The Atlanta Track Club has heard from approximately 160 of the more than 1,000 racers who didn’t receive a T-shirt after Friday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race.
The Track Club was alerted at 10:45 a.m. on Friday that certain sizes of the shirts were being depleted. By the end of the day, all that was left were XL and XXL sizes.
The club sent out an email at 2:45 p.m. Friday to the racers who finished after 10:45 a.m. , saying that if they didn’t receive one of the coveted T-shirts, or received the wrong size, to respond by July 11. As of 8:30 a.m. Saturday, half of those emails were opened and one-third of those had responded.
“We are putting all efforts into making sure that people get their T-shirts,” an ATC spokeswoman said.
Executive director Rich Kenah said on Friday that he didn’t want to speculate why they ran out of certain sizes. The spokeswoman said the club still hasn’t tried to figure out what happened.
“We were disappointed and surprised, since this wasn’t exactly a new race, but I figured I’d just email Atlanta Track and get it figured out,” runner Katie Stilson said. “I was pleasantly surprised when they followed up first. Now, we’ll just wait and see if/when the shirt actually shows up.”
Running out of certain sizes is not an uncommon occurrence, according to former Peachtree director Julia Emmons.
“This is something that does happen when people give one size and take another size,” said Emmons, who served for 22 years as the race’s executive director before resigning in 2006. “It’s very hard to prevent this. It’s happened in the past and I’m sorry it has happened in Rich’s first year.
“It’s not unexpected in a race this size.”
Emmons said in the past the club would send a letter of apology and the requested T-shirt, usually within a week. Emmons said trying to fix the problem by including a T-shirt size on the running bib, for example, can cause ripple effects that will create other problems, particularly when there are as many as 60,000 official runners and scores more of unofficial runners. There were 57,173 finishers in Friday’s race.
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