The most difficult half-marathon

Today, I ran the half-marathon of Novosibirsk. Jonathan, Erika and I had planned that for about 6 weeks, which is a decent amount of time to prepare physically for the race (21.1 km). However, it is quite tight to go through the administrative hurdles in order to participate to the race. It looks easy on paper: all you need is
(i) a medical certificate dated after Aug 20 that you are apt to run the race,
(ii) a registration form completely filled out, and
(iii) a receipt of the bank where you went to do a transfer of 300 rubles to the bank account of the race organizer. Finally, before the race, you need to bring these 3 documents to the race organizers.
That's where running a half-marathon in Siberia is turning into a team sport; here is the list of the people to whom I say a "big thanks" for helping me doing this race:
-the lady at the bank who told me that the information about the bank account given on the race's website was erroneous, and she could not do the transfer
-my beloved girlfriend Katya who called the race organizers to know the exact reference of the bank account to which the money had to be transferred (in addition, she received a "big thanks" from the race organizers who had not figured out until then why nobody had signed up for the race, until Katya told them about the error)
-My doctor Alexey at work who accepted to sign and stamp a document that said I was in good health to run the race;
-Erika, who logged in 2 days before the race and found out the last-minute small-print announcement that the start of the race was moved from 1pm to 10 am.
-and of course, the support team (Nadine, Nicolas and Natasha) who got up early to cheer us during the race.

Here is the list of the people whom I do NOT thank:
-the lady from the organizing committee at office 1, who estimated that Dr Alexey was not a proper doctor to evaluate that I was in good shape, and who wouldn't let us run the race. She was of the opinion that, in addition to the official "physician" stamp and signature, Dr Alexey should have put an official stamp of the clinic he was working in. We called Dr Alexey on the phone and the lady lashed out at him like he was a worthless piece of s--t, and still wouldn't accept us in the race. After I showed her a printout of the registration rules, which said that a doctor from a workplace was entitled to sign such document, she took the printout from me, read it (probably for the first time) and accept my application on the condition that I write in Russian and sign: "I am healthy" (which must have read: 'I am hell-sy', because she did not look pleased with my Russian grammar when I handed out the form).
-the lady from the organizing committee at office 2,who estimated that foreigners must pay more than Russian participants and did not accept the bank receipt I handed out to her. Here again, a printout of the registration rules which I carried with me helped me out. Still, she had to call 2 higher authorities before letting me in.
-the lady from the organizing committee at office 3, who had me rewrite all the information on the registration cards on separate pieces of papers, and called me at work later on for additional information.
-the organizing committee who changed the time of the race 2 days before the race

The hardest part of the race was done when we were approved to sign in. I'll tell you about the easy part (the race) in my next post. That was interesting too...