In Their Shoes

Next time you think about berating a race director for running out of bagels, consider the money and energy—and undying dedication—it takes to put on the events the Colorado sporting community has come to know and love.

Whether these devoted souls are lining up enough porta potties to relieve pre-race jitters or coordinating with law enforcement to ensure a safe century ride through the mountains, there are enough logistics involved in race organizing to drive the average person, well, mad. Yet the owners and directors of some of Colorado’s classic races do it year after year—taking all the planning, participant feedback and inevitable chaos in stride.

Managing Expectations

Depending on the type and history of a race, there are varying degrees of difficulty involved in organization. A simple 5K that occurs annually at Washington Park, for example, may take much less brain- and man-power than a well-hyped inaugural multisport race in a virgin venue.

Racing Underground’s Darrin Eisman, who since 1995 has successfully established a variety of multisport, running and snowshoe races including the Mile-High Duathlon and Boulder Stroke & Stride series, says the keys to quality event planning is taking a business-like approach: write a business plan for each event; know your event costs before setting entry fees; be prepared to lose money from your own pocket; and design a course map with volunteers for everything you can think of. “There’s a big difference between doing a race and organizing a race,” says Eisman, who participated in events for years before moving into race directing. “It’s a job.”

Managing expectations is one of the most crucial aspects of event directing, according to Creigh Kelley, owner of BKB Ltd. which organizes races such as Runnin’ of the Green Lucky 7K and The Colorado Marathon. Event success is earned in the form of entries, sponsorship and media attention, but first-time events are costly. “Many committees of debut events see a Bolder Boulder or Race for the Cure and set their bar at those levels in the first year,” he says. “Our policy is to demonstrate and outline the hard costs of an event and then back into the softer, more fun parts.”

Other expectations come from participants who seek perfection from grassroots, volunteer-staffed events. Leslie Caimi, event coordinator for the 120-mile, three-mountain Triple Bypass Bicycle Tour, says she’ll never forget the year that a rider criticized her for refusing the woman an official sag wagon to personally escort her from Idaho Springs to her car in Evergreen after she left the race due to inclement weather.

Some of the simplest solutions to the expectation issue are for participants to read and follow deadlines and administrative rules, says Kelley. “Perhaps one of the things all race directors wish entrants would do is simply visit the event website and read all the printed material.” Just fill out the entry form completely, wear your bib number on the front, don’t participate with someone else’s entrant number and turn in your timing chip, he says.

On-the-Job Training

Some of these things a race director can only learn from years of on-the-job training, and experience can play a huge part in making an event safe and fun. Every event director will tell you that safety is the top priority, and often it’s because they’ve experienced a profoundly disturbing brush with emergency or death. Caimi’s saddest memory is that of a man who suffered a heart attack on a descent during the Triple Bypass. Likewise, Kelley’s haunting tale includes rerouting a course around a porta potty-turned-crime scene, after a man was discovered post drug overdose.

Ensuring safety includes everything from staffing enough and the right volunteers to providing plenty of fuel at aid stations to marking courses for physical obstacles. “My reoccurring nightmare is it’s the morning of the event and we’ve forgotten to mark the course,” says Scot Harris, event director for the 21-year-old Elephant Rock ride. “Cyclists are leaving and they just start riding all over the place.”

Harris works with some 50 paid staff, 500 volunteers and seven different law enforcement agencies to secure the Elephant Rock course. Charting the route safely through towns, for example, so all directional changes are right-hand turns is an important element. And Harris learned marking the hard way. “The very first Elephant Rock, none of us had any experience and we went out to mark the course at 6 p.m. thinking we’d all have dinner together,” he says. “We weren’t done until 4 a.m. in the morning.”