served system would end up in a sort of ballot, based on luck and Internet connection speed. Are they going to stick with this one next year? In this case, I humbly suggest a proper ballot from the start: not only it would save the users & organisers stress and the computer denial-of-service, but that would call a spade a spade...

Ultra mess.