Today on the emergence of dirt podcast episode number 39, I'm gonna give you the 5 takeaways I learned after directing a multi day racing event. Where the complexities not only doubled, the problems that emerge are so unique, you'll never see them coming. Not until you're in the middle of the chaos, So after doing a dozen of these multi day races, I've kind of developed this perspective
that few single day race directors have a chance to experience. That means if you're a 1 and done promoter or maybe you're thinking about tackling a multi day race, then you need to buckle up buttercup because I'm gonna pull back the curtain and expose the 5 challenges you will certainly discover when you decide to commit to this type of slogfest. You know what does end? Your magnificent hair. Hey, look, another gray 1. I wonder where that came from.
Welcome to The Merchants of Dirt Podcast, recreational Engineering for a better outdoor life. And now your host, Kyle Bondo. Thank you for joining me for the emergency dirt podcast. I am Kyle Bondo, your recreational engineer, your merchant of dirt, and your coach to help you learn how to build events and races from start to finish. And it's my goal to teach you, this art and science behind event management, sports management, race production, that is primarily focused on being on the outdoors.
Now, if you're thinking, you know, I hate my commute. I don't wanna work in Cube Medical anymore. I don't want to go into the city anymore. I cannot handle looking at another gray lifeless place or walking on cement. I wanna go someplace where there isn't a Starbucks or Dunkin' or some place else. I wanna go someplace where it's just birds and trees. Maybe it's in deserts,
and lizards. Maybe it's mountains and and just just the wind or maybe you're down in the Everglades where it's, you know, quite rustle over the leaves and and occasional alligator. Maybe you're in the northwest where it's it's toll pines and and ales. Whatever it is that you call the outdoors for you, you can make a career doing something in that environment. It doesn't have to necessarily be racing.
It could be it could be an outdoor event to be tours, it could be travel where you're you're you're you're you're helping people understand how to use certain outdoor equipment in those areas. Skiing, mountain biking, boating, fishing, hunting. Outdoor events really kind of expand beyond racing. But we like the competition element of it. The competition element of it gives us a place to start. So if you're thinking about doing an off road an outdoors type event,
racing is an easy way to kind of test the waters, put your toe in the waters, and think about because it includes all the elements you would have in an outdoor business. Now if you have a tour touring business or you're doing some sort of educational thing outside or you're you're thinking about expanding an operation to that area. Think about a race where it's just people running or people riding a bike. Or maybe it's the, you know, the biggest fish you catch. It has rules,
requires a permit, requires planning, requires all these kind of things that you require in a race required for these other events too. Even in tours, you're required to have permission to be on the property, You need insurance to make sure no 1 gets hurt. You have to have equipment.
So you have an investment, an overhead of of capital equipment you need. If you're gonna do rafting, you need boats, If you're doing some kind of tour, you might need a bus or a truck. Maybe you're taking people to the top of the mountain after they've been to the bottom mountain because there's no ski list in that area. Just some cross country kind of things. You don't need to buy a truck or a bus.
These are all the kind of things you need to think about when you do any kind of outdoor events. Any kind of outdoor business requires a lot of these building blocks. That racing inherently has in it. So I like to start with with off road racing as kind of the metaphor for you could build an event management company for all sorts of kind of events, not just mountain biking or trail riding or adventure racing.
So that's what the merchandiser podcast is all about. And if you're coming here for the first time, hold on a board. Alongside here, of course, is my cohost, Mister Murphy, Mister Murphy is our allegory for if it can't go wrong, it will go wrong in the worst possible sequence and the worst possible order. Things that have to go together, to work together, or cannot be shipped together, and all the other things Mister Murphy likes to do to disrupt,
cancel races, or throw weather at you. He is the proverbial disaster waiting to happen. So we kind of we kind of think of Mister Murphy as a real a real being in a sense that he is He's causing mischief. He's our lokey. You know, he's our grumbling. He's the guy who is constantly looking for the weakness in your plan. And today's topic about the multi day race is a perfect example of how Mister Murphy can get involved.
And it's the reason of this is because of the complexity of doing an event for more than 1 day. And it's because this is a special kind of challenge, and it requires more than just your the 1 plan in a sense. And you're gonna have your big overhead plan, but it's gonna require you to plan each day and maybe even the night. Now, most of you wanna done racers
race promoters who do, like, in a rate event at, you know, 7 o'clock in the morning. The sun comes up. Registration opens. People show up. The gun starts at 9. They're off. I'm around 2 o'clock. You're done. You're packed up. The garbage is is taken out and leave no trace. And you're out of there. It's over. You never have to do this from the rest of the season. Now think about that as you're not done, that you have to do this all over again the next day.
What do you do with the hours between the end of the first 1 and the end in the beginning of the second 1. What about even other races like venture races or endurance races? Where the competitors are still out on a course when the sun's gone down. I mean, there are some adventure races that extend past the 24 hour mark. But let's just let's just encapsulate
this kind of discussion in on a weekend. That's an easy 1 to understand. You're gonna do races from Saturday Sunday or Saturday through Sunday. Don't think about that. Because there is a lot of logistics and operation stuff that is surrounded around the multi day kind of thinking. And if you're not prepared for that,
You're kind of in you're kind of in big trouble. Because unlike the 1 and done kind of race thinking and the race planning, you have to also consider the moving parts that are outside of the actual race itself. Now when we go to planning, we think about 3 months, 6 months in advance, We think we have those moving parts. But if you're like a lot of people racing or about event management
is a side hustle. It's a it's a it's a hobby. It's a somebody do it on the side. So you do it when you want to, you kind of like build up to it and you're done. But when you commit to a weekend, there's a lot of things that need to happen. In orchestration. And that's an important concept, orchestration, important concept to think about when you're when you're dealing with the in between because the in between is the time that is that is encapsulated around
the what happens when the race is over or what happens when the gun started and the finish line, the in between stuff, or on the bookends, happens before the race and after the race stuff? Extended over 2 days. Very, very different when you're not dealing with only, like, a 4 hour for 6 hour time commitment.
When you're dealing with a 24 hour time commitment, you used to think about things like maybe you never thought about before, like, sleep or a replenishing of supplies, or maybe you have to think about safety in a context where you may not have full control over what's going on minute to minute.
So That's what we're gonna talk about today. The 5 lessons learned from doing a multi day event, and they go like this. The first 1 of course is race day plans change and they change on both days. We're gonna talk about that. Number 2, keeping everyone in town. Ever thought about that. They're just because they're here on Saturday. It's not gonna be here on Sunday. We're gonna talk a little about that. 3, keeping the venue alive.
You have to pay attention to find out about that 1. 4, volunteer burnout. And this is a problem you have to really consider is do you have enough manpower to do this kind of the size of event because remember the day event is a bigger it's a bigger commitment. And last but not least, is something you probably don't think about often, but it's a race director burnout,
and we'll get into that as well. But before we get into that, I am drinking the 4 horsemen roast right now from Rick Roasters out of Fredericksburg, Virginia. And this stuff is awesome. Now as a as a vet myself, Sean and Kaylee Ricks who is a veteran owned family run, cocker roaster for a rich roasters coffee company. They come at coffee the same way that I come at coffee. Is there is a military attitude towards how coffee tastes or how it should taste.
