Today on the merch to the dirt podcast episode number 32, we're gonna do part 2 of Inside the Race Director Studio, where I walk you through the thinking and process that went into making an actual race day decision to call off part of the race. It all happened when it started raining. Mister Murphy turned on the faucet, and that's when the pressure goes up because you have to know how to make a decision. And I'm going to walk you through a 5 part process that will help you understand how to make a good, a effective decision based upon the information you have at the time and knowing your environment and your trail system so that your racers are both safe and happy. Are you ready? Get set? Go.
Greetings. Am your local neighborhood recreational engineer, Kyle Bondo. And as the Rechinir, I'm here to help make the art and science of race promotion under fantible and simple for those race promoters who didn't major in business. And this is part 2 of inside the Race Director Studio. And in part 1, we talked about a high level process for how you plan
day before the race during the race and what happens after the race. In part 2, we're gonna talk about some of the more specific race direction things that take place. When you're actually there in the midst of a race and a surf terrain. And weather starts to become a safety and braille damage problem, that you need to handle right away and how you should approach
major things like turning a race off, calling the race, making things stop in the middle of everything going on, which is which is not a great place to be as a race director. So we're gonna talk about how and, of course, we're talking about mountain bike racing in this time. So if you didn't get a chance to listen to episode 31, back to listen to episode 31. You kinda get an idea of where we are in our process for directing a mountain bike race. And then join us for this episode which is all going to be about decision making. And decision making
right in the midst of something happening that makes the race director's job really hard, but these are also the key skills you need to have in your toolbox. For when these these situations present themselves, you are prepared for how to deal with them. During the 3rd race of the 4 race series for Wednesday's at Wakefield, which is the race series have been directing. So now it's 15th year. The midweek race. So it happens on Wednesdays, hence its name, Wednesdays at Wakefield.
There was some weather for the 3rd race. And what I mean by some weather is winds is Wakefield in Wakefield Park, which is located just outside of of Washington DC along the the Beltway. Which is the freeway that goes around DC. So it's kind of a suburb of Washington DC. It's at some place. Technically, it's Anadale
but it's Burke in Springfield. It sits right in the wooded area. It's you wouldn't even some people drive right past, don't even know it's there. Anyway, The Wednesday's Wakefield race and where we hold this race at sits in a place that's strange meteorically. What I mean by that It's just a couple miles north and a couple miles south, east and west. You could be pouring down rain and Wakefield by itself
will be dry. Now you'll see the clouds. You'll see all the the activity going on, but you will not get any of the weather that other people are saying. So this is a challenge because this is a midweek race. People are at work. People are away doing their daily week day fit on things. So coming to a race on a weekday requires them to to either bring their bikes with them or go home and get their bikes and change and bring it to the to the venue.
We're talking 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock. So if it's pouring down rain around 3 PM and they look out the window and see rain pouring out at 3 PM, then they have this this this conscious thought of thinking, well, if it's raining here, it must be raining there. And and as a result, it impacts it impacts the the race turnout anytime this kinda weather thing kinda happens. So to combat this, it came up with this strategy of communicating people around the 3 PM time.
So around 3 PM time, we put out Facebook post, Twitter post, send out a a snap mail chimp to the list email to let everyone know, hey, look. We know it's wet. We know the weather's out there. We know it's raining where you're at. We know that It might not be the best riding conditions from your perspective, but at the park, parked a okay.
And we have people at the park who are checking the trails, drying out puddles, using air leaf blowers to dry out the bridges, to make sure that even though it did get a little wet or it got wet earlier that we're drying it all out in preparations for a race to make sure it's safe. Because the ideally The weather I mean, a trail system can take a lot of water. It's just dirt. Just dirt and rock and root. Now, you don't wanna have some of the stuff that's been built up. You ruined.
Some of the the some of the money put it there. You wanna rub it out so much that It's just this nasty muck. Those those places where the puddles never dry,
or it doesn't run it up so much that it's just kinda sketchy because it's with this deep gouge You don't want that to happen. But Wakefield is not like any of the park. It's been around forever. So it's taken a lot of punishment. That ground is like the hardened clay. It can take a lot of water. And it's been very dry. So rain sometimes is a helpful in keeping the trail together.
So a little bit of rain, not a big deal. Especially in summertime, when these trails are being baked, a little bit of rain is not a big deal. A lot of rain, however, is a big deal. And 2 years ago, at this particular park, we had a huge problem. There was a large amount of rainfall that took place.
