El Scorcho Dos Lights

I was thinking back today to El Scorcho Dos and what a crazy day we had. Running a night race brings a whole new set of challenges on top of the normal things required for daytime runs. One item in particular that tends to be a recurring issue is the lighting situation in Trinity Park. No other event in the park has the light requirements of El Scorcho so it is tough to get the city electricians that when we say that we need "All" the lights on in the park we are not over exaggerating. 

This year Gandaman and myself did an inspection run the night before the race to check on the course and found that 90% of the lights in the main area were not on. I quickly hopped on the phone to Mike, the supervisor in charge of Trinity Park who told me the electrician had already been out and turned on all the lights that he could.  Mike assured me he would look into more and get back to me if there was anything he could do. 

To make a long story short Mike ended up trying to contact the electrician with no luck so he drove all the way in from Burleson to check on the situation on his day off. After being unable to get into the electrical box due to a recent key change Mike and Jim from the Parks Department literally took a blowtorch to the lock. The lock gave up the ghost real quick with that kind of effort and lo and behold the lights were never turned on. 

Those of you at El Scorcho know that some of the more strategic lights never came on, but without the last minute efforts of Mike and Jim we would not gotten we would have had only a couple of lights at the Gazebo area. 

So what does this mean for next year? Well looks like Ganda and I get to spend the Friday before El Scorcorcho showing the course to the electrician and fielding the inevitable questions of what would possess anyone to come out and run an 25k/50k in the middle of the night. Should be fun!