Road Race Disasters: What Are the Basic Requirements For a Good Road Race

I'm sure he does, but he obviously doesn't know how to efficiently set up on race morning. If it takes 5-6 hours, you don't have a very efficient system in place.

Calling you out wrote:

I'm sure he does, but he obviously doesn't know how to efficiently set up on race morning. If it takes 5-6 hours, you don't have a very efficient system in place.

From his earlier post, it doesn't take him six hours to set up. He gets to the course at 3-4 AM in order to have everything set up before the first runner arrives. So say he gets to the course at 4 AM and the first runner gets there at 7:30 AM (and really, many will be there earlier). That's three and a half hours. Is that more reasonable?

Calling you out wrote:

David Katz wrote:

For a local 5k with a starting time of 9 am we are at the race site by 3-4am. Then done setting up our stuff when our client shows up.

I call B.S. on this, unless there's some extenuating circumstance surrounding that 5k (difficult to secure location, highly unusual course, or something). My team regularly arrives no more than 2 hours before race time, sets up and fires the gun not one minute past the advertised start time.

Granted, we do a fair amount of work before race day, but if you're showing up 5-6 hours before a 5k, you either have a very unusual 5k, are horribly lacking in volunteers, or you are terribly inefficient.

"Horribly lacking in volunteers" would be my guess. If you have a sizeable team of workers that know what they're doing, race morning set up is relatively quick. I'm a member of a running club that has it down to a science. We could almost do it blind folded. We show up 90-120 minutes before the start, get to work, and are ready to go right on time.

If, on the other hand, you were a one man show, it would take A LOT longer. Or if you have a bunch of volunteers that don't know what they're doing. Or if the course is really spread out. The longer the race distance, the longer it takes to set up. There are a lot of variables here. Saying it takes X time to set up before any race is short sided. How many pieces of string does it take to reach the moon?

I believe New York Road Runners employees start at 4am for races in Central Park, earlier for races on public streets.

d2xccoach wrote:

Races are seeing more and more cardiac situations these days, not sure why that is but it certainly seems to be the case.

More runners?

Relying on volunteer help is a big problem. As volunteers, by definition, the have no real incentive to show up. I HATE HATE HATE having to beg for volunteers, and then hoping like heck that they show up on race day.

Of course, if the weather is bad, the volunteer turn out is even worse. There are not that many people willing to wake up early on a weekend morning when it's cold and raining to hand water to a bunch of smelly, ungrateful runners. Now that I think of it, I can't say I really blame them.

Randy Oldman wrote:

I believe New York Road Runners employees start at 4am for races in Central Park, earlier for races on public streets.

"Employees" being the key word. Employees have a motive ($$$) to show up. Volunteers don't.

Employee: "It's 4:00 a.m., it's cold, it's raining. Man, work's gonna suck today."

Volunteer: "It's 4:00 a.m., it's cold, it's raining. Screw it, i'm going back to bed."

For most of our weekly races it takes us approximately 3 hours to set up all of our equipment (which I call toys) with a 2-3 person crew.

Most companies similiar to ours have a great deal of electronics. Most of the electronics are not easy to replace and therefore we don't allow staff/volunteers besides my staff to handle (exception digital clocks for splits).

We fine tune everything we set up down to the orientation of cones - we strive (never reaching) perfection. We set up a great deal of backups. And all of our connections are hardwired- except when we do wireless transmission for splits. We want all of our computers that are connected to the timing system and used for data entry to be up and running before the first race day entry is typed in. That means that we need to do a full system check on the transponder sytem to ensure the data flow.

As previously stated we want to be set up with as much as possible before our client arrives at the site. This only leaves registraton which we provide all of the labeled bibs, lists, signage, etc.

So let's do the math- A race starts at 9:00 am. Registration needs to be set up at 7:00 with the doors open at 7:15-7:30. Back up 3 hourse from 7:00 and you get....

I invite anyone to come and join us but bring your own coffee. I will even give you a chair.

So in your case, "refusal to trust volunteers" would be the answer. Gotcha.

Volunteer help wrote:

So in your case, "refusal to trust volunteers" would be the answer. Gotcha.

How about, "The success of our business depends on how well we do, so we show up early just to be sure."

Nothing wrong with being overly-cautious - maybe that's why they are great at what they do?

I trust volunteers for many jobs at a race, and not for some others. I doubt there are too many professional timers in the world that would trust a volunteer to set up their timing equipment. Plus, I would never allow a volunteer to assist with the set up/break down of our finish line structure - the liability would be astronomical.

I ran the DC Hot Chocolate 15k. It wasn't well organized, there were too many people for the course, it started way too late, the mile markers were in the wrong place, but there were plenty of porta-potties and the cops leading the race were nice. In all it wasn't so bad. People's expectations are too high.

However, if I had to pay the $60 entry fee maybe it would be different. I also ran 7 miles in the morning to get to the shuttle buses so I didn't have to worry about parking (though the shuttle did drop us off in the wrong place).