Now, Sean has created the this it's called like, 4 horsemen with with the it's it's 4 different blends of coffee mixed together. So it's not like anything I've ever tasted before. Has this really kind of really rich chocolate y kind of flavor to it. And I, of course, I got a mix I put sugar and cocoa and that kind of stuff, and I totally mix it up.
But it is something that is 1 of the few coffees I've actually drank without all that stuff in it, which is really rare because I usually don't like just regular black coffee. But 4 horsemen has this this flavor to it. It's just It's just outstanding. And I I drink a lot of it, to be honest. I drink a lot of other coffees and I always come back to this 1. This is the 1 I like about it. When they when they when when Sean Ricks talks about his when his coffee company,
is all about the bean. Well, this is all about the beans because there's 4 different kinds of that. And I'm I'm not sure where I mean, I guess you start mixing them together to start thinking about how me how good they become. But Sean Ricks has figured it out. He has he has discovered he's looked into the matrix of coffee and discovered what it is. That makes coffee taste good, and he's got all these different kinds. In fact, because it's December,
we're getting in a Christmas time. This is when his Christmas stuff starts coming out. It's when some of these really rare roasts that he's discovered, and he does these cool things like, It's got a bourbon barrel roast where they take the coffee beans and put them inside the old barrels that used to have bourbon inside them. Kind of adheres that kind of flavor to the bean. So it doesn't actually have bourbon
technically in it, but it has the bourbon kind of flavor. And if you You like that kind of thing? Do you like that kind of that flavor with a coffee? Then his his burden blend There's a couple different burning, like, bourbon, really good reserve, and a couple others. Couple different ways he he puts us together is fantastic.
So if you're thinking about coffee, especially for for Christmas time and things like that, someone who loves coffee, someone who really wants a unique blend, and think about Rick Roasters coffee company. And I'll have the the address and the show notes. And right now, for the merchant of your listeners, If you're a merchant of dirt listener
and you would like your for your first order, you'd like some money off. Now get a nice good not only give a gift for somebody, but, you know, get 13% off. I don't know. It's a weird number, but that's the kind of number they thought of. It's a small, little tiny, veteran owned company. So they they figured out for your first order only. You get 13% off. You go to their website, ricgrocers.com, and you put in the words wolf bouncer.
That was a mountain bike race that I did that Rick Rick's roasters, Sean and Joel, Joel's with the marketing director, he gave me a whole bunch of coffee to give away to his protein prices, which is awesome.
So that's why it's called wolf pounceer. Yeah. Like that. Wolf pounce kinda weird. If you've ever listened to this podcast, you you'll know. You can go back in the in the archives. You'll you'll hear wolf pounce pop up. Just go to wolfe bouncer.com, and you'll see. Yeah. We'll have the race. The race comes every September. So the 5th anniversary of that will be next year. So Just put that in 13% off. You have any troubles? There's phone number there. Give them a call.
And and just tell them that, hey, I try to put them in this promo code. They will hook you up. They are fantastic. Family run, good attitudes, veteran owned. It's the perfect place to get coffee for the holiday season. So go to my buddy, Sean, go to his coffee company or Rick's Roasters coffee company and pay it forward. And he they're they're they're they're they're friends of mine. They're fantastic coffee, and I don't rave about anything that I don't try myself.
And this is the stuff I'm drinking right now. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. There you go. Ritz roasters. 4 horsemen blend. Right ahead. Of course, I spilled it all over my shirt, my beard. There you go. November, it's over. Gotta shave this thing off. Right? Oh, so good. I got coffee all over my face. It's fantastic. So Rick Grocers coffee company ghosts and coffee to friends, a he can port or she can port all over her beard. I guess that doesn't really work, does it?
But you get what I mean. All over her chin. There you go. Her nice pretty chin or his big burly beard that he refuses to shave because, hey, dude. No damage over, dude. Anyway, yeah, I know. It's it's December. I gotta shave this off. Anyway, Again, Rick roasters.com. Put in promo code wolf bouncer. Get 13% off. Telling Kyle sent you from the mergers and dirt. I'd love to hear what you think of this coffee. Send me an email. It merchis dirt.com@@gmail.com.
Or and let me know. Hey. If you order some, let me know what you think. Let me know. Thank you. If you have the same impression that I do. Because I think you're gonna love it. I really do. That's rixroasters.com. Alright. Let's get into today's 5 challenges, the multi day race. I mean, we wanna take the slugfest on both we're gonna break them right down at it and just just dismantle the things that you will not understand from rays, until you've done 1,
until you've actually been in the trenches and went, oh my gosh. I cannot believe this happened to me. Why did not think about this? And the first 1 we're gonna get into is race day plans change, and they only just play a game for 1st day. They change for both days. And some of the things that you planned on your race day number 1 are not going to work out in race day number 2.
And this also goes into just things like like course setup or where you plan on putting registration or how you plan on dealing with parking or some of the you know, you have too much turnout or you you don't don't have any idea how you're going to take it. And then the next day, you don't have any turnout. People decided that they didn't wanna come the 2nd day or the weather changed or
the wind or the weather changed for the for the worse or for the better. And then on the second day, everyone shows up or even something even more remote is you planned another 2 day event, or on the 1st day, everyone's had another event. And the 2nd day, they're bored. They wanna do something. And they found out you have race day registration and they are coming. And you're like, oh my god. Look at all these people, which is a great problem to have.
But if you didn't plan, if you looked at your preregistration and went, oh, 40 people shined up. So I guess I guess that's cool. I guess I'll you know, I guess there'll be 2 or Ray State people, no big deal. Right? And then you triple that number? What do you do? How do you plan for that? Did you have enough waivers? Did you have enough parking? Did you have enough volunteers?
So this is the kind of thing you need to prepare for. When you when you think about a multi day race, you have to break it down into day 1 day 2 at the minimum. That's what you gotta do first. Day 1 and day 2. Or day 1 is just like if you were doing a 1 and done race. And then you have to think about day 2 is just like you were doing a 1 and done race again.
That's pretty simple. Okay? Lay out those 2 schedules, you have all your logistics set up for much water you need and ice and where your setups are gonna be. Then you need to plan for the middle which is the in between time. Now, if you're doing just 2 races with an in between time, there's a couple things you can do. First off, you can take an inventory. Of all your stuff and realize how much of something you have left over?
Ice, water. I mean, those are things you're gonna have to buy next day anyway. Right? You can't really unless you didn't crack open 1 of the the water containers. You know? Okay. Just contaminated water later on. You can't really reuse that. But you can cookies or fruit that didn't go bad, maybe it's just a regular day. You can reuse some of that stuff, put it back in the cooler.
