The race director's conference lasted two full days and the Portland Marathon occurred on the third day. The majority of the attendees were race directors of marathons, although some smaller races were represented, too. Right away, I realized I was one of the youngest people there. I suppose race directing is what the passionate runners do when they retire from their job or from being competitive runners. Along with event directors were some vendors of race apparel and other products and services.

The first thing I learned was to know your race. After introductions, the first subject discussed with another person is the race they run. I was asked how many people participated in the event and what the fastest times were. People asked me about marketing and sponsorship. I was embarrassed that the race was only two months away and I didn't even know answers to some basic sounding questions. Sure, I wasn't the race director, but I was involved enough that I felt I should have known. By the second morning, I was prepared to describe Decker as having 1100 athletes and the fastest runner the previous year finishing in 1 hour, 10 minutes.

Sponsorship
This seemed to be the topic with the greatest interest. Races usually need major sponsorship, and the more money and products that can be donated means a better race for the participants and more money towards charities. Our speaker told us to create a sponsorship package. It should have a vision statement, information about the race, demographics on the participants. Mail a custom cover letter that explains why it makes sense for that contributor to be involved. Instead of placing a paper with tiered sponsorship levels in front of a potential sponsor, listen to them to find out what they want out of the relationship. Very rarely do sponsors make donations without wanting something in return. Sometimes what they want isn't offered in your sponsorship package. For example, Red Bull was a sponsor for the Portland Marathon and what they most wanted was a place at the finish line where finishers could rest and have a free Red Bull. To some degree, we already do this with Decker. One of Decker's biggest sponsors, Roger Beasley Mazda, provides us with a sporty Mazda pace car. This gives Roger Beasley visibility that's increased over a simple logo on the race shirts and allows us to have a good looking pace car.

The best sponsorship advice was to keep your sponsorship relationships active throughout the entire year. Keep your sponsors involved and aware of the race. Thank them for their contributions. The race director for the Cooper River Bridge Run in South Carolina has mastered a way to keep not only sponsors thinking about the race all year long, but runners as well. He showed us a 12 month calendar filled with photos from his race. Each participant gets a calendar which contains race information, an entry form, and major races dates listed in the calendar. One race sponsor is spotlighted for each month of the calendar.

Expo

ARC volunteers Amy Bush, Jay Weinshenker and Jennifer Vance handle race morning registrations for the Decker Challenge 20K.

When it comes to marathons, particpants expect that there will be an expo. The expo serves multiple purposes. It had an administrative process of registering athletes and distributing race information. It allows you sell race merchandise. It is a way for sponsors to get more visibility and share their products or services with participants. You can have sessions to educate athletes on many topics, including race details, stretching, hydration or give them an opportunity to meet an expert or elite athlete. The Decker expo was the location of race registration, volunteer sign-in, chip pick-up, exhibitors, post-race massage, post-race food, results, retrieving items from clothing drop-off or lost and found, awards ceremony and door prize drawing. As an added bonus, the building provided protection from potential cold or rainy weather for athletes and supporters.

The expo was my baby, or rather, half of the expo was my baby because Decker shared it with the Brown Santa 5K. I contacted potential exhibitors and tried to offer a good mix of upcoming races, vendors of running products and services, local clubs and training programs.

You can drive people to the expo by listing the exhibitors ahead of time, so that's what I did on the website. I also got exhibitors to donate door prizes as a way of encouraging race participants to stick around and visit different booths while waiting for the door prize drawing. The door prizes were also listed on the website. Many athletes attend expos expecting to buy something, so have products and merchandise available for purchase! The challenge with the Decker expo is that we have to have it on race day. The location is too inconvenient for participants to have registration and the expo in the days before the race. Because the expo is held the day of the race and also because this was the first Decker race that had an expo, not all participants show up prepared to purchase things. I worked hard to get the word out that we would have a post-race expo. Even if some athletes showed up without money, it was an excellent opportunity for exhibitors to educate, demonstrate products and services and increase their visibility among the running community.

As a runner, you may not be aware that a lot of thinking goes into the layout of the expo. Many expos are laid out in a way that you have to go through the booths to get to the race registration. Additionally, you often can.t leave the expo without first going through the store. Because Decker had a post-race expo, we placed the food in the back of the expo to encourage finishers to go into the expo, rather than grabbing their food and heading home. One final note on the expo. During the conference, some race directors expressed concern over athletes owning their own timing chip. They were worried that if more and more athletes owned their own chip, there would be no reason for them to attend the expo. I thought this was a funny concern considering how many Austin area runners own their own chips and still go to the expo. For reasons already mentioned, picking up your chip is just one of many reasons to attend the expo.

