Seneca7 26

Race Week

Web Updates

Thanks to all for your patience as we worked through the wrenches. This week I spent time redoing the race website to make it hopefully make it clearer in content and formatting. The timeline was tweaked, links to start waves and information on the tracker added, and course guide tweaked and corrected including based on a few of you catching discrepencies. A few additional FAQ / answers also at the bottom.

I’ll continue to keep it updated so please continue to stay on checking it out all the way through to raceday. Team members, please be sure to check in with your team at large on receiving this email, as it’ll unfortunately be the case that some individual’s emails will screen or filter them out. Okay, on to breaking some of those items down, and adding in a few more….

Race Week Timeline

Tuesday April 21 @ 7pm - Live Q/A broadcast to Seneca7 Facebook and Red Newt Racing’s YouTube pages. Please have watched the pre-race briefing and reviewed the course guide prior to. The Q/A session is not mandatory, and will be hyperlinked in the timeline after and available for viewing.
Saturday April 25 at the Finger Lakes Welcome Center from 10:30 - 2:30. At least one member of your team must attend pickup & teammates encouraged. NO Race-Day Pickup!! For the couple of teams who inquired, it’s possible we’ll add an evening pickup at someplace like Watershed Brewing, but for this year, Sat AM only.
Sunday April 26 - First wave off at 5:45, last wave at 9:45. First to finish around 4:30, last team in around 8:00.

Required Parking & Disqualification Potential

Teams are permitting only one vehicle to park at the Welcome Center on race day, and that is only for the start and at the finish. No team vehicles are permitted to remain parked at the Welcome Center for the day. Please make use of Municiple Public Lots at the historic start location along Scott Lafaro Drive in downtown Geneva, or at lodging.

Each year we also get reports of Teams appearing to be using more than one vehicle during the race. Each team will get a Team Vehicle sign for their dash and we may have an exchange point or two where a volunteer is checking for that singular sign. If rocking more than one, or if we receive concrete reports, you’ll be disqualified. Exchange points are tight and additional vehicles, or those which don’t fit the required one normal space parking spec will risk being DQ’d.

Course Guide

Every team must not only read and understand the “Rules of the Road” listed on the website, but also “Learn It, Know It, Live It” regarding the Course Guide. Each team must have a printed or downloaded copy of the Course Guide in their vehicle. There’s not always reliable coverage to pull it up on your phone. Teams must know the vehicle route, and runners will want to glance at their run-leg ahead.

We’ll have runner turns marked with blue surveyor’s flags, but you won’t have confidence markers out there. Each year I hear comments from runners coming off a leg where they didn’t feel confident knowing where they were going. Most legs have but one or two turns…some literally none. There shouldn’t be a case where runners don’t have pre knowledge of their leg ahead. Look at your leg in advance. Make Brad from FT@RH happy…Learn it, know it, then run it.

Starting Waves & Shuttle Info

Starting waves are assigned based on a best average team pace estimate. It mostly runs in reverse to give the slower teams the longest window, to make it a bit more exciting for fast teams to run with others and tick off “road kills”, but also to consolidate the window for volunteers, particularly in the back half. The first wave goes at 5:45, the last at 9:45. All team members must be present at the start. You can find the waves here. Note, I had to shuffle the 8’ish waves a bit later in the week based on shuttle bus timeline and me playing with projected mass at exchange points.

As mentioned in the Course Guide and on the Recorded Briefing, please note that starting waves from 5:45 through 8:15 will be required to have the finishing leg 2 runner board a shuttle for transport and reunification at Anthony Road. Teams will be permitted to drop their leg 3 runner at Kashong, but they are not permitted to park for more than drop-off only. NO waiting to pickup runner 2. Waves from 9:00 - 9:45 will be permitted to park at that dropoff and both drop and pickup runners as normal.

Team Tracker / Results / Runner Order

In addition to finisher results, which will be posted at Leone Timing, we’ll again use the Live Tracker created by S7 Co-Founder Jeff Henderson. The link to the Team Tracker is below. Teams will take their unique Team ID #, found in the Wave Start Time spreadsheet, and insert the number immediately after the “=” sign in the url. At each exchange teams will plug in time of day for that exchange area and click Add. Post race you can see the list of paces, teams passed or “roadkills”, etc…

This will be live around April 21st for teams to experiment with, and cleared ahead of race day for the slate to wipe clean. once the start list is truly finalized.

Each team’s runners must stick to the same leg order. In prior years that info was taken in an effort to insure all teams had 7 runners but it would be impossible to check on actual follow-through. I did what I could to tease that out in advance, and cull teams who didn’t at least have seven. This year there is not an additional location where teams will need to provide us that order. We trust you to do that and follow the rules.

Awards & Contests

The top three teams in each division will be awarded wine from exchange zone partners including Anthony Road, Glenora, Magnus Ridge, Lakewood, Idol Ridge, Zugibe, and . We’ll have results as quickly as we can as provided by Leone Timing. Pick those up in the Welcome Center’s Community Room post-race.

Additionally we’ll have the following special categories:

Best Team Costume, to be judged from in-person catches or from images shared on S7 social media on race day. The award: 7 x $20 store credits from Finger Lakes Running Company (Ithaca or new Syracuse location, can be redeemed over the phone for those out of area) + Guaranteed Entry slot for 2027 race for the Team Captain
Best Name - “Penny for your thoughts” Voting style with the RD’s selecting a handful, jars for each at check-in, and the winning team getting to choose a charity from local charity choices to which the penny total will go.
Rest Your Legs, for the slowest leg split of the day, chosen from an unannounced in advance leg, and with some beverages or a gift card from Watershed Brewing.
Scavenger Hunting - with 14 laminated Finger Lakes Running Co logos set atop aluminum pigtail hangers for the finding and grabbing, and to be redeemed post-race for $20 store credits from Finger Lakes Running Company (Ithaca or new Syracuse location, can be redeemed over the phone for those out of area). If you see one, grab it and carry it to the finish, redeeming in the Community Room.

Pre-Race Dinner & Race Morning Eats

Still looking for a dinner reservation for Saturday night pre-race? Please consider making a reservation with our friends at Torrey Park. Fueling up on calories or caffeine pre-race Sunday morning (unless in the 5:45 wave), consider stopping in with our friends at the Water Street Cafe. They’ll have ready for their traditional Seneca 7 Specials of “The Starting Line” (Three Eggs, Melon & Toast choice) and “The Finish Line” (Two Eggs, Two Slices of Bacon, Two Sausage Links, Home-fries & Toast).

Perk Discount For Some Of The Finest Juice in the Land

We’re grateful to once again be provided a post-race juice for each of you from Geneva’s Red Jacket Orchards. It’s fresh and truly incredible. Please further support them in making use of a promo discount code for a follow up purchase, and in applying the code of SENECA726 at checkout.

Ian, JAckie, & Chris