There's some of those things that you can you can really use, you know, your we have enough waivers. Maybe you had everyone signed their pre reg waivers online. Or they sign waivers in another fashion. You got a whole stack of them. You don't need to print out some new ones. Right? Maybe with with results. Maybe you only did results for day 1 that don't compute with day 2 results. So you don't really need to to think about carrying over points or doing tallies and those kind of things.
Same thing with awards. Not everyone comes up for the podium. So you might have some stuff leftovers. You gotta take into the count of the leftover stuff. And whether or not you either ran out or didn't run out of something they could might possibly reuse the second time around. Next thing you need to think about with with the race date planning changing, is, like I talked about in kind of introducing this topic, is that no 1 shows up
or everyone shows up. Now, if you have race day registration, you need to plan for the number of people show up as this think think of this as day 1 and day 2 are complete different things. You know, they're almost like they're on different different months. And if you have a bunch of people show up to your race number 1, and a bunch of people show up at race number 2, and you think of them separately, then you need to really kind of use the scotty math
You're thinking, okay. Kyle, what's Scotty Math? Okay. Not a Star Trek fan. Scotty was the engineer on the Starship Enterprise. Now, Scottie had this way of saying, you know, it's impossible, Compton. We can't do it. And Kirk would say, do it anyway, and Scottie would say it's gonna take 5 hours. Well, you only have 2. And really, the only thing Scottie won.
Mhmm. See the see the science in there. Scottie used to do something or the writers of the character for Scottie used to do the 3 x kind of solution. This is where he would take how long it would take, how long he think he could do it in, how long it would really take a normal person to Take the normal person time, times that by 3, and that's the time he would give the captain. This happens in the navy all the time. You know? Allegedly.
Let's call it. It allegedly happens in the navy all the time. But if you think about it, it's the 3 x kind of concept. Is How many waivers do I need for this race? And this event will require me to have 20 waivers. Okay? Let's 3x that. That means I should probably have 60. You're thinking, Kyle, that's a that's a lot of waivers. It's paper. You go to the kinkos, you spend the money,
It may not be comfortable to spend a couple bucks on some paper. But what happens if no 1 shows up? You have extra waivers. Right? Everyone needs extra waiver, especially if it's a good waiver, you use it for all your races, no big deal. But you have 60 ready. And you have 60 ready for day 1 and day 2. These are the kind of things of the planning. You're planning your logistics out.
Have those plans. And especially when it comes to to race day changing, those plans, You have to see what doesn't work. Now a huge opportunity you have in a multi day event is on day 1, you put the registration thing up, and this is something that I I we learned firsthand. We had scoped out the venue multiple times, but in the afternoon, we'd never done a scope out early in the morning, which is kinda you think about
why would you do that? Know, you get off work. You go school out the the venue. Like, I'm gonna put stuff there and put the pro registration here. Put the podium there. This is where cars gonna park. In a in previous articles I've written about, you kinda need to see the venue on the in the same context as the racers will see it on the race day. Now a lot of us don't do that. A lot of us have never been to a park at 6 in the morning
until race day you go there. You've been there 4 in the afternoon 50 times, but never 6 in the morning. Well, in a multi day event, if you make this mistake, you have the advantage of recovering from it. Like, you've like like, you should have done earlier, but it allows you for this mulligan. So we set up the the tents and the registration tables in an area where when that sun and this is September when Virginia, which still is kinda warm, when that sun peeked up over the trees,
it was like baking an egg on a rock. It was intensely hot. The the the gravel area we'd set up in was just like concrete. It radiated all the heat. It was no protection. There's no wind. It was stifling. The tens were at a weird angles. The sun comes in at a weird angle. You screen computer screens are unreadable. It turned everything around. It was it was it didn't work. But what do we learn?
Well, when we came there the next morning to set up the race stuff, we didn't set it up there. Now while we're sitting there cooking in the sun, realizing how stupid it was to put those tents where we put them, Let me correct that. Or I realized how stupid it was where it goes because I made that decision. You know? Buck stops with me. I noticed, like, maybe a hundred yards off where there was, like, a small little tree line, it stayed shady all day long.
Well, why the heck did I not put stuff there? Those various reasons why I didn't, but on day 2, we corrected that. And put this put all the registration of in the shade. Made a huge difference on day 2 because the temperature relatively stayed the same.
These are the kind of things that you're gonna experience, the day 1 mulligans you can recover from in day 2. The same thing I go with with with course markings, and with with thinking about elaborate ways to put up different kind of tape, you'd be surprised that after day 1 on a course, if you reuse the course, how much people don't realize that you put up a a barrier. They're not supposed to go through. And they go through it anyway.
And I'm like, what? That makes no sense. Why would they go through that? That's obviously I mean, there's wood there. There's paint there. It that says no. It screams no. Instead, I had to put someone to stay in there until people to turn. That we learn on day 1. Well, we were used the course on day 2 for different kind of event. It was still we did mountain bike racing the first time. We did an endurance race the second day. This is the event we did just a couple months ago.
Where in the mountain bike race, no 1 even thought twice about about that being a place to travel through. But in the endurance event, I don't know, brain baked, dehydrated, people suddenly came around the corner and decided to go straight. Like, why? Had it put someone there. It was weird. So you're gonna find things out that you didn't think that 1 kind of race, another type of day 1 is kinda problem. Day 2 is another kind of problem. Like, day 1, 1 of the problems is not enough volunteers.
Day 2, too many volunteers, which is a great problem to have. Always find the use for a volunteer. It's pretty easy. But you go through these kind of things where where the challenges of day 1 are not the challenges of day 2. So that that is about when you talk about your race plan will change, is if I didn't you know, I have volunteer locations in day 1, but day 2, I've got more opportunity
and flip that around. What happens if people wanna shows up in day 1? None of your volunteers show up on day 2. Where do you actually need people? You need to know where the critical spots are versus the the locations that, you know, well, it'd be nice to have someone there, but really you don't. Okay?
So if you if you plan if you build your plans, thinking about, okay, I gotta do race day 1 as a standalone. Race day 2 is a standalone. I gotta do the in between time as its own plan and then an overarching plan that covers my bookends. That's what you do when you you're thinking about a multi day event for race day planning. And then step that it's gonna change on the fly and be ready with that with some of those kind of things that we just talked about. Be ready for it.
How about number 2? Keeping everyone in town. So this is a this is a this is a thing that happens almost always when you're doing collegiate writing. And open we we do an open rent on Saturday, open been on Sunday. Some people cross. They go Saturday on Sunday, but it's weird. That in the open style events, especially the mountain biking, I get different people in day 1 than day 2.
I got weird. I mean, it's kinda weird. You think they'd do both days? They don't. They they had time on Saturday or they time on Sunday, and they didn't have both days. I thought that was kinda strange. But collegically, because this is a series of events they wanna put together to get the points, to go to nationals, they are there for all the points. So there's a bunch of different events they wanna participate in. They wanna be there for the whole weekend.
