Running USA’s annual Global Runner Survey has always been an important gauge of runner attitudes and trends for the endurance events industry. And in 2024, following some key content additions, the report is more valuable than ever. So, how can you leverage runners’ fitness and social habits to increase the reach of your event? What is it that runners really value in a race? And how can you remove obstacles holding back your race’s growth from its full potential?That’s what we’re discussing t...

A couple of episodes back, we looked at event liability insurance: why it’s important that your race is covered by a robust liability insurance policy, the circumstances under which a liability policy would kick in, and what happens when it does. But there was a significant part of that discussion we only briefly touched on in that episode, and that was the importance of supporting your liability protection with the use of a liability waiver.So, what is a liability waiver? What needs to be in...

If you’ve ever directed even a single race, there’s a good chance you would have received at least one email from a frustrated participant complaining about the distance they ran not matching your race advertised distance. They do have a GPS watch, you know.And although it’s easy to jokingly dismiss these kinds of demands - most people do - there often is an uncomfortable point to the complaint: How do you know the actual distance of your race course, if it hasn’t been accurately measured and...

If there’s one thing you can’t have enough of as a race director, it’s race insurance. Particularly - knock on wood - when the unexpected happens and you’re faced with a dreaded lawsuit that threatens to take away your livelihood and your piece of mind. So how can you best protect yourself and your business from the risks associated with putting on a race? What will your standard event liability policy cover? What does it exclude? And how should you expect to be protected against legal and me...

When doors start dropping off planes mid-air or your favorite online retailer gets in touch to let you know your personal details may have been compromised, it’s tempting to think you may have done a better job handling that crisis were you in their shoes. But how well-prepared are you really to manage the many crises that can come up during the planning and delivery of your race? Anything from a late delivery of medals or an unfortunate slip-up on social media to a full blown race...

It’s that time of the year again. RunSignup’s annual RaceTrends report is out for 2023, and it’s larger and more comprehensive than ever before! Among the most notable trends highlighted in the report we see registrations for 2023 races up from 2022 and tantalisingly close to 2019 levels, entry fees continuing to climb across most race distances and event types, and encouraging trends in younger runner participation first seen in 2022 carrying through to 2023 numbers. With me today to go...

With more than 2 billion monthly active users (MAUs), Instagram has secured a comfortable lead as the social media platform of choice for the vast majority of online-active almost-30s and 30-somethings out there. And with Instagram’s core audience slowly aging to match running’s demographic sweet spot, it’s really important your race gets its Instagram strategy right soon, if you have an Instagram strategy at all. So, how do you master Instagram’s highly-visual storytelling to reach new...

As a race director, few things in the race planning lifecycle can be as exciting and enjoyable as designing a brand new race course. From picking a start area to mapping out race distances and figuring out where to place amenities, such as aid stations, race course design constitutes an important first step in shaping your race’s identity - one that will likely affect all aspects of your race experience, safety planning and logistics for years to come. So, how do you nail this critical first...

Building a race from the ground up, as anyone who’s done it will know, is a tough business. But what about planning, coordinating and growing a whole series of races, all with a common theme and brand identity? How do you finance and grow multiple races from scratch? How do you choose when and where to launch a new race? And how can you make use of local delivery partners to deliver new races on a budget, while ensuring your quality standards and vision are adhered to? That’s what we’ll be...

First run on a whim in 1982 by Oregon Road Runners Club president Bob Foote with only 8 teams participating in the inaugural race, Hood to Coast has grown from modest beginnings to become a huge success story. More than 40 years on, the race that has come to be known affectionately as “the mother of all relays” now attracts more than a thousand teams from over 40 countries to what is one of the most spectacular 200 mile courses from the top of Mt Hood to the Pacific Ocean. So what’s the...

Racing has come a long way since the days when women were being told that running the marathon would cause your uterus to fall out. And with women now making up 54% of all race registrations in the US, according to RunSignup’s 2022 RaceTrends report, you’d think there’d be very little holding women back from racing in this third decade of the 21st century. That, however, is not the reality for most women out there, according to today’s guest, SheRACES founder and GB team ultrarunner, Sophie...

Nestled in a valley in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder, CO, is often referred to as the fitness capital of the US. So it was a bit surprising to Phil Dumontet, a young East Coast entrepreneur moving to Boulder in 2017 to launch his smoothie bar business, to realize that Boulder, in all its glorious outdoorsy-ness and obsession with fitness, lacked a first-rate city marathon. For most people, that would have been just a passing thought. But not to Phil, who made giving Boulder...

