When I was checking out reviews for the Denver Marathon, I came across this gem, the Volkswagen Denver Marathon. From what I can gather the Volkswagen Denver Marathon took place from 2000-2004, 2004 was the death of the VW Denver Marathon, in fact they didn’t even have it, it got cancelled the day before the race.

I realize this event was only four years ago, but I wasn’t racing back then, so it is news to me. I didn’t make my grand entrance into the Colorado Running scene until 2006. At 21 (1999), I retired from the game, wanting to go out on top. But just like all of the other greats, Bret Favre, Lance Armstrong, & Jay Z, I came back on the scene in 2006!

From what I can gather the race director did not get the needed permits from the Police Department in time, something about trying to pay them on Friday with a partial payment but the city of Denver was no longer accepting partial payments. The race director did not have enough money to pay for the 100 off-duty police officers. Thus, the race got cancelled. It sounds like the race started in Washington Park and the funny thing is it sounds like 10-15 runners showed up anyway and ran the course, unofficially.

Here are a few of my favorite racer comments:

I have finished the 50 States and DC marathon circuit and am ashamed that this travesty of a ‘marathon’ was allowed to be run by a greedy race director who has no clue how to run a quality event but is willing to charge what he thinks the market will bear and then some. I am not sad it was cancelled (it should have been after the first year) but feel for those who paid the outrageous entry price and got shafted 21 hours before.

The 2004 Denver Marathon and Half Marathon was to be my first half marathon. I just returned from the J.W. Marriott in Cherry Creek where packet pick-up is supposed to take place for the 2004 race. I was already aware of the race ?postponement? announced this morning, but I wanted some answers as to why I trained for the last half year for a race that was ?postponed? 21 hours before the scheduled start time. When I got to the room reserved at the hotel for packet pick-up the first thing I saw was a woman crying outside (she was still crying when I left 20 minutes later).

Chuck Trujillo was at the Marriott. His explanation for the failure of the event to me and the others gathered there at the time was that in the past he was allowed to pay the bulk of the permit payment due to the city of Denver on the Friday before the race and the rest of the balance due on the Saturday before the race. He contends that the city did not let him do that this year and denied him a permit when he did not have all of the money on Friday. He also claims that the real reason behind the city denying a permit is that they were short on resources (police) due to other events taking place in Denver on the same day and that they dealt with their problem by pulling the plug on the marathon. When pressed on the issue however, he did concede that the city told him that he needed to pay the permit fees by Friday October 8th. Those are the facts I am aware of at this time.

Extremely disappointing to see absolutely no public announcements, no media coverage, and basically nothing done for pre-race publicity. How on earth are we to have any spectators when no one knows about the event. A $43.00 t-shirt is total rip-off when little or nothing was done to create any interest, curiosity, or at least some excitement. It’s truly a very big letdown and I will certainly not consider participating again unless there are some big changes. You only have to look at how the Cherry Creek Sneak is organized and run to know this event lacks a lot. In fact, it is incredible how badly this event has been presented to the participants and general public. I know for a fact other cities do it right from start to finish and truly make it an event that the entire city can get behind; thus making it extra special for the people walking or running the race. Changing the start time 5 days before the race, not publishing the race route until five days before the event, offering race packet pick-ups the day before the event, and providing absolutely no public notices only reaffirms how badly organized this event is – and thus it should be rated as extremely poor.

Reading through the reviews from 2000-2003 it sounds like the VW Denver Marathon was a disaster from the start. Runners talked about getting lost in City Park, poor course markings, etc. Pretty sad, I’m glad that the folks running the Denver Marathon now put on a quality event that shows what a great running town Denver truly is.