Well, not everyone's gonna stay the entire time. And there's this illusion out there that if you have a 2 day event, everyone's gonna stay for the whole thing. That is not gonna happen. And you need to be prepared for that. Is you're going to plan as if you have a 100 riders on day 1 and then day 2, you have 50. You're gonna feel kinda weird about that. What do what do I do? Do I refund money? Do I, you know, did I overplan? Did I did I spend too much?
And this is the kind of thing you need to to really kind of kind of get your hit around that people will pay for the entire weekend They might only come on Sunday Sunday. They might not come at all. But again, it's you're paying for the value of you setting up as a rent for the opportunity to set this event up, not if they don't show up or not. If they don't show up, they don't get their money back. This is why race day registration is so high. Because they're paying for
all that work you put into putting that event on on race day because they decided not to pre register. They decided, hey. They're just gonna show up and wing it. And that's my tie, and it's expected to be high. Because everyone else got the benefit of registering early, of the value that they know that you're gonna put into building a race. So you just have to to to understand it. You're gonna have a 2nd day event, and some people are gonna be missing.
People you thought were gonna stay are gonna be gone. In 1 in 1 instance, 1 girl, her dad, got in a car accident, and you turned out to be okay. But he got a car accident down North Carolina. She had to leave. Middle of that, boom, gone. An hour before a start line. Suddenly, your start line has missing writer. You're like, woah. Does he got me a parking lot? I don't wanna start to race that or I don't see left. I don't really tell anybody.
Another thing about the multi day event is people get used to the day 1 activities. And this is I mean, I'm gonna out the collegiate people here. Collegiate riders, none of the officials. That's it for another podcast. They think because they registered on day 1, they don't have to register on day 2. And this is a challenge that you're gonna have to have if you do these kind of events. Is do you make them register the 2nd day?
Now it depends on kind of like what are you doing. You've been doing a race series. They were just for 1 day, and then they at some point, you have to know they're on the course the 2nd day. How do you do that? Start line? Did they check-in with somebody? Did they sign another waiver? How do you know? What do you know they left? How about
trying to understand when when you're doing a erase and the 2nd day registration no 1 shows at the table. And then on the start line, there's 50 people there. You're like, where are you people come from? Oh, we raised your day 1. We didn't know we had to raise your day 2. Things like that. So you need to establish this communication to where you understand how each day is set up so that your racers and your people participating understand
what is expected of them day in and day out. That's why I say, keep pressing 1 and keep day 1 and day 2 as independent entities, where they understand that No matter what they did day 1, day 2 is a brand new clean slate. And you can communicate that very clearly. So as long as you have that communication between your racers, you should not have any problems. You still will.
Trust me. You can explain this to your blue in the face, and there will still be a collegiate guy going, oh, I didn't know I had Richard Day 2. He never fails. But that's just the this nature of the beast. So if you understand that that you have to be clearing communications and that people are not gonna say the entire time, then you kinda get an idea of what day 2 is gonna kinda look like. And it really strange how day 1 is usually the day where everyone
kinda packs in day 2 is kinda the light 1. Kinda works out that way. It's not always the case. We kinda expect that kind of level of commitment of of people participating. Because, and here's another interesting fact, is that there are people that travel a long ways to race. And they come all the way in the town to race on Saturday. They may erase your Saturday race, and then they might erase your Sunday race, and then they split
And then you have a podium where everyone's gone. You got a ton of prizes and sponsors and all kind of stuff that could brought you everything. There's no 1 here for podium. You're like, oh, did I make everyone upset? You know, did they not like by race? You start to second guess everything? No. Some people just drive a long ways, and they gotta work Monday morning.
So these are the kind of people you need to understand that. This is the reason why they split at the end of a multi day race. This happens in adventure racing all the time. And race promoters and adventure racing have this problem where they think, oh my god. Everyone hated my race, and it was too hard. And they didn't like it because they couldn't find things. My map was no. No. No. No.
Some people travel a long ways to get to your event. And if they travel a long ways to get to your event, and it takes all I mean, talk about the endurance required to do an 8 to 12 or 24 hour race. Chances are when they got back to the car, They got cleaned up, they drank a soda or something, and they turn the heat on in their car, and I'm like, oh my god. That's so nice. Or maybe, you know, in in a couple of races I've been in, I couldn't walk.
I was just, like, so, you know, just just bike seat and wet pants and all that just chewed up my insides and my legs where I just did not wanna move. And here we go. Oh, hey. We got 2nd place. Come to the podium. Like, oh, jeez. No. You guys get it for me. No. I see the other words. When you make 2nd place, your butt gets up there because your friends pull you up. No. No. We're doing this. But there are people that are just like, nope. I'm done. Your podium is tiny.
We're ready to go. I got all this stuff I gotta give away. So just understand. Keeping everybody in town, our multi day race is hard. And you're gonna have to accept that. Now the final point on this on this topic is delays, cancellations, and in those mistakes that can be compounded with day 1 to day 2. If you are going to experience a the multi day race Mister Murphy.
I guess, as I kind of think think about how to frame this. Is that what happens if day 1 is sunny and day 2 is poor enough rain? And you can't have the race on day 2. Or even better, you have, like, a slick and this happened at the USA Cycle, including mountain bike nationals. Just this year
is short track was on day 2. So they did the cross country race, and it snow, and it rained. It was It was really rough terrain. And I'm talking about Montana. Right? So you're gonna get a little bit of that. But there was a snowstorm expected to come in and hit that venue hard the next morning. That's when the short track race is supposed to happen. So they put out an announcement, canceled, not happening.
Short track is canceled. We're gonna postpone it till and it was like this was to be Sunday morning. We're postponing it till Monday. So if you had a club, with 16 riders in it and all these boosters and big trailers and trucks, and you came all the way up there. Post Biden erased till Monday? Not a big deal. But if you're a little tiny club like we were, you came all the way from Virginia to Montana and you had plane tickets, you could were nonrefundable, and you were having to go back
Monday morning or Sunday night. Guess what? Cancellation? Your race is over. So they put that communication out very early. What happened the next morning? Storm didn't happen. So everyone's already packed up and ready to go, and we're heading out the door to to go back to the to to our our our plane. And he was recycling flips the script and says, oh my gosh. We heard that all the clubs were leaving. I have it anyway. Was it their fault?
Let's just say the communication channels weren't that great. Website wasn't updated in time. They were putting out messages on Facebook and Twitter, which They didn't really coordinate very well. So we found out from another team that, oh my gosh, they didn't cancel it, and we had to have a powwow. All us all us Virginia writers that come in, you know, have a little powwow in the hotel lobby that we can do this or not. We came all about here to do this. Do we do this?
Now, I say this because I want you to put yourself in the racers point of view. On a multi day race, if you have the inkling that you're gonna cancel something versus the Sunday or the the, you know, the 2nd day or 3rd day of your race, and you are you've decided you're gonna cancel it. You need to you need to first spell out why and how you can do that. You need to we go back to communications again. Right?
