Early Call Time

In this month's interview episode, Tony and Eli talk to Jared Rohatinsky, CEO of Brooksee and and a member of Utah's famous "running Rohatinsky family." Brooksee, best-known for its series of screaming fast Revel races, is also responsible for what the guys think is one of the most exciting running industry innovations to come out during the pandemic: OYO (as in "On Your Own") racing.

In this interview Jared reveals how OYO was born out of dissatisfaction with existing virtual race options, how its unique set of in-house core competencies allowed Brooksee to realize this concept (a degree from MIT is involved...), the ins and outs of their extensive results verification process, and what's next for OYO (and if you're interested in partnering to bring OYO to your city, you may like what you hear).

Jared also lets us know what wet end-of-race-day tradition he and the rest of the Brooksee crew are looking forward to when traditional in-person racing returns....But until then, if you're looking for the closest thing you can get to an in-person race experience, you should check out OYO!

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

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In the final episode of an October jam-packed with bonus content Tony and Eli interview a man of many hats, JT "Just Truth" Service, the founder of Soul Focus Sports (parent company of Run Local and the Silicon Valley Half Marathon), the CEO of Silverback, a podcaster extraordinaire, an ex-agent, and one-time running media start-up founder. His audio track isn't the clearest, but we all have a lot to learn from him about how he juggles all these balls--plus finds time to take care of himself by starting every day of with a bit of movement--so listen carefully!

The fastest ECT Pod guest yet, with a strong collegiate career at UCSB and a 2008 Olympic Trials marathon qualifier on his athletic CV, JT went to law school with hopes of becoming the Jerry Maguire of endurance and action sports athletes before realizing "that 15% of very little is even less." While that phase of his career may not have been very remunerative, he did gain some great stories involving Dean Karnazes, whom he represented, and nudity in the desert.

After that chapter, JT started building his empire, which he kindly takes a moment to clarify the many intertwined different arms of to the guys: Soul Focus is his production-for-hire arm, Run Local and the Silicon Valley Half are Sole Focus-owned events, and Silverback is his and Kyle's equipment rental and operations for-hire company. He also talks about having Meb and Merhawi Keflezighi as business partners in the Silicon Valley Half, and how a piece of advice he didn't take from Merhawi has helped his businesses thrive during this time when so many traditional organizations are struggling (Hawi's advice was not "a con starts from the shoes up"--that's a JT original).

A theme that runs throughout this whole interview is the strength of JT's team. Anticipating this like the professional podcasters they are, and also knowing that no one would have better stories, after a brief diversion into JT's newly-discovered Jewish heritage the guys secretly invite Silverback COO and JT's partner in crime Kyle Meyers to join them halfway through the podcast. Kyle doesn't disappoint, sharing stories of JT being "a really good sport" while barely making it through a weekend working the Chicago Marathon, how he regularly cuts his hand while working, and his deep love for a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco karaoke joint. There's one story specifically--that sounds like it involved criminal activity--that Eli can't drag out of him, but he lets Kyle off the hook and lets him finish by saying something nice about JT instead.

Kyle is quite the industry pro himself, so Eli promises to have him back on not just to talk shop but also about Minneapolis (since Kyle was raised in Eli's new home), but everyone agrees he should stick around for the evergreen closer for this episode, too, so the episode wraps with both JT and Kyle talking about their team's post-strike traditions.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, or want to try to stump us at Virtual Race Balderdash, please send us an email at [email protected].

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Last week the Montana running community and the national running industry as a whole tragically lost one of its leaders, Tony Banovich, Executive Director of Run Wild Missoula. In what was supposed to be a bye week, the guys discussed producing a special episode in remembrance of Tony, but in doing so realized their friends at the BibRave Podcast  had already done so with aplomb. That episode is shared in its entirety here. Thanks to Jess and Tim at BibRave for allowing us to share their episode--if you listen and like it, consider giving the BibRave Podcast a subscribe--and for giving Tony such a lovely remembrance. He'll be missed by all who knew him, and we should all strive to honor his memory by bringing his infectious passion and enthusiasm to our work and lives.