Price list wrote:

How about an "a la cart" approach to entry fees?

Entry fee: $10

Want a t-shirt? Add $5

Want a tech shirt? Add $10

Want a finisher's medal? Add $5

Ect., ect., ect.

Nice thought from a runner's perspective, but for a race organizer, it would be a nightmare to administer. It's much easier to just say, "The price is X, and you get Y."

So many well known races fail in so many ways. It is common even for popular races to have too few portajohns, bad parking, poorly organized baggage check, over crowded corrals, misplaced mile markers, etc.

Great Thread.

For a smaller race 2000 people or less I have a list of some important things. Our race is for charity and we raise close to 100k a year.

Traffic control is paramount. The course starts and ends at a local high school and runs through a neighborhood. Folks living in the neighborhood need to know about the race ahead of time. The volunteers at every intersection in the neighborhood need to be able to give an accurate escape route to drivers who want to leave the neighborhood. You can't trap people on their own street.

Get a permit from the county or city. Its simple. Fill out a form and submit it 2 or 3 months in advance. Someone will always complain and the permit makes your event legal. Since the event is for charity if you are real nice and sweet in the office many times the fee is waived.

Get a cop and an EMT. The first year I paid an off duty cop and EMT $150 bucks each and now they are both back every year and donate their time. Compensate with donuts and coffee

Have a volunteer coordinator and a race director. Its simple. Your volunteer coordinator is in charge of assigning your volunteers to intersections, water stations, registration, post race food, post race clean up, course clean up (cones, trash and water stations) and whatever else. I have a huge list. Keep the volunteers informed. Race starts at 9:00AM. Close your intersection at 8:55.

Get someone on a motor cycle or a 4 wheeler to roll through the course last minute to make sure folks aren't driving on the course.

Host your event at a school. Most often they have everything you need.

On day one we formed a partnership with a school. Then we got in touch with the maintenance staff. These are the folks that get shit done. You need an extra table or chairs? Recycling bins? Trash cans? Need to get inside because of the rain? If you have your own volunteers cleaning up the trash and the race site and make sure the maintenance staff doesnt have to do a thing they will love you. At the end of the day give these guys or gals who are working on race day an extra $100 bucks for there efforts and they will always take care of you.

Saying it takes X time to set up before any race is short sided.

So you're saying you would rather them be long sided?

I hate it when races don't serve egg nog.

Price list wrote:

How about an "a la cart" approach to entry fees?

Entry fee: $10

Want a t-shirt? Add $5

Want a tech shirt? Add $10

Want a finisher's medal? Add $5

Ect., ect., ect.

This is a little outside the OP's question...but this approach is what our company has gone to, for some races, and with limitations. For example, we have a 5k coming up in a few weeks. It's $17 to enter. We also offer a "2 for $25" entry fee. The goal of the race is to get people out running to start the year, promote fitness, etc, and we've found "2 for ___" entries encourage friends and family members who might not otherwise come out and run. If you want a tech shirt for this race it's an extra $14, which we make about $3/shirt (and that's if we end up selling all the shirts we buy and not eating a few, which we always seem to do). If you want a hat instead of a tech shirt you can get a hat for $12 (similar margin for us).

$31 for a 5k with a shirt might seem like a lot (or not, depending on your area), but after we pay venue rental, cops, portos, advertising, all the small costs like bibs, there isn't a lot left.

For what it's worth, when we went to ala-carte shirts and dropped our entry fees we got positive feedback from entrants. Plus our entrant numbers are up (or for the sell-out races we close entries earlier) although I'm not sure there is a correlation. We find that about 50%-60% of the entrants buy shirts when it's ala-carte. Doesn't seem to matter if we set the shirt price at our cost or our cost plus a couple $, that 50%-60% stays constant.

Turning the rest of the perks into ala-carte is something we haven't figured out how to do. I'd love to do it with medals, but how do you screen out in the crush of a finish line? How about on-course gels or Gatorade (for longer races). Some runners would opt out of that and carry their own, but how do you segregate on the course?

Ideas?

The no t-shirt option is obviously easy, and as a race entrant, I love it when it's offered. I have over 2 decades worth of race shirts filling my closets and I don't need any more. When my running club hosts a race, we don't offer this, and I'm not sure why. We're all volunteers, so maybe it's just that we don't want to spend the extra time and effort to sort through the shirt/no shirt thing.

I would think the finisher's medals would be pretty easy to do. Have a tear off section of the race number (like some do for t-shirts), and after the race, you go to location X, tear your bib, and pick up your finisher's medal.

The on-course stuff would be virtually impossible to do ala cart. Would you have different bib colors? Yellow bib? No Gatorade for you!

One thing I've been amazed at is how hard it is to make a decent amount of money putting on a race. After you pay city permits and police presence (these costs have SKYROCKETED in the last decade or so), you're not exactly printing money. In all, putting on a road race is a lousy way to raise funds. You'd probably make a better return off your efforts doing an auction or dinner or something.