We go back to you need to be very clear on how you plan on telling your racers what's happening, and why it's happening, and make it a centralized location you do this in.
So in a multi day event, people will be checking Facebook. They're gonna be checking Twitter. They'll be checking your Weir site. If you won't update any of those things, people have no idea what's going on, and that means your cell phone's gonna explode with people going, here's the room still going on. There's rain outside my hotel room, but at the venue, it's completely dry. Things like that, all that kind of chaos.
So in a multi day event, you need to establish a centralized communication headquarters. Where all your information is gonna go through. And you need to tell everybody, this is the authority. This is where I'm gonna tell you when it's gonna happened. These are the times until you guys happen. Now, of course, our race was gonna listen. Well,
yes or no. Some are gone. Some are some are still gonna call you. Hey. The race is still going on even though you put it 20 minutes ago. The race is still going on. You're gonna get those people. Why? I don't know. Let's just say 20% of racers are, you know, Will they're, you know, they're frustrating. How's that?
I guess that's a really good word to put it. They're frustrating. Maybe maybe they didn't get the message. Maybe they didn't see that part in the mean, a couple of 1000 different reasons, who knows. Maybe they have their they didn't have their Rick Brokers coffee that morning. There you go. Shame was plugged. Yeah. There we go. Now I got the coffee going.
But think about that is if you have a cancellation, you made a you made a mistake. The mistakes are compounded that way. If you go, yes, it's off. No, it's not. Yes, it's off. No, it's off. And you go back and forth and you go back and forth to different channels. People are getting confused, and what happens after confusion is anger. If you wanna get a group of people totally up edit you, play the off off off on game. They will crucify you.
Not only not only the the the the some people will physically physically verbally, that's probably a better word. Confront you about being angry about this type of, you know, being jerked around like this. But then they go on social media. I can't get ugly real fast. So what's the thing to do on a multi day race? If you have a policy, state the policy. Take the policy before you even have this race or have a policy. You don't have a policy. Go to reckoner.com, type in policy,
find how you build a policy. It's not that hard. Go through your cancellation process. Go through your rain day thinking. Then think about what happens if you cancel your race. Or there's a delay to the race. And where you centralize that headquarters communications is crucial from day to day of that operation. Maybe even hour to hour. And maybe you need to I don't know. Gonna reach out here. Sign a person to do that for you.
Did you hear that? Hear that you soloist out there who think you can run a whole company by yourself. Yeah. Newsflash for you. You're gonna need a person that is a media communications manager. That's what happens in multi day events. You need to delegate some of this stuff. So that they can handle the phone calls and all that kind of stuff.
Not easy to do, but the fallout from a multi day disaster of people not knowing where the heck to go or what to do or how they do it is going to make this just a mucky soupy mess, and you do not want that. The third thing you need to think about is your venue. Keeping your venue alive. Your venue is the way I mean, you think about your venue day 1, pristine. You've already set up the course the night before or maybe a couple nights before. You've already got everything in place.
There's no trash there because no one's showing up there. You get the parking all set up. You're ready to go. Boom. 6 o'clock in the morning. People will show up. People are there. Race courses going on. Race is done. You close-up for the night? Well, close-up for the night. What happens during the night? Done. Done. Done. That's right. You got the critters out. You have people. You have all sorts of weird things gonna happen.
Between day 1 and day 2. 1 huge thing to think about is what happens to all the stuff you brought to the course day 1, the packet all back up, take it home? What happens if that course is way out in Illinois? Do you believe it? Now, plenty of races I've been to and have directed and promoted have had the multi day hours of the 2nd day come to the venue to find, oh, things missing. Things that disappear in the old dark
because your venue is very vulnerable between each day. And this is something you need to understand. Is that not only do you run our supplies the day 2, but you have to go and recheck everything again. Now if you set up a course on a Friday for Saturday morning race,
And then Saturday morning race happens, guess what you're doing Saturday night. It's not sleeping. So think about all that work you put into a whole day's worth of work. Of worth racing, of directing and moving and and decision making. And now everyone's gone. He used to do it all over again. You have to recheck everything again.
I mean, not only do you have the weather double jeopardy, but you have the the setup double jeopardy you have to worry about too, is people will mess with your course. You know, you have a guy who, every, you know, every Saturday night, after he gets done with his friend's house, he cuts through the park. And finds out he's got this ribbon stop everywhere? Well, that's not gonna fly. Bus. Bus. Bus. How about the the deer and the antelope play? When they come through your course and mess with stuff.
You'd be surprised how much damage a dang deer can do to course tape. Now you can break stuff down, you know, turn off all the intersections and to use for the next day. But learn this, even with the with doing a a race every Wednesday for 4 Wednesdays in a row. We took the tape down and kinda stashed in the bushes. Well, of course, What happens? Mister Murphy comes along and misses all that up because you littered, so I'm going to clean it up for you.
You left your arrows up. You silly race people. Let me take your errors down for you. Wow. Thanks, Mister Murphy. You're such a pal. Your venue is vulnerable. Day 1 to day 2. And it's no it's no exception that if you're doing an overnight race or you have people start at morning on Saturday and end afternoon on Sunday, Even in the night hours of them out on the course, your course is still vulnerable
because volunteers are gonna come and go, and people are gonna come and go. But when the darkness sets in, that's when you get people who roll up and pick up trucks and realize that your pop tent is a really nice thing that they can add to their camping trip. Or they see a generator that no one's paying attention to or some cables or there's some bikes left out. I mean, even in the UCI road racing championships, they had Richmond, Virginia last year,
was it a year before? Last year. Year before? Anyway, You know what I'm talking about? If you're a you're a real person, you definitely are talking about, is some of the the the local riders there had their bikes stolen. Why not their cars? In broad daylight.
So think about that. That's in a major city. Richmond is very densely populated. There was a lot of riders and racers down there. People grabbing bikes all the time. People don't pay attention when a lot of bikes are being pulled around all the time. They just think, hey. There's a guy taking the bikes off the top of the car. Not being stolen. But you're out in the woods
and you roll up on the whole set of bikes just sitting there. Oh, wow. Look at the advantages of just throwing I mean, some of these mountain bikes what? 3, 4, 5, $10,000 full carbon super bikes that weigh, you know, 30 ounce, you know, I mean, my coffee cup probably weighs more than some of these bikes. But think about that.
I mean, stolen arrows and boundary tape is 1 thing. But what happens when someone comes by and here's 1 that happened the other day, someone burns the porta potty to the ground. What? Why why would someone do this? It's a plastic box you potty in, and they burn it to the ground. It was just a slag pile with a metal ring because that's the only parts of it that are metal I think was the doorway.