Regular ECT Pod programming will return next week with a bonus second interview in this five-Thursday October. Until then, if you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

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This week's episode kicks off with just what you all listen to this podcast for--an extended discussion of the weather! Once the guys get through that scintillating topic, the guys tease some interviews they have coming up (want to know what they are? Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or--if you're old--Facebook) before Eli brings up something Tony has in the past raked him over the coals for his views about: virtual race results.

The reason Eli brings this up is that since they last recorded, Tony ran his Bank of America Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience Half Marathon, and his different forms of technology (his Garmin watch and his Strava account) recorded different times with a two-minute discrepancy! The guys discuss all the different ways that a virtual race time can be recorded differently (moving time versus total time, to an exact point or to a distance on a tracker), and then get a little metaphysical in discussing whether and how we can really know what time anyone ran in a virtual race and even if we can say they ran a specific time what that means.

This has long been Eli's point--virtual race times can be accurate enough to track progress and compare against oneself, but aren't precise enough to compare with anyone else with any real meaning. By the end of this discussion, Eli thinks he has Tony converted to his position that virtual PRs are fine to count personally--but if you're going to bring them up as a way of comparing yourself to someone else, you need to mention that it's a virtual PR.

The guys then talk about the re-emergence of regional-level marathon events with the Prairie Fire Half Marathon taking place in Wichita, Kansas this past Sunday, and the BCS Marathon, Mississippi Blues Marathon, and Louisiana Marathon all  on the docket in the coming months. Tony says that what he's going to be looking for to judge whether these are safe and successful events isn't anything in the event's plan--we all know what that needs to look like--but what the runners do at the event, and whether they read and then follow new rules that are in place to keep participants, staff, volunteers, and events' host communities safe. Eli says that what he's going to be looking for is for events that are able to take place in-person to be willing to turn people away, and not try to push past their caps to a size they may not be able to manage during a pandemic, and also be willing to understand that--while they have to advocate for their events--the very characteristics that make their event the unique and beautiful snowflake that it is may also make it an event that shouldn't be held, even while another event of similar or larger size may be able to be held.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, or want to try to stump us at Virtual Race Balderdash, please send us an email at [email protected].

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In this week's episode, the guys introduce a segment: Virtual Race Balderdash! During this segment the guys take turns reading descriptions of virtual races and make each other guess whether the description they've just heard is real or fake. If you just want to hear the segment, you can just skip to just past the 27-minute mark, but before that they talk about some industry happenings, some of which are even in-person--like the COVID-safe in-person finish line activation Eli helped put on on what would have been Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Sunday.

Tony, since he's not in Chicago helping to put on the marathon this weekend, shares his planned participation in the virtual Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience Half Marathon--which, since virtual will be here to stay alongside many events, may not be a one-and-done when he does return to working the event. For this week, though, Tony has to figure out how get his virtual race in around a camping trip he doesn't sound super-enthusiastic about, which leads to the guys talking about both their running tech use and also how they personally don't necessarily follow all of the liability-necessitated instructions organizations give out for virtual event participation.

The guys recap the highest level road race to happen in-person since the start of the pandemic, the elite-only London Marathon, which was conducted on a criterium course and held in a bubble, and also talk a little bit about a similar race planned for Arizona later in the year, the Marathon Project 2020. They agree that criterium-style racing is cool, and is something we would like to see more of.

Tony and Eli then discuss what's going on in the Texas marathoning scene, with Dallas, traditionally held in December, announcing its postponement to late April of 2021 (which the guys are skeptical of), and Houston kicking of the major 2021 cancellations by going virtual for its January event. The (usually) much-smaller BCS Marathon is still on for December and a reg spike seems likely with its major competitors clearing the field.