And kind of explained to you since maybe you're not any you know, you have no idea how how the DC system works 3 ways and all that kind of thing. Let me kind of paint the picture for you. So the Beltway is, what, 3 to 4 lanes 1 way and 3 to 4 lanes another way. So you're looking at, like, 8 lanes of cars going up and down this freeway. That's a lot. That's a big big surface of concrete. Now when it rains, all this water's gotta go somewhere.
And Wakefield parks is right up next to an exit to 1 of the to the 1 of the the highways, and it's called Braddock Road. And it goes on to George Mason University. So right there in Fairfax County, there's this big exit which is like 2 lanes exiting into 1 lane. So in a sense, you have you have like 10 lanes of concrete there, and you had drains along that way that would dump into the park.
Those drains would lead to creeks. Those creeks would lead then to Accutene Creek and then the Accutene Creek waterway ticket to Lake Accutene, which is a man made lake. And that's how the water system the hydraulic system of this area works. Well, up to this point, we're talking 2015, the drains were full of junk and tree tree limbs, and debris, and the water didn't flow very well.
And so a big storm and the water would just kinda be would create just puddle. So as you go on the exit, you're hydroplanning, you're brewster tailing. It's just insanity. So you have to be very careful called Freeway. Especially doing 60, 70 miles an hour to hit this giant pond on the exit
because the water flow is not going very well. Well, Virginia Department of Transportation over that period of time up into 2015 was putting in something called hot lanes, and these are the the high occupancy vehicles, the HOV lanes, which would alleviate some of the traffic problems, and they put this in the middle.
So they took out they took out some lanes and and reconfigured the way the freeway works and put these hot lane in the middle. Well, why they did this? They fixed all the drainage problems along the freeway as well. Now, we come to Wednesday's wake field. I believe it was race number 2, 2015. At no point had a large rainstorm ever taken place in that park. And because of that, No 1 had ever seen the hydraulics of the new freeway system with those drains cleared. So we kick off race number 2.
Racers are are on the trail. Everyone's having a good time. It's sprinkling. Now again, sprinkling at this to this park is not a big deal. The trails can take a little bit of water. Plus we have the the mid Atlantic off road enthusiasts there that they're called more, which is kind of the trail evangelist and trail maintenance people for this park are there among us. And so we get some consultancy. We we consult with them. They don't see the rain as that big of a deal.
So the race continues, the race goes on, and we're and everyone's having a good time, laps are taking place. And then something Something bizarre happens. Something that's never happened before is the water coming off the freeway into the park is at 10 x what it's ever been before. It flows into the park so fast remember, we're talking 10 lanes of freeway. Constant constant rain. So the rain picks up a little bit. All that water flow going to those drains and those drains into the park.
And what used to be 6 inches of creek flow turned into 10 feet of creek flow. Flash flood level biblical Noah's arc flowing through the middle of all that. And mountain bikers, being who they are, see some some flow in the water and like, oh, well, look, the creek's a little high. And they wait across it or they try to ride across it. And at the first couple of laps when this creek wasn't really as high, it was kinda getting fat as in the distance from shore to shore was increasing.
The depth was not really that much at the time. Hadn't quite gotten to the the the biblical portion of it yet. And so some races were able to go across, then the rain picked up. And you're talking like the surface space of the freeway mixed with the park, with the drains of the park free flowing. Just a little bit of increased rain flow, increased the water
so much that we were we were dealing with a flash flood right in the middle of a race in a park that never had a flash flood in the history of this park. At least as far as I've been doing this in 10 years, never as this ever happened. So people start reporting as they come to the the the finish tent where I'm standing, hey, the Greeks get really, really deep. I'm thinking, well, there's a lot of people who, well, little lack of better word, exaggerate.
What's deep for 1, not necessarily deep for another. And and as being a venture racer from in my core, what I see is deep and what someone else sees is deep for 2 different things. Okay. That's fine. That's fair enough. So mountain bikes are saying sit deep, which means it's probably not rideable, which means they got off your bike and take a walk across you know, a foot of water, 6 inches of water. So I move myself down to where the creek bed is, and the water flow is so intense.
And the creek is so deep that it's it's it's totally What's the what's the word to put this? The the the danger level was extreme. Let's let's put it that way. So much so that during this race, some some racers were washed away downstream. In fact, a a firefighter, a water rescue firefighter in West Virginia, Went into the water to rescue a guy who's about to be sucked further down the creek bed, there are some converts that go under a dirt road.