Just squished the crystal big spot on the ground. If someone threw, I don't know, either lit it on fire with a some accelerants or, I don't know, throw a match in there. I don't know how you said it. I don't think about it. How do you set a porta potty on fire? Only thing to think about is douse it in gasoline, maybe? Maybe they're really flammable. I don't think they're not flammable. That'd be pretty unsafe. Yeah. Anyway,
think about that. Think about let's say you have all your porta potty set up and you're thinking, well, obviously, I'm not moving those. That's gross. Oh, So you have them upset for day 1 to day 2. Only come back to day 2 and find all your porta potties are now piles of plastic slag. The fire department says, yeah, we're sorry. We tried to get here in time, but we didn't. Because porta potties are a dime a dozen. And just get a new 1.
Well, maybe not to you, but maybe to the person you rendered them from, now you who's liable. So keeping your venue alive has some kind of tricks in you think about. Now, I wrote an article recently on wreckingyear.com, talking about on-site storage. Think about trailers and even pods, and the things you could think about to put to put your your gear in during day 1 to day 2 of a race. And this was a big challenge during it, during
during 1 of my races was do I load it all back in the car? Take it home? And then is it it's not clean and everything's everywhere. Nothing's in the right boxes anymore. And then you have to, like, go through all that, and they need to put it all back in the car, and they need to take it down the course the next day, and then take it all home, then second on the second day. Well, When do you sleep? You don't. That's what the answer is. So think about security. Keep that venue alive.
Might require you to camp some people there. Now, does the park allow that? Mm-mm. Good question. Lot of parks don't allow camping. Is it camping though? You wonder?
So think about the the idea of how to protect your venue and what you need to recheck day in day out. And some of the things that you can't live with, probably the things you need to take with you. I mean, these are like computers and generators and things that, you know, high ticket item value kind of things. And then think about even during the venue, during the event,
of keeping your venue alive is, you know, people are Saturday Sunday, people wanna come to the park. You're gonna have to chase off all sorts of people coming at you in a multi day event. Now in this particular case, we had a mountain bike race right next to the equestrian center. And, of course, the horse people on a Saturday, they to show up in their giant trailers of giant pickup trucks to have their 14 year old kids go around on their their ponies.
As a fun afternoon, which it was a fun afternoon for them. When they showed up and we had taped everywhere, mountain bikes everywhere, they weren't expecting that. We had some tense moments. Let's just say the bot made some get ready to make some glue. I'm a horse lover. Don't get me wrong. But, wow, that was frustrating. Now, turns out, the park knew they were coming the whole time, but they had let me know. Because centralized communication? Nah.
We're talking to local parks, man. They don't tell you anything. There's no coordination of schedules for kidding me. That's someone else's job. There you go. Bureaucracy at its finest. So You have to think about your venue during the day, what you can do, the plan to get around those kind of things, and then how do you protect it at night day to day? Those are the kind of things that you have to really consider as a possibility. You can't just let your venue just kinda like stagnant.
If you remember, individually day 1, individual day 2, and the in between. Sometimes the in between requires you to keep that venue alive with a security person.
Or you have some volunteers that show up really early in the park to help you reset everything and check everything that's up. But you need to plan for that. That's a different kind of volunteer effort if you need someone there at 4 AM to help you check corners and stuff, which also may mean that you need things like something in different plan for, when you're doing a 1 and done kind of race is like lighting. This is a big deal.
If your venue needs to be You need to actually function in your venue at 4 AM. You're gonna need head lamps and maybe construction lights, which means you may need power. These are things you need to think about. So keeping your venue alive requires that that kind of asymmetrical mindset that there is gonna be some creepy crawlies and some creepy people gonna come through your venue and mess things up. Mister Murphy likes the dark.
He likes when people aren't paying attention too. So the security element extends into the daylight, but just keep that in mind. Okay. Enough of that. Not a number 4. Volunteer burnout. Now I kinda talked about this a little earlier, but let's just this is gonna reiterate the volunteer burnout. Is your volunteers are day 1? Are much easier to lock down than day 2. And why is that?
Well, it's because the effort of getting volunteers for day 1 sense to be kind of like the the the pointy end of the spear of your volunteer recruiting efforts. The the vent days usually coincide with, like, September 2021.
Well, everyone sees the 20 and thinks, yeah, I could do the 20. And the 21st comes rolling around like, oh, yeah. And even worse is when you do the scramble for day 2 volunteers usually happens when people work they're buns off or day 1. You just work them like a dog. Put them out, especially if it's like super hot out, blazing sun. Involunteers are day 2. Like, I'm not going back. I stood for 5 hours. No way I'm going back to Kyle's race.
You know, put me out on that course marshal place where I I didn't have a chair, didn't sit, and it was hot, and no 1 brought me water, all those things that are true. So you need to think about the day 2 stretch of volunteers is you don't wanna pile your volunteers out on day 1. You need to care for them. You need to be be thinking consciously about what they're experiencing. Just like you put yourself in the racist point of view.
Think put yourself in the volunteer point of view as well. What is a volunteer experiencing? And maybe it's time to think about, okay, I had Israel out on
on the course marshaling place in 1, maybe I can move him to 3, or maybe I put him in the shade, or maybe I put him over where the timing is for a while. So he can get some, you know, some time off, sit in the chair, relax, have a have a cool drink. Those are the kind of things you need to start thinking about. And when the race is happening and officials are yelling at you and racers are yelling at you and your red your staff is yelling at you and you're trying to get everything going on, you need to then think about is, like, you need to
be consciously aware that volunteers are out there as an extension of your perception. They are your sensors. And if you burn them out and they don't show up today too, you're in trouble. So you need to to part your schedule, part your plan, be thinking about volunteer's rotation.
Volunteer captains, and this is the delegation part again. Again, as a race director, you're just gonna get a media person, and you got a registration person, you need a volunteer person who maybe is doing that for you, your volunteer captain. Someone who's who's going out there to find those people because you're gonna that group of volunteers from day 1 that are not coming back if you ignore them. If you beat them up, if you you puse them, hey, coming back.
And this is this is a huge thing to think about. And I'm talking to you people with the staffs who think that the staff do more than volunteers. If your staff has the attitude that volunteers don't do as much as the staff, you have you need to retune your staff. Volunteers are there, 4, 3. They did this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are giving their afternoon and sometimes for nothing. Yeah. Maybe a t shirt. Yeah. Maybe slice of pizza.
But they're not doing it for any kind of, like, the value they're getting for the amount of money work they're putting in. Is very lopsided. Race directors need to treat volunteers like they are the 2nd coming that they are gold. And the minute your staff takes a break while volunteers are working,
it's it. You will not get those people back. They're not coming back to a race that Everyone and the staff gets, you know, gets to sit back and have a beer while the volunteers are picking up trash and pulling trash after garbage cans. They won't come back. They're gone. Don't abuse your volunteers. And on a multi day race, this is so easy to do. It is such an easy thing to do. Is to forget while you're in the the midst of the chaos of day 1 to forget to take care of volunteers.