In their Virtual Race Balderdash segment you fearless co-hosts throw everything at each other, from the RBG Run to the Virtual Virtual Run (featuring a hellaciously difficult online racing game), and in a moment of high drama the winner is determined on the last of the six rounds. Who wins? Who goes home in tears? Did the guys accidentally invent any good virtual race ideas among their fakes? You'll have to listen to find out! (And if you stick around until the very end you'll get a special Easter Egg courtesy of recent podcast guest David Waskowski...)

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, or want to try to stump us at Virtual Race Balderdash, please send us an email at [email protected].

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As the calendar turns to October, the month of the 2020 Bank of America Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience, the ECT Pod has on David Waskowski, Director of Participant Services for Chicago Event Management, organizers of the Chicago Marathon. Before you read any more of the summary of what was truly an interesting and insightful interview, please listen to the ECT Pod jingle(!) that our talented guest wrote for and shared with us after recording!

David is a lifelong runner, and the guys wax nostalgic with him about running cross country before this industry veteran walks us through his career path at CEM, the early days of which included a job Tony can commiserate with him about: flyering the Chicago Marathon course. David shares the most Chicago story ever from his days doing race operations--getting approval to place a tent outside a union hall where whoever answered the phone didn't have any time for nonsense. He explains his transition from the race operations side to the experience side, and along the way tells us about the biggest changes he has seen in the industry over his decade-and-a-half of varied experience at an industry leading event management company.

The interview then veers into the esoteric, as Tony and Eli ask their guest of many talents about his much-ballyhooed musical gifts, comedy chops, and whether he has any other super powers that they should know about (he demurs). As inevitably happens when anyone learns that someone plays the banjo, a long digression into David's banjo-pickin' ways occurs. Wazko also shares some insight into the musical breakthrough he has made due to the regular deep practice the pandemic has created space for for him, which is something we all can and should learn from.

There have been some interesting projects going on at CEM recently, and David shares his perspective on a couple big ones: the inaugural Bank of America Chicago 13.1, a major event that planned to bring racing to a new part of Chicago that was planned for this past June but ultimately was canceled due to the pandemic. And the aforementioned Bank of America Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience, which takes a different tactic than many virtual races by opening up new virtual distances to all comers but limiting access to its longest event--the virtual marathon--to only existing registrants.

David, a loyal Early Riser, is prepared for the final question and tells us about his end-of-day on-site ritual of cheering in final finishers (and becoming an unofficial photographer) and then, after taking advantage of the running water at the after-party before ghosting, settling in with some fellow Cheesehead buddies to watch a Packers game.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

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In September's second banter episode, Eli and Tony realize that their homework before the next banter episode is to find another way to open the podcast than asking each other "How ya doing?" since that has become such a loaded question during 2020.

The guys then move onto their topic for this week's conversation: with in-person races slowly returning but demand remaining low, what does the industry have to do in order to make runners feel comfortable and want to return to in-person races? They discuss the actual appetite for in-person demand right now and whether people complaining vocally on social media about the lack of in-person races are a minority (they are), whether these smaller events cater to only a certain type of (mostly-speedier, no-frills) runners but are less interesting to the social-runner masses (they are), and whether races have to make a concerted effort to establish a baseline trust with their runners that their event is safe but then communicate beyond that (just like in the "before times") about what elements make their race worth a runners' while (they do).

Tony compares putting runners at ease about post-pandemic safety measures to putting them at ease about post-Boston bombing safety measures, and Eli proposes that some sort of "contract" between runners and race organizers is necessary, laying out what the race's responsibilities are and what the runners' responsibilities are in helping to assure an event is safe. The guys touch on the idea that not every event needs to happen right now, and that organizations like Eli's that are putting on smaller events right now are both achieving their mission and also doing market research and taking one on the chin a bit for the rest of the industry. But for smaller organizations that aren't capable or willing to do that at a loss, it may not make sense to put on an in-person event right now at this time when, even if we build it, runners aren't coming.

