Q & A with New Wharf to Wharf Race Director

Sunday’s 40^th annual Wharf to Wharf was the final one for longtime race director Kirby Nicol. Stepping in to replace Nicol is assistant race director and elite athlete coordinator Scott McConville. Capitola-Soquel Patch spoke with McConville—a former Wharf to Wharf scholarship winner and current head track coach at Aptos High School—about this year’s race, the challenges of managing such a popular event, and what he sees for the race’s future. His responses, condensed and edited for clarity, follow:

Capitola-Soquel Patch: How did this year go overall?

McConville: Overall it was a great race. We got really good reviews from the community in terms of our organization and how good our volunteers were. On the elite side no records were broken but we still had some fast times and some fast athletes from all over the world.

Patch: How difficult is it to balance an event with so many different levels of participants from elite athletes, to walkers, to competitive but non-elite runners, and make that a good experience for everyone?

McConville: That’s something we’re always trying to improve on. You can’t always make everyone perfectly happy but we try every year to do everything in our power to make that possible. The people who are very competitive but not at the elite level, it’s always a challenge to get them enough space to work with so they’re not having to weave through a lot of people. That’s something we’re going to have to work on moving forward.

Patch: What were your own highlights from this year’s race?

McConville: I’m also the elite athlete coordinator so from my personal point of view it was pretty neat to have Americans so far up in the elite field. That really doesn’t happen too often for us. And with the introduction of American prize money we saw additional Americans enter the field who are some of the top American road racers out there so that was really fun to see. The spectators maybe got to see a different kind of race than we’ve had in the last few years on both the men’s and women’s side with Americans getting second place.

Another highlight from the race overall was being able to seeing Kirby Nicol’s last year as race director go so well; arguably the best ever Wharf to Wharf race in its history. He was able to see that in his last year. That was a pretty cool thing.

Patch: This is only the second year the race has had electronic chip timing. How do you look at as a change for the race and how is that transition going?

McConville: Chip timing is something that is mandatory to have if you want to consider yourself one of the top races in the country. We’ve had learning curve as we’ve introduced it. A lot of races in the country introduced chip timing a long time ago and they got to work through they’re issues a long time ago. We figure we’re going to learn every year and improve in the efficiency of the timing and results.

Patch: Where do you think the race is headed in the coming years?

McConville: One of the things I’ll be looking at is ways to make a good experience for every single participant and a lot of those people in the middle of the starting line, we want to make sure that they don’t get lost in the shuffle; the people that train really hard but maybe aren’t able to get into the elite coral but really train hard and want to get a fast time. We want to make sure they have the opportunity to do that. We meet in September and that’s when we’ll start discussing what’s coming for 2013 and beyond.