Who's so focused with staff, staff, staff, staff, the volunteers, they get forgotten, and then they don't come back day 2. And then on day 2, which the same officials show up and say, where's your coach marshals? And you go, I don't have any. And they go, well, you don't have a race either, guess who's not having a race? That's how that's gonna happen. And that's not being an official being mean. That's the official saying, hey,
safety is the primary concern that you need to have. And if you don't have enough people to be your sensors, you have a huge problem. And if you abuse your volunteers, you lost an opportunity. So never do that. And not only never do that, but on day 2, you need to treat them just as good as day 1 because you want those people to come back. You do not want to burn these people out because they're gonna also tell you
where on your course the problems are. They're gonna tell you that, hey. I saw people blasting through that barrier, so I stood there. I got into effect. Yeah. I think anybody blasted that barrier. I mean, it's jammed wood barrier. Yeah. There's a little opening that they always ride. Every time they ride out here on their Wednesday afternoon ride, they always go that way. Just because you put a wood barrier there, it didn't stop them. That's where they think they go.
Volunteers gonna tell you that. Volunteers gonna tell you, hey, you know what? We ran out of water an hour ago. Volunteers are gonna tell you that someone is on the course isn't supposed to be on the course. Volunteers are gonna tell you that you have someone down. These are the kind of things that you need to cultivate.
So if you can't do it yourself, you need to have staff members doing it for you. To be your your concierge of volunteers, to be your captain of combat volunteers. That is the there's the number 1 focus, and that's all they get to focus on. They don't get distracted by registration.
They're not worried about course tape. They're not worried about anything else. No officials do nothing. Their whole job is what can I do for volunteers to make their life better? And you treat that person accordingly. Give that person every resource they can to take care of those volunteers. Because on a multi day race, if race 1 goes off without a bang, goes off a hitch. Let's try that. Goes off without a hitch because your volunteers made it happen.
But you did it at their expense Day 2 is gonna be a disaster. So don't be that guy or gal.
Okay? Alright. That's volunteer burnout, which is I think is and I have a couple articles in wrecking her.com about, you know, volunteers can ruin your race, volunteered, how you not burn them out, how you deal with volunteer captains. I think I'll put those in the show notes too. You can link back to that and think about how to do some volunteer management because you need multi air race. It's important. It's key.
Staff can't be everywhere. You can use those volunteers. That's how race happen. These events happen. The volunteers. Okay. Enough of that. Hit that dead horse. Right? Okay. Wow. That is a bad sound. Okay. We're going on to number 5. The 1 thing I think that most restrictors fail to take into account. Okay. The final segment, segment number 5. Is race director burnout. This is something I think is the most overlooked thing that you could you could What's a what's a good way to frame this?
Not considering your own health while you're directing a race, will ruin your race. And you may think that you can multitask. You may think that you have the insurance to stay up to 36 or 42 hours. To you you could you could 96 hours or 3 days without sleep or maybe a nap here and there. You can just pound all the coffee in the world know, you got your rich roasters on, like, super brew, and you're just pounding down pot after pot after pot of 4 horseman coffee thinking,
I can make through they can make this through. This is piece of cake. I'll just sleep when it's over. Well, guess what? The average race per owner, 40 plus. So think about the metabolic and the health and the mental faculties you have as a race director that already are challenged just due to your age. Let's put that out there. Okay? So say you're you're 40 plus. Maybe you're not. Let's just say, you're gonna get there 1 day. Right? Or never go or not. Get now this life alive.
That's the 1 appointment you're gonna keep. So you need to take care of your health. Now, as a race director for off road events, outdoor events, you probably do a lot of workouts yourself. You probably trail run-in mountain bike. Venture Rays are probably very physically fit. So let's just say you are for the sake argument. You're physically fit. You're relatively healthy in your forties, in your thirties, and you wanna put on this multi day event. Well, that's great.
But this is the race within the race. Because although you may be you know, as a racer, you have some very I guess you could say acute thinking. He's like, I have my gear ready. I have my my gear working order. I have my safety equipment. I'm in the I'm in I'm at the core starting line. Bang and the gang goes off. The gang goes off. Okay. I either have to traverse
a certain number of of of miles until I'm done. At certain speed, or I have to navigate to certain areas and find certain things until I'm done. And then, you know, I get some points and that, you know, that's a winner, not a win, and then they can relax and whatever. K? Following me so far, as a racer, there's a significant beginning and end of the race, and then it's over. For a race director. You've been you started 3 months ago.
Forgot about that, didn't you? Remember way back when your race in September when you started the this planning thing in June, and you started going after the course, and you started finding out where all the things you need to put, where your venue needs to go, and you need to start doing your registration. All the website stuff you did to Ozark 30, all the emails you sent out to get people to come to your race, all the paperwork and planning you did, the computer programs you had to work on, and get your timing thing correct. The people you had to to to Joel to come to your race, the where they had staff or volunteers,
all the things you had to do, you started 3 months ago. So already your brain is kinda like in this mode. Okay? So you are in this mode of thinking. That's exhausting all by itself. But now let's throw you into the race director's role. Think about the last time you did any kind of direction where you sat down Remember that? What day was that?
For me, it was never. That's when that was. I only ever sit down when I'm at a race. I'm constantly moving from registration to timing for timing to course commercials to do all my course commercials back to timing. I'm on the radio. I'm walking around, solving this problem, solving that problem. I'm delegating this problem. Going to that problem. I am standing and waiting. Here comes from racers. Everyone's okay. Okay. I move back. It's enough of water. It's enough fridge for you. They're moving all the time, constantly moving.
In fact, my wife, that the last race, forced me and she got my friend Aaron to walk over and shove pizza into my mouth so that I had something to eat. Because I had not eaten all day long. Why? There's no time to eat. There's things to do. There's ratios that go on. There's the official stand in there and, oh my gosh. You can't, you know, the officials, you gotta be all Johnny on the spot. Official asked you a question. That's just that's just race day stuff. Now,
race is over. Gotta pack all that stuff in. Right? You gotta put that in your car. You gotta drive to where you live or to where you're staying at. You have to figure out what you can do for race 2. You have to do all your planning and replanning of, you know, what had worked, what didn't work. And then the next day, yeah, do it all again. Now if you're physically fit, I don't care if you're a new Olympic champion. 2 days of this, we're gonna burn you out. Really gonna burn you out.
You're the single point of failure of all the planning on top of that. What happens if on day 1, you get sick, you get hurt, you fall out? Because you pushed so hard because you're an incurrence athlete, and I can do anything. Right? That kind of thinking, what happens when you fall out? Here's a simple 1. You step off the the the trail at a weird angle and you roll your ankle. Now, what?
