Head Start

It’s probably fair to say that when it comes to a race director’s calendar, it doesn’t get much bigger than race day. It’s the day your race comes alive and a day you and your team have been working towards for months.

Whether it’s your first race or your hundredth, everyone goes into race day a bit like a standup comedian walking on stage for their first gig - with a mix of excitement and, well, dread is probably a good word for it.

A million things are going through your head. Does everyone know what they have to do? Are we going to run on schedule? And what do I do if this or that happens?

Today I have the pleasure of being joined on the podcast by Crisp McDonald, a race director and timer with more than a thousand races under his belt. Crisp is also RunSignup’s RaceDay Expert and, as such, has been training race directors and timers on what to expect on race day and how best to prepare for all the curve balls a live event might throw at you. 

In this episode:

• Planning your event site and start/finish line 
• Setting up a clear line of communication with your event team
• Balancing how much you do on race day vs setting things up in advance (e.g. pre-marking your race course)
• Figuring out how long tasks take on race day and when to start setting things up
• Sharing resources across different tasks throughout race day
• The importance of team leads
• The effectiveness of seasoned volunteers, and how to inspire loyalty among volunteers to your event/brand/cause
• How to reduce volunteer no-show rates, by recruiting volunteer groups instead of individuals
• Inspiring volunteers to take ownership of their work, through fun race day volunteer competitions
• The importance of recognizing and thanking volunteers before race day
• Contingency planning: being prepared for switching your in-person race to a virtual race
• Emergency planning: figuring out what to prepare for
• The role of onsite EMS units, and where to station them
• Having a protocol for tracking runners who drop out of the race
• Putting together a key person contact list 
• Anticipating weather changes and what to do when the weather shifts rapidly
• The role of cancellation insurance for races in higher-risk locations
• The task matrix: who's doing what when on race day
• Setting up a race command center
• Communicating with your team: phones vs radios vs apps
• Race day registrations: what you need to be able to take registrations on race day
• Dynamic bib assignment: what is it? how does it work? 
• Packet pick-up: pre-packing packets vs putting them together on the fly
• Setting up your race course: what order to do things in
• Tearing down your race course: the benefits of a rolling tear-down
• Shipping out race results to participants after they finish the race
• Debriefing after the race

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about race day prep or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Ask yourself this: when was the last time you bought something without checking out reviews for it online?

Experiences, like races, are no different. When you have a dozen 10Ks to choose from, you’ll want to hear what others have to say about each race before making your decision.

And that’s where race reviews come in. Whether they’re hosted on your website or a third-party site, reviews are the mirror of your race to the world. It’s the best social proof you have and the most effective way to communicate to prospective participants what’s great and unique about your events.

Well, my guests today, Alex Tanti and Katie Ho, know a thing or two about the power of race reviews. Through Racecheck.com and RaceRaves.com, they’ve helped thousands of races make the most of the huge missed opportunity that is race reviews, and they’ll be sharing with us today all the tips and tricks that can help you make the most of your race reviews in your marketing and PR communications.

In this episode:

• The importance of race reviews in race marketing and the participant sign-up journey
• Race reviews vs race surveys as feedback and marketing tools for organizers
• Why even mediocre reviews are better than no reviews at all 
• How to win over participants by addressing negative reviews
• Medals, goodie bags, porta potties: common things people focus on when reviewing a race
• How a participant’s race performance will bias their review of the race
• How to use strong race reviews in your race marketing, social media and with local media
• How to address negative reviews and win over participants
• How to encourage participants to leave more reviews for your race
• Using incentives to solicit more reviews and how to do it right

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about making the most of your race reviews or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Have you ever thought about timing your races yourself? Building your own RFID timing system? Perhaps even building a small race timing business on the side as a way to diversify your income?

Well, doing your own race timing is certainly not for everyone. For most race directors, managing their own race timing is the last thing they need on race day. Nevertheless, DIY race timing is exactly the route many race directors choose to go down, either to save money, try their hands at building a race timing side-business or simply for the enjoyment of building their own RFID timing system.

Today I’ll be talking to Brian Agee of Agee Race Timing, a man very well-known among DIY race timing enthusiasts not only for his very popular race timing software, but also for his willingness to share with others everything he’s learned building and operating DIY race timing.

Over the next hour or so, we’ll be touching on a few things with Brian, from choosing the right components for your race timing system to bringing everything together, setting up your system correctly, and avoiding some common race day pitfalls. 

In this episode:

• What is an open hardware timing system and who is it suitable for
• Pros and cons of open timing systems vs branded/proprietary systems (MYLAPS, Chronotrack, IPICO etc)
• How proprietary systems use password-protected tags and what that means for the ongoing operating cost of your branded system.
• The main components of a DIY timing system: reader, antennas, cables, tags, software
• Mat antennas vs panel antennas
• Passive vs active RFID tags
• 2-port vs 4-port RFID readers
• The cost of building a DIY RFID timing system
• Chip starts/chip times: when you need them and when you don’t
• Recommended RFID tag placement: bib tags vs shoe tags vs wrist tags
• Double tagging: pros and cons of using two tags per runner
• The cost of buying RFID tags
• Making disposable tags reusable 
• Programming/encoding your RFID tags
• Inexpensive backup systems for your main RFID timing system: camcorders, capturing backup times manually, using secondary RFID systems

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com, where you’ll also find a 5% discount from Atlas RFID Store for all your RFID timing equipment needs and a 15% discount from Agee Race Timing on timing software you can use with both your DIY and proprietary timing system.