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs planted by brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tarnaev exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. In the devastation that ensued, three innocent people lost their lives, while 281 others were injured, in what was, and still remains, the biggest ever terrorist incident suffered by a mass-participation sporting event. In the midst of all this, Boston Marathon race director, Dave McGillivray, and his team, working alongside emergency services, had to...

If you’ve done the hard work of prospecting and soliciting sponsors, and got some of your prospects to engage with you, you may be forgiven in thinking your job is done. Actually, that’s where the real work begins - understanding your sponsor’s needs and closing the deal with a sponsorship proposal that hits all the right notes. So, how do you get into your sponsor’s head? How do you put together a sponsorship proposal that clicks with them, while maximizing the value you get out of a...

Selling merchandise is a great way to increase brand loyalty for participants outside race day, and, of course, a very good way to increase revenue from your event. So, how do you get started selling race merchandise, both online, on packet pickup and on race day? How do you pick and test merchandise items that sell? And, very importantly, how do you manage inventory well to maximize sales while minimizing the risk of costly leftover items? That’s what we’re going to be discussing today...

From the minute the first participant shows up on race day till the time the last one leaves, responsibility for the wellbeing of everyone on and around your race course rests with you - the race director. So, how can you make sure your medical preparations are up to scratch? How do you figure out how many - and what type - of resources to dedicate to your race? And where does your duty of care as the race organizer towards your participants even begin and end, practically, legally and...

If you’ve been following our industry updates on race and participation growth, you may have picked up on the fact that trail running, and trail races, have been doing particularly well over the last few years. In fact, trail racing seems to be one of the few spots within racing still growing at a healthy enough rate as other areas in racing are stagnating or slowly falling behind. So, what is fueling trail racing’s amazing growth? How different are trail races to organize, promote and grow...

Over the last decade or so, lots has changed in the social media landscape. Facebook has gone from exciting upstart to the mature granddaddy of social media, Instagram has grown by leaps and bounds to become the platform of choice for visually engaging content, and TikTok has emerged as the new contender in the battle for social media supremacy, favored mostly by younger audiences, looking for the next cool and exciting network to join. So, how should your organic social media presence adapt...

In a number of our past podcasts, we’ve touched on the issue of race waste - and specifically a particularly significant and persistent part of that issue which is water cup waste. In an ideal world - or shall I say in a trail running world - we’d all love to put on cupless races, where racers themselves are responsible for bringing along their own water containers to the race. But, unfortunately, that high standard may be a little ways off still for the majority of road running and...

Gravel racing has been one of the fastest growing sectors in mass-participation sports over the last decade or so, particularly in the US, where high-profile races like UNBOUND Gravel, Rebecca’s Private Idaho and Belgian Waffle Ride have grown massively in popularity, attracting a broad range of both veteran and newcomer cyclists to the sport. It’s against this backdrop that in 2019 professional road racer Amy Charity launched her own gravel race around the ski resort town of Steamboat...

Besides race medals and finisher shirts, the one experience item participants have come to expect from a race, particularly in this digital age, is a good set of professional race photos. And perhaps because of the cultural changes that have come with the digital age, the purpose of race photography within the endurance events business has been swinging back and forth between race photos as a secondary revenue stream vs race photos as a marketing tool. So, do you offer paid photos, as a...

If there’s one thing that often sets apart races that go on to do really well from others that struggle to gain traction in their community, it’s the ability of the former - and the inability of the latter - to engage with the non-race world. And nowhere is this more evident than the way in which events interact with local media. The truth of the matter is, very few people participate in races. And very few people outside of those who do care about anything race-specific a race has to say....

Whether you’re putting on races through a for-profit or a nonprofit organization, having a good grasp of your race budget can often make the difference between a profitable bottom line and days of post-race head-scratching about what went wrong to land you in the red. Admittedly, building and maintaining a race budget is not a lot of fun - not to most people, anyway - but it is something that has to be done, and has to be done right. So to help us understand what “right” looks like for a...

When you want to know what’s happening and trending in the endurance events industry by the numbers, where do you turn to? Well, for me and many people I know, the definitive source of event data for the industry is, and has been for some time, RunSignup’s annual RaceTrends report. The report leverages RunSignup’s extensive registration data from tens of thousands of events to point to trends in overall event participation, event pricing, participant demographics, registration trends and a...