Early conf lists up

• Unlike the last two years, registration for PPA and PPM has not sold out yet.  From the site ...
  • As of 10:00 PM MT there were plenty of spots left in the Ascent Wave 1 and Wave 2. There are less than 10 spots left in the Marathon Field 1 and less than 30 in the Marathon Field 2.
• Gazette article on registration ...
• Matt speculated as to why on the discussion board
  • that was a mess in 2007. However, I always felt the "melt down" artificially compressed the registration times because there was a week for everyone to go into panic mode before the do over. This carried over a lot to last year and some to this year. But as more newbies come in and everyone relaxes a little we will get back to normal:-)
  • I'd also suspect a bit of the economy here but I can't say that definitively.  I do know a few folks who were wondering if shelling out a hundred bucks for a race was worth it ... and a heck of a lot more if they were traveling in.
• I started getting various word of buddies who were in yesterday - Matt Hill from the Fleet Feet team; John Prater (junk food king, adventurer extradonaire, survivor of the La Luz Element crash of 2007),  Claude Clegg -  in the marathon ("No way bro, I ain't ever doing that downhill bullshit.") (and survivor of nut cancer) (actually best pre-race quote ever ..."I am going to PR this today.  I only have drag one nut up this time."); Verne Carlson (general bad ass well into his 70s); JW and his FW, JP, Jeff V (aka - JV as in "just vertical"), co-workers Gus, Tony ...
• All that ... and the early confirmation list are up.  Ah yes, the lists ... giving me something do late at night when I should be sleeping.  Nay, instead I troll these lists, looking for the true runners, the posers, the clowns who put up sub 2 hour ascents for their first Pikes based on a 2:15 half marathon.  The lists ARE EARLY.  They don't reflect the top ten folks who can register later (guys like Mackey, Mock) or prior winners (folks like Goldsmith and Carpenter).  They don't reflect the throw outs after pre-req times begin to get confirmed.  So more to come on those.
• Generally - kudos to the registration team for having a generally smooth registration.  Active still seems to encounter some basic load issues but I was in 12 minutes post the hour, and apparently could still register now if I wanted to.  Nice job folks.  The tricks of staggering registration, tweaking the qualification times - seem to be working for this race that does have a cap.