Finish Line
The finish shouldn't be anti-climatic. Have greeters at the finish line to offer water and medals, spot medical problems and remove timing chips. I believe the race director of the Big Sur marathon said he high-fived and greeted every runner that he could. Athletes walked away impressed that the race director was right there to congratulate them. It's my belief that the most important and easiest way for any Austin area race director to have a memorable race finish is to have Evil there announcing finisher's names as they cross the line, and this is what we did at Decker.

Large finish areas should be protected from family and friends. Be prepared to clean up after and care for those who puke. Limit boxes and bags near the food, or finishers will take more than their share. At the Portland marathon, they additionally offer a pin, a rose, a tree seedling, and food on a side street. Photos are taken by the race photographer, and there is a medical tent and VIP area. Finishers are released at a specific point, where volunteers have to control swarming families and friends.

The finish line of the Portland Marathon is especially impressive because it is the finish line for all four of the day's events (marathon, 5 miler, kids 2 miler and 10K fun run/walk), all of which are running simultaneously for a portion of the day.

Volunteers
The Portland Marathon is run entirely by volunteers. Various charity groups provide teams of volunteers in exchange for their charity getting a percentage of the proceeds of the race. With this system, they have 4000 volunteers for 7000 participants. If Decker had that type of a volunteer to participant ratio, we'd have 600 volunteers! For the Big Sur marathon, they have 73 people on the race committee and 30 for the half marathon. Needless to say, Decker is run with a much smaller race committee and number of volunteers. Being a shorter and simpler event, not nearly the same number of volunteers are needed, but recruiting and organizing them is still a challenge.

A race director warned on the risks of depending upon just one charity to provide volunteers. One year the charity ended up getting unexpected funding and didn.t show up to volunteer for the race. Another race director said that when they get corporate sponsors, as part of the agreement, the sponsors provide some volunteers. Last year, the Decker Challenge was a success thanks to volunteers from within ARC, the RunTex 30K, Austin Fit, Town Lake Trail Foundation and Austin Fit.

Having an online signup of volunteers makes it easy for volunteers to sign up, and allows volunteers to pick their preference of area. As the website administrator, I was sure to list out the areas needing volunteers and had a simple form for people to register as a volunteer. Volunteers need clear information on what will be required of them, what benefits they will receive, and directions on where to park and when to arrive.

In addition to volunteers, sometimes races need the cooperation of local businesses and residents impacted by the road closures. You can get a lot of help from people by offering them a race shirt and saying how much their assistance would help the race.

Website

Over 1,000 runners await the start of the hilly Decker Challenge 20K on the tree-lined road.

The conference didn't teach me anything beyond what I already knew about having a website for the event. They focused more on online race registration. Previously, the Decker Challenge only had one page with information on the race. It was my goal to have one of the top websites for information out of all the Distance Challenge races.

For 2004, the website grew to fill up 8 web pages with information. The main page showed general information, a preview of the actual award and race shirt, race day schedule, and linked to an article of race strategy advice from Coach Mixon. Volunteers were able to sign up online and specify their prefered volunteer activity.

On the registration page, I added a feature that only some large marathons provide, a listing of registered participants. I had to update the list regularly, but I think it provided a great benefit. It let participants confirm their registration and that we had their chip number. It also let others know who else was already signed up to race and where they were from. If I had more time, I would have added each participant's race division, so you would know exactly who was signed up in your division.

The website had details of the race course, including maps, photographs, course elevation profile, and locations for porta-potties, water stops and clothing drop offs. I did a lot of searching to find historical race results, and was able to compile results for the last seven years. The sponsors page showed logos and linked to sponsor websites.

The expo page explained in detail the post-race food, door prizes, post race massage, exhibitors, and awards. If the website didn't contain every bit of information a participant needed, there was a list of contacts for each of the major race areas.

Summary
I have just barely touched on some of the important things to know when directing a race. Some important topics I didn't have room for are the race course, signs, publication, hospitality, elites, registration, photography, marketing, medical, merchandise, training/clinic, set up/clean up and partnering with the Brown Santa 5K.

Attending the director's conference allowed me to learn from the experiences of successful race directors and view the marathon's race coordination first-hand. Now that I was aware of so many possibilities for the Decker Challenge, it was still frustrating to feel as though we are limited in what we could offer. If we had more money, more free time, more volunteers. Oh the things we could do! As an ARC member, I hope that you will consider volunteering for this year's Decker Challenge. With your help, we can put on a first class event!

If you are interested in attending the conference in Portland, see their website at http://www.portlandmarathon.org. The conference has been extended next year to include even one more day for a total of three information filled days. There is also a race directors conference held in conjunction with the Freescale marathon. Check the Freescale Marathon website for more details.

Julia Weatherby is an avid runner and triathlete. Julia aspires to someday have the time to run a race as the race director. Until then, she will just keep writing about it and retain her day job. Comet's Carry-On will return in the next issue.

This article originally appeared in Running Austin, a bi-monthly publication of the Austin Runners Club.