If you are building and operating your own system, Race Timing Hub is our Facebook group dedicated just to race timing and building race timing systems, so come join that and people, including Brian, will be glad to help out with any questions you may have.

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Making races more sustainable is on more and more race directors’ radar these days - which is awesome. But when it comes to moving from theory to practice, working to affect actual change in your race that has a meaningful impact on your event’s environmental footprint, things sometimes get a little bit confusing.

Where do you even start? How do you benchmark where you’re currently at with your event, so you can measure your progress going forward? What things should you focus on? And what does making progress even look like, when it comes to making your race greener?

These questions and more is what we’ll be discussing today with the help of my guest, Bruce Rayner. Bruce is the Chief Green Officer at Athletes for a Fit Planet and has been working at the forefront of event sustainability for years, having helped countless races, major road races and triathlons as well as local events, become more sustainable by reducing their environmental footprint. 

So if you’re ready to work on making your event more sustainable today, you’ll get a great head start out of the next hour or so.

In this episode: 

• A look at the progress the endurance events industry has made towards greater sustainability
• The reasons still holding back race directors from committing more strongly to the sustainability effort 
• How to start benchmarking your waste and carbon footprint
• Primary vs secondary waste: what counts as your race’s waste and carbon footprint?
• Who should cover the offsetting cost for participant travel, the event or the participant?
• What is carbon offsetting and how can it help events get to carbon neutrality?
• Asking participants to cover their carbon footprint through their registration fee
• Are participants willing to pay a “green” surcharge to cover the offsetting cost of their travel?
• Why it’s important for races to be transparent with participants on what their carbon footprint is
• The marketing benefit of promoting your race’s environmental credentials
• How to avoid recyclable waste contamination by getting your volunteers to sort it
• Recovering and recycling discarded water cups and bottles at aid stations
• The advantage of using compostable cups vs recyclable paper cups
• Is cupless racing possible for road races?
• The role of businesses and local government as sustainability sponsors for races

Links:

• What are Carbon Offsets and How Do They Work?

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about making your race more sustainable or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Have you ever wondered how the choices you make about your race start procedure can affect every aspect of the rest of your race? Even simple things, like choosing a wave start over a rolling start, or changing the order and size of each wave, or the width of your start line, can have a significant impact on your race’s safety, congestion on the course, and even your staffing requirements for aid stations and your race finish area.

Today I have the pleasure of having as my guest Marcel Altenburg, probably the world’s foremost expert in crowd dynamics for mass-participation events. Marcel is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and has helped countless races optimize their participant flows from start to finish. Marcel has so much experience in this area and we’ll be going over some simple rules Marcel has come up with from his research that you can use to optimize your race start procedure - whatever the size or type of your race.

In this episode:

• What is crowd science and how it can be applied to the study of participant flows during mass-participation endurance events
• How your start line procedure affects everything that happens downstream at your race race course
• Always try to order start waves by pace (faster runners at the front, slower runners at the back), even if you can't do it perfectly
• Make your start line 30% narrower than the narrowest point on your course to avoid congestion
• Aim for a max 3 people per sqm in your start pen for a safe, comfortable race start
• Keep start waves of slower runners at the back smaller than start waves of faster runners at the front
• Prefer rolling starts over open starts to eliminate the uncertainty of people arriving at random times
• For socially-distanced races, keep participants sufficiently socially-distanced at the start and they will only spread out further during the course

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about start line procedures, participant social distancing or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Selling sponsorships is arguably the biggest chronic challenge race directors face. Many race directors simply don’t like doing it, others don’t know where to start, and perhaps some have even given up after multiple frustrations and disappointments.

My guest today, Ben Pickel, is the Director of Sales and Strategy at Life Time Events. Ben has been working for years in the front lines of sponsorship sales, and knows a thing or two about the ups and downs of event sponsorship. His advice? Know your event. Understand what a sponsor needs. Accept that not everyone will say ‘yes’. And just go for it with integrity, perseverance and confidence in what you’ve  built and what you have to offer. 

Today’s episode is a long one - the longest we’ve done so far, in fact. But there was just so much ground to cover with Ben, from finding and approaching sponsors, to negotiating and closing sponsorship deals, so I hope you’ll bear with us till the end.