There is strong agreement that, as we return to racing, we're going to need to take the lessons we've learned in creating community in the virtual space and find ways to translate them to our new in-person environment, and also that we should all be kicking ourselves for the money and engagement we've left on the table over the years by not embracing virtual alongside of in-person before the pandemic forced us to. And Tony notes that to know what lessons we have learned we should all make sure our surveys are done the right way, and that if we don't know what a survey done "the right way" looks like, we should consider hiring a professional.

Lastly, astute listeners may note that early on in this conversation Eli, to the surprise of no one who knows him, takes over a minute to realize that he's talking to an empty room as Tony experiences some technical difficulties with their new recording platform. But Tony returns to only moderate criticism, and your fearless co-hosts go on indomitably shouting into the void to wrap up another successful ep of the pod, technical difficulties be damned!

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

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In this week's episode, the guys finish their draft, each drafting three things that they most look forward to for the industry when in-person events return. Before drafting, though, they talk about the Virtual Boston Marathon and whether running a virtual race "counts" (the verdict: it clearly does!), give a tip of the cap to past guest Tom Bedford for holding a successful 3500-person in-person edition of the findarace.com Kew Gardens 10k over two days, and then--in a bit of a callback to last episode's interview--talk about Eli's self-deprecation, the Dunning Kruger Effect, and the source of their powers (such as they are). (Warning: Eli drops an f-bomb or two in this segment.)

The draft is a fun one, leading to discussions of topics as far ranging as city permitting agencies' outdated tech, runner resilience and the monster we've created in doing so much to support our runners, the running industry lifestyle and race ops burnout, race weekend hotel room assignments, and old standby topic virtual versus in-person PRs and running "gatekeepers."

Somewhere around the one-hour mark, the guys lose track of what they're even talking about, and that's when they know it's time to wrap up this jumbo-sized banter episode, and with it the first and hopefully only edition of the ECT Pod "what we miss/what we're looking forward to about races" draft.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

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In this month's interview episode Tony and Eli talk with Run Calgary Executive Director (and the pod's #1 fan from the Great White North!) Kirsten Fleming. We talk about her globetrotting youth, her "past life" in broadcast media, and how her active lifestyle blurs into her job. Along the way we learn how Kirsten landed her dream job with some bravado and the help of a "cheeky" afternoon drink, why Eli makes a better Race Director than a Director of Marketing, and that Kirsten just can't bring herself to say anything bad about Tony... even when Eli threatens to kick her off the interview unless she does.

The guys invite Kirsten to brag a bit about the City of Calgary and Run Calgary's events, and then ask for a peek behind the curtain at how this past May's cancellation has affected the Run Calgary organization. After taking that dark turn, Kirsten brings it back up by talking about what the best-case scenario looks like for Run Calgary in 2021 (Mulligan Marathon, anyone?), and also shares some of her other favorite Alberta-based and women-led races. She also has some suggestions for future podcast guests for the guys.

Is this episode a delight? As Kirsten would say, "Absolutely!"

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

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This episode of the ECT Pod is one like none you've ever heard before. Not only because Tony is calling in from under a blanket in a closet in Boston for the recording session, and not even only because Eli is doing the audio editing--but also because the actual structure of the episode is a new one, in which the guys conduct a draft. Inspired by Eli's favorite baseball podcast, Effectively Wild, this week Eli and Tony each draft three things that they miss most about in-person events. Next episode in Part 2 of their draft extravaganza (draftaganza?), they'll each draft three things that they most look forward to for the industry when in-person events return.

Before they get to drafting, though, the guys talk about event people putting their talents to work doing non-event things (and how maybe if event people were in charge we would have the pandemic under control), Eli's employer's return to racing, and the Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience (and how good it is to be a World Marathon Major).

Want to find out what the guys drafted? Want to learn why Tony was podcasting from under a blanket in a closet? We're not giving away the good stuff in the shownotes, so you've gotta listen!

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].

Facebook: @EarlyCallTimePod
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Twitter: @EarlyPod