Active.com is a website that a lot of race organizers outsource the tasks of registration and collection of fees to. The Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon was no different. However, with the shotgun registration process that is in place for the PPAM, apparently Active.com wasn’t prepared for the traffic all at once.

A buddy at work notified me at about 7:58am this morning that the registration had opened. I browsed on over and started the process. I knew after the first button I clicked on the page that things were messed up. It took a considerable amount of time for the next screen to show up. All totaled, it took me about 25 minutes to register for the race. When I got a receipt via email, it said that my card had been charged the $95.55, but the “Registration For” section of the receipt was blank. WTF? I then tried to print a receipt on the Active.com site. Everytime I clicked that link, it lead me to a blank page.

About 20 minutes after I had registered, I was finally able to print out a copy of the receipt and waiver. A couple guys at work also experience difficulty but finally managed to get registered in just under an hour.

As the day went on, the PPAM staff updated the website and eventually called off the registration until they could sort out the massive screw-up they had on their hands compliments of Active.com. For a website that many race organizers use, you would think they have their act together enough to accept registrations from a couple thousand people in an hour. It’s a pretty monumental IT failure on their part and I hope another system can move in and take over where Active failed so miserably.

As of now, I’m in the race. The Board of Directors for the PPAM is having a meeting tonight to discuss how to fix the botched registration. I hope my entry holds and they open it again for the remaining slots left. I think it would also be cool if Active.com would refund my $6.30 processing fee that I paid to fight with their website this morning for a half hour.

Stay tuned for more!