In this episode: 

• Re-establishing the value of sponsorship when talking with sponsors post-COVID
• What sponsors are trying to achieve through sponsorship
• The difference between engagement-focused sponsors and sales-focused sponsors
• How to manage sales-focused sponsors
• The importance of having sponsors that align with your event's brand and identity
• What event assets sponsors are interested in
• How to approach your first sponsor meeting
• How to figure out which person to contact in the sponsor organization
• The importance of reaching out to sponsors in the first few weeks after the end of your event
• How to present demographics for your audience in sponsorship proposals
• The pros and cons of using sponsorship packages (e.g. Gold, Silver, Bronze)
• Setting a price for sponsorship: how you would know whether you're over- or under-pricing sponsorship
• Why most race directors tend to under-price sponsorship
• The pitfalls of offering sponsorship discounts
• Why you should focus on activating lower-paying sponsorships 
• One-year vs multi-year sponsorships 
• Title sponsorships: are the right for your event?
• The value of in-kind sponsorships
• How to deal with rejections from sponsors and how to make the most of a negative outcome

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 22,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about sponsorships or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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With races starting to come back, and at least a hint of normalcy slowly returning to the endurance events market, it’s a good time to take stock of where we currently are on the road to recovery.

Are more participants signing up for races? Are they signing up later, as some race directors have suggested? Are in-person races making a strong comeback? And what about virtual races which dominated events for most of last year?

We’ll be answering these questions and more today with the help of my guests, Johanna Goode and Bob Bickel from GiveSignup|RunSignup. With registration data coming in from thousands of races, GiveSignup|RunSignup is in a pretty unique position to be able to provide actual data-driven insights into what’s happening in the market - and, as we’ll see, the conclusions coming out of the data are not always what you’d expect.

In this episode:

• Total registrations volume is still down, but recovering
• In-person races are making a strong comeback, but virtual races are still a thing
• Entry fees are starting to normalize towards 2019 levels 
• Contrary to anecdotal evidence, the data doesn't support the narrative that participants are registering later than usual
• No clear evidence right now that more first-time racers are entering events
• Downward trend in participation for younger audiences continues

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 21,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about the findings in this episode or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Does your race offer a kids run alongside your main events? If not, you could be missing out on a great opportunity to make your race more attractive for families, as well as getting a few more sponsors on board that may not normally take an interest in sponsoring your race.

Lucie Murray of specialised kids run production company Run Kids Run has been managing kids runs for some of the largest races on the West Coast, including the LA Marathon, Surf City Marathon and Santa Monica Classic. She is an expert in developing youth and family programs for races, and on this episode she’ll be sharing with us her insights on how to put on a successful kids run, how to make it work alongside your adult races, as well as some tips for monetising your kids run through sponsorships with family-oriented brands and businesses.

Things covered in this episode:

• The benefits of adding a kids run to your race
• Managing kid runners (and overeager parents!)
• Ensuring your kid runners' safety and privacy protection
• Swag: kid wants what mommy/daddy got! + more...
• Marking the most of your kids run: family registration, kids zones, kids run sponsorship opportunities

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 21,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about kids runs, race family activities or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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When it comes to waste in the endurance events industry, water bottles are the big plastic elephant in the room. So it’s no surprise that a great deal of effort has recently been going into finding ways to tackle the problem of plastic bottle waste in races.

Today, we're talking to Lise Honsinger, CFO & COO of Notpla, a UK-based company pioneering the use of edible packaging. Notpla’s flagship edible sachet, Ooho, has been used in the London Marathon and many other races across the world with great success as a totally safe, naturally biodegradable substitute for plastic bottles. So it’s a great treat to have Lise tell us more about it today.

Things covered in this episode:

• A short history of Notpla, the company revolutionizing edible packaging
• What is Ooho? What is it made of? What liquids can it hold? How do you consume it?
• Ooho as an alternative to water bottles in races
• Runner feedback from using Ooho in the London Marathon
• Getting Ooho for you race: How many will you need? How much does it cost? How can you order?
• The future of Notpla and Ooho

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 21,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about sustainability, reducing bottle waste or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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Having a charity partner is sometimes a bit of an afterthought for many race directors. And yet, there’s so many benefits to getting a charity involved with your event, from increased participation and volunteer recruitment opportunities to even higher likelihood of closing sponsorship agreements.

Well, today, I’m talking to industry veteran Susan Hurley, Founder of CharityTeams, about how to approach charities, what to expect out of a charity partnership and how to make the most of this underappreciated opportunity for your event.

Things covered in this episode:

• Why partnering your race can help your race registrations, volunteer recruitment, community buy-in and sponsorship prospects
• What charity partners expect from your event
• How to research and do due diligence on potential charity partners
• How to pitch your event to your shortlisted charity partner candidates
• How to structure your charity giveback in a way that best aligns your interests with those of your charity partner
• How to set up a charity program for your race

Links:

• Charity Navigator - ratings agency for nonprofit organizations
• GuideStar - search data, reports and information on nonprofits 

Thanks to GiveSignup|RunSignup for supporting quality content for race directors by sponsoring this episode. More than 21,000 in-person, virtual, and hybrid events use GiveSignup|RunSignup's free and integrated solution to save time, grow their events, and raise more. If you'd like to learn more about GiveSignup|RunSignup's all-in-one technology solution for endurance and fundraising events visit runsignup.com.

You can find more free resources on planning, promoting and organizing  races on our website RaceDirectorsHQ.com.

You can also share your questions about charity partnerships and fundraising or anything else in our race directors Facebook group, Race Directors Hub.

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