She rescued the guy being sucked into that convert because people underestimate the power of water. And she rescued this guy only in the rescue she got sucked through. Hit her face on a rock, knocked her teeth out. It was horrible. Hey. That's why you have insurance. Luckily, that's the only injuries she suffered. It looked worse than it was at the beginning, but once she kinda came around, thankfully, that's the really the only kind of injury she suffered, which is which is
she's doing much better now. Mood out of their life, that kind of thing. So no 1 was dramatically hurt in that physically. Reputation wise, however, it was a complete disaster. The race was either shouldn't have been race because it was raining. There were people who weren't there commented on Facebook, it got really ugly. So the sensitivity to waterfall in this park escalated because of that event and then let alone. Now let's take you to 2017. Take you to the race that just happened this week.
At 3 o'clock where I live, which is like 40 miles south of park, it's pouring down rain. So I'm concerned. Do we need to call the race? I have guys who are up in the park looking at the park in the park or at the at that time. So I'm talking to him on the phone, say, there is no rain. The trail is mostly dry. The puddles that were there are gone. There was a storm earlier. It's gone. I can see sun. Blue Sky. Again, Wakefield, it's a weird place.
So at 3 o'clock, I make the call, raises on, raises a go. I put out the Facebook post, the true Twitter post, the email post, everyone knows the race is on, which is fine. At that time, race is fine. So what can you what can you think about the what what the sensitivity of this? The learning aspect of this is that making these decisions are hard. Because what do you do? Do you do you shift yourself off to a rain date, which could jeopardize volunteers.
People have summer plans. They might not make it to the next race. They might have to to bow out. You got you got turnout problems. This is a huge race day event where people come and only pay on race day. They don't preregister. So you get a lot of locals come in and register. So making the call early is important. Because if you make it too late, people all come. They look another window. They see the rain. They're not gonna come. So at 3 o'clock, we make the call.
Everything's good. I get to the park about 4. It's been raining the entire time I've been driving north up to the park. Until they reach about halfway, then, like, driving through a curtain. I'm in the dry. The road's dry. The sun's out. I was like, oh my gosh. Look at that. The rain is only south of the park right now. About 20 miles south of the park, which is a good distance. And knowing the geography of Virginia, rain tends to do this. Comes through certain swaths.
There's not a lot of mountains here. So it's hard to predict which way things are going. But usually it's the wind flowing out to the east, and you'd rain just kinda come and just comes and goes in different patches. Just like to stick anywhere. There's no mountains to block it in or cause it to to sit over a a particular park, which is nice sometimes. It's also unpredictable because rain just come out of nowhere.
Again, no mountains, so rain clouds can come right over the the appalachians or the Shenandoah's and come right into your park without without any warning, especially if some heavy winds. They can just show right up. You have to be kind of vigilant about the about the weather and the weather's weird. It's not like other places. So about 4 o'clock,
Still dry. Some dark clouds, but patchy things here. A little blue sky, a little sun. We're good to go. We set up. We get everything going. At 6 PM, we get everyone launched. All the single speeds, the master classes, the juniors, the beginners, they all go under the trail. We're good to go. This is about 6 PM. Right? So so right around 6:30, the rain shows up. What was it? 20 miles to the south? Winds kind of changed a little bit. Boom.
Here comes my clouds. But it's like sprinkling. It's like this tiny little triplet droplets. It's not big, sloppy rain. It's not that kind of stuff that that that's, you know, the biblical flood, the flash flood type of rain. But it's it's steady. Steady sprinkles, and it it just kinda ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows. So there's some concern. You gotta keep your eye on. So we finish up the 6 o'clock racers, and
we've got people out watching the Creeks. Learn that lesson the hard way again. I take you back to 2015. This time, we have people watching the Creeks. We're making sure that this hasn't happened. We've went from 1 inch of water till about 4 inches of water. So not a big deal. A little sidebar is last year, they spent a couple $1,000,000 and rebuilt the park to stop this whole flash flood problem.
Because not just mountain bikers are having to worry about this. You know, hikers and people who live there too. Plus all the sediment is being washed into the creek bed into their man made lake. And people in the little paddle boats that they rent at the lake were getting stuck on little sandbars. So they had to rethink the engineering of how this creek fed into like, which means they had to reengineer the way it flowed
from off the freeway and from everywhere else with the rain into those into those aqua. The zaquaduct areas. So they put so the park put in some money, the county put in some money, a couple $1,000,000 to rebuild all these creek beds. And because all these waterway creek beds have been rebuilt, they did their homework, that monsoon like situation, doesn't happen anymore. That was the 1 time it happened,
hasn't happened again. And since the reconstruction, there are some water flows but everything has been dis dispersed in a way to mitigate that flooding taking place. Plus, we're also aware of it now. So now, like I said, I put people on the creek beds to watch. They've got radios where I'm keeping an eye on the water, keeping an eye on the rain. But inside the tree line, water's the the trails are fine. Just outside the creek outside the the the tree line
and some of the open areas. It's getting a little peanut buttery. There's some there's some peanut butter. But the trails, like I said, they're kinda clay. They're they're really they're tough. A little bit of peanut butter is not that bad. Plus another aspect of rain, is usually constant rain or the storm that we were about to have, kind of smooths out the ruts.
It's only when you ride after it's rained. Those ruts really stay. So we have this huge debate going on. On what is rideable trail conditions and what is not. Now, we don't want people riding on wet trails. This is an unknown a known philosophy of mountain bike racing, at least here in Virginia. You don't want people riding on wet trails.
So you wanna keep the trails as good as possible. You don't wanna run them out. It takes a lot of work to fix these kind of ruts. It's not impossible work. It's just the manpower is small. The amount of resources you have is small. The amount of money it takes to fix a trail is minimal. So you do a lot of this in volunteer time. You do a lot of this with donated supplies.
So you don't wanna fix the whole trail system every single time you have a race. When you have this downpour and you run people over the trail and just mess it all up. And I say I mess it all up and how about ruts? These are giant grooves in the trail that mountain bikes tend to create when they hit the soft parts of of the dirt
and create these little valleys And these ruts tend to fill up water, and then the the water never drains, and this this becomes just as mucky place. And then you're going from puddle to puddle to puddle, and that's horrible. You don't want that. That's not a really good that's not a fun ride. And plus all the work it takes to drain those puddles.
But we put a lot of work in this trail We've drained a lot of these puddles. We put drains into a lot of these puddles to fix a lot of these problems. We know where the spots are that that this happens in. So a little bit of rain is not that big deal. And we're watching the rain, we're checking the trails, checking our marshals, everything's okay. So there's a debate on where we need to decide, are we gonna launch the 655 race?
Is that a race we wanna launch? These are the guys who go much faster. These are the experts in the sports the cloud sales and the fat bikes. These guys go fast. You know, wet trails, fast bikes, safety. You're kind of asking for an injury of some kind. So what there there's a huge risk here. So how do you plan the risk? How do you mitigate this risk? So here's my criteria is what I this is what I did to mitigate this risk. Number 1,
look at the look at the the complete picture and get as much consultation as possible. I have the trail guys for more telling me 1 thing. I had the PVC people telling me another thing. I had the various racers and their comfort levels for doing things, and I got all big picks sure of how the people who are aware of trail and trail maintenance and trail conditions. And how they felt. And at the time, it was pretty positive
that a little bit of rain was not a big deal. That was 1 number 1. Number 2, when you have a more expert level of rider, which is what the 655 race is, is you really don't have a lot of you know, no beginners in there, more or less. A lot of people are are very competent in their writing skills. You have a little better confidence that they know how to handle this situation. And then third, I just put into to understanding
of the bridges are probably the worst places because when you get water and wood, and bikes going over make a little dirty. They got slippery conditions. That's usually where things go go wrong. Is there any kind of obstacles, any kind of rock gardens, or mandate bridges. That's where things go wrong. So so I decided that 655 race would would would start. Figured the rain, it was kind of coming and going and coming and going. At this point.
I warned everybody about bridges, use the ride arounds when possible, and we launched the race. And the first lap, more or less, went exactly as planned. Nothing happened. Everyone rode, it was fun. They were dirty. They're muddy. They're coming through. So you got the experts going through, and the experts are usually they're the ones who get launched first. Usually take some between 20:22
minutes to finish a lap. I was gonna get a very good idea what the first lap looked like. And if I saw a broken people or broken bikes I'd call it right there. So the experts become so everyone gets 1 lap in, and then if it's too bad, it's too bad. Do the experts come in? Well, just before the experts arrive, the rain decides to hit, decides to get heavy, decides to get really heavy. And the heavier it starts to rain,
the more concern you get. Check the waterways. It only goes up another couple inches. Again, 1,000,000 of dollars. Pay, you know, get you paid for, which is pretty good hydraulics now. So the water is not really concerned inside the inside the waterways. It's the conditions of the trails the safety of the trails. Can riders navigate wet trails with muck and dirt, all slippery and slidey?