You gotta go to the medical. You gotta get your ankle checked out. Now you're on crutches. What happens if that happens? Or worse. Here's 1 that I heard the other day. Race director Step back into a pile of logs, got stung by a whole bunch of bees. Bad juju. Now he's having an allergic reaction, anti flaky shock, epi pins, all that other crazy stuff. Guess who's not coming back day too? That's right. Race director looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
So think about the single point of failure of what happens if you push so hard day 1 and then day 2, got nothing left. Tank is empty. Are you gonna be an effective race director if that happens? So a race director burnout is a real thing you need to consider. So think of just think about the manpower you move use just to move the gear, especially if it's just you. Right? Let's day 1. Let's get loading. Unloading at your house, unloading at the venue.
Loading it up after the venue, unloading your house, gotta clean it, and then you gotta load it back in. Right? Fix it, repair all the boxes, put all the stuff back in, find out what you're missing, what you're not missing, make sure everything came back because nothing ever, you know, never roll with Mister Murphy, which grabs something before you It's sitting in the dark somewhere on your menu because you were loading in the dark. Right?
And now it's loaded up, and now you get to go to sleep. Oh, no. You don't. It's 3 in the morning, and you have to leave for the venue at 3:30. So you get, like, a cat nap, some more coffee, pump back coffee, woah, woah, then you go day 2, you go back, you unload the venue, Then you're done with the venue. You load it back up. You go back to the house. You unload it. You gotta clean it because god knows after 2 days of racing. The last thing you wanna do is have all that stuff in your car because you're, you know, SUV where it's just stinky stinksnag. Right?
That's amazing. What kind of icky things come back after a race? I got a whole box full of, like, weird, like, you know,
rags and like, 1 glove and someone's IKE Sunglasses and a whole bunch of bottles with god knows what kind of oozy, gooey, gooey, gooey stuff they put in that stuff. You know, this is gonna make me faster. I don't think so, buddy. That's just sounds like it looks like sure. And then later on, it's sitting in your garage, and it's something else. It's got a mind of its own. So think about that. That's just loading, unloading.
That's not anything else. I don't know the brain power involved in orchestration and scheduling and making sure things are the right places. And taking care of problems. And then there's that 1 guy who decided to do something stupid, like, you know, go out on the mountain bike course with no shirt on, it never ends. So restructure brand is a real big deal. And I would like to point you to an article I wrote atreckinger.com.
Called be a race parameter, not a race director. And I wanna point you to that for 1 simple reason. And I go to the single point of failure again because as a race director and a lot of us out there are the 1 man show or 1 woman show. We are it. We're the single point of contact. We're also the single point of failure.
Racer to burnout on a multi day race is a real thing. Because if the race director on day 1 doesn't show up on day 2, what do's what do you do? What happens to your event? Who picks up the slack? Who is your backup? In the navy? We called it The redundancy factor.
2 is 1 and 1 is none. Think about that for a minute. If I have 1 or something and it breaks, what do I have now? I have none. If I have 2 of something and 1 of them breaks, chances are the other 1, it will get me through to when till I can find something else. K? Backup of a backup. Are you a single point failure for your race? On a multi day event, that's exactly what you are.
If you haven't thought about this, if you haven't put this into thinking in thinking mode, a 1 and done event, you can power through that. You've sick, broke, whatever. You can get a 1 and done out of the out of the box and into into reality. But a 2 day event, 3 day event. If you're not at the top of your game after day 1,
That race is gonna be a disaster. Things are gonna fault with the cracks. They're not gonna do the way you want them done because you didn't think about that. You decided it's all you put it all in my head. Kyle knows everything. Kyle knows where everything goes, what everything does. He's not gonna let anybody know nothing. And then what happens when Kyle gets sick?
Or, you know, I don't live the 1 in the military. You know? Wait. What happens you get here with the bus? What happens you fall off the ship? Yeah. What happens you win the lottery? Like that 1 better. What happens if Kyle just calls in sick? No, Kyle can't call in sick.
In in the in the outdoor business world, if you're a single point of failure, you can't call it sick. And that's the whole point of race director burnout. You have to plan and know what's coming next, and if you can't show up who is. And if you have all the gear and you don't show up, what happens? In fact, I think that will be next week's episode. We'll talk about we'll talk about what happens in the year and show up. So think about that. The race director burnout.
So that's the that's the kind of the 5 challenges when you go back and think about it of a multi day race, and you kinda have to to to put those lessons together and think about your race day plans. Number 1, let's go this re this is, like, Let's revisit those really quick. Right? Race day plans change. We know that. Both days. Okay? We talked about that. Keeping everyone in town is hard.
And you're gonna have some challenges with that. Keeping your venue alive is important to know and understand that day 1 and day 2, things change. You have to be prepared for that. You have to be careful how you treat your volunteers. Voluntary burnout is a key issue that you need to prepare for and you have, you know, plans to deal with the volunteers. And then number 5 is race director burnout. That if you don't take care of yourself, who's gonna take care of your race? And there you go.
Alright. Thank you so much for listening to the Merchant Center podcast. If you got something out of this. If you're thinking about doing a multi event and you heard these 5 challenges, then you're thinking, yeah, wow. I'd never even thought about that. Let me know. Let me know what kind of maybe there's some other challenges in a multi day event. Especially you adventure racers out there, when you've got racers out on the course at O'DARK 30, what are the challenges you have to think about for that?
Because some of those some of those challenges might be something that someone else might be interested in learning as well. And you never know. When race directors start to think alike and start to compare notes, it could save a life. There's some safety's things in there and some gotches out there. They can help everybody make off road racing safer, more enjoyable. So think about that. So if you have any of those, let me know at [email protected].
Or it maybe just got some short little feedback you wanna give me. Go to at urchasing dirt on Twitter. I would love for you to go on iTunes. If you're if you're definitely if you're a subscriber, Go on there and give me a review. 5 star review. Tell me what you think about it. Let me know on iTunes. You can find me on iTunes, and the links are on the website at mergersger.com.
And give me some feedback on what you think, maybe a topic of something you don't think I've covered yet, or maybe you feel challenged, maybe you don't agree with something I have to say. Let me know. I'd love to have the conversation with you because I think more conversation about race directing and doing off road business help make this community better and this industry better for all of us. And again, I hope that you learned something from this and
I hope that you can take this and actually apply it to your next race. Maybe your next race will be 2 days. I'd love to know what that is. So let me know. I look forward to talking to you again on the next merch distributor podcast. Where I think we're gonna talk about I think we're gonna talk about the gear problem when the race record of all the gear, single point of failure and he doesn't show up, they couldn't talk about that. So to pay attention to that. So there, if you listen all the way to the end, you now know what's coming on the next podcast. Where some people maybe jumped off in the middle don't get to hear them. So that'd be cool. So I'll look forward to to seeing you on the next episode of the Virgil's podcast. Until then, Go outside.
Go grab fun. Go into the wilderness. Find your happy place because you can make a business out of off. Outdoor outdoor adventure and outdoor racing and off road sports. I know it's possible, and I hope you know that now too. So until the next episode, take care. I had an idea for Birch as a dirt podcast t shirts that said hashtag getting kinda dirty, and they only come in triple x.