I mean, you just that's where you start you accidentally start to increase your safety and risk factor. So as the experts come through and they're looking rough and a couple of them who I know, telling me, hey, it's getting kind of unsafe out there. Then you're starting to get kinda sketchy. When experts tell you it's getting sketchy, yeah, depending on the expert, of course. Right? But when extras tell you it's getting sketchy,
it's time. Alright. Like I said, I let those experts come through. They were gonna be my my canary in the coal mine. My bellwether let me know what's going on. So they come rolling through right after it starts the heavy rain. They're saying it's getting getting kinda sketchy out there. It's getting kinda kinda safe, Kyle. And that's all I needed. So I got I they got their 1 lap off they go to do their second lap. I decided, okay. You know what? The experts can probably handle 1 more lap.
And a lot of them and some of them self DNF the conditions get too crazy. It's a backyard race. There's no $1000 checks. It's it's local fun time. We're giving away pumps and tires. For experts, we give away. We take the purse. We cut it by half. We give them
the top 3. Get a get a chunk of that. So there's there's a little bit of money involved. Right? We're kinda we're just giving back the money. More or less. With the expert females, we just, you know, we take the total registration and we just give it back. That's just how it works. It's easier that way. So there is money involved for those guys, but it's just prizes and stuff for sport and client sales map bike. So I decided at 7:30. That's it. The last expert female goes by.
That's it. Call the race. Send out the the alert. Call the race. All my course marshals start telling people. And this is a critical point in this race. Is rather than just me sending the finish line and say, race is over and people going, what? And then they keep running riding by,
I had to put some some some more communication in place. So I told all the course marshals start telling people when you get to the finish line, it's over, calling the race. So by the time they got up to the finish line, they were shaking their heads. Yes. Thank you. Cool. Got it. I didn't wanna do another lap anyway. It's horrible out there. And off we go. And so that communication chain helped prepare a racer. So they cross a pass a course module. We're calling a race. They pass another course marshal. They're calling their race. They get to me. They already know the race is called. And then I put people in front of the where you can go You need to go to parking lot or go continue on your lap. I had a bunch of BART riders just group up right there. So they can't get by. So they're gonna see if they don't get the message 3 times in a row, they're gonna see
a group of bikers and know something's wrong. And there's another course master right there too. And this is especially true for people whose English is not their first language. And there's a and Fairfax County is a very metropolitan area. We have a lot of people from Ottoman Countries. I got a large large Spanish riding population that comes out to this race. So they may not understand the race is closed because of maybe just the English accent to understand
whether or not they're they're interpreting what they heard correctly. But by hearing it 3 times and a block, so they can't move on the lap, everyone understands. Which is fantastic. So we have total communication. We shut down the race. That's 1 lap for the rest of those guys. So they at least gotta lap in. We can do results. The experts come and they finish,
they are so happy because they're supposed to be 3 laps. They do the 2nd lap. They're like, I didn't wanna do a 3rd lap anyway. They're done. They're more or less happy. A few, you know, there's always a few, but majority of them are happy. So all the racers are in by 8 PM, And, of course, the rain lets up. You know? Thanks, Mister Murphy. The rain lets up. So now the concern is, did we do any damage to the trails Did anyone get hurt?
What's the kind of the vibe of the racers who all finished? So the next thing I do. So they're doing results. As a restructure you need to go over and find out, can I get can I get a feel of your audience? Are they upset? Turns out that when you ride in those kind of conditions, so much more energy is expended, so much more energy to to go over those obstacles that slide, your tire slip, so much more energy to ride in soft top dirt, and just getting rained on just sucks all by itself.
So you have you have all those conditions when you see these people are colored head of toe mud, and giant smiles on their faces. And they say thanks for cutting it off at 2. It's getting cut and safe. Cut it off. Did it made the right decision. So even though we launched the race and we had to cut it short, Everyone's still happy. Everyone got a ride in. The local race remember. So, you know, there's no no championship on the line, so to speak.
And everyone understood why we did it. And more importantly, you get kind of the the trail advocate and the trail, you know, the streamers. You're like, oh, you're ruined. The 1 drop of water and the trail's ruined. They're kinda they're kinda like, you know, yeah. Yeah. We're worried about these sections. We know it looked it looked bad when we were riding it. We'll we'll see how it looks like in a couple days. So even they were kind of yeah. Okay. I guess, we were we were concerned.
It was not feeling the vibe too much from them, but definitely feeling from the racers. So everyone got a chance to race. We had an award ceremony and off we go. Race complete. Then comes the next day. Okay. So the race is over. Everyone's gone home safely. Couple couple of bruises, couple of bumps, but most everyone has gone home safe. Most everyone seemed pretty satisfied with the decisions made. So you think.
So what happens at a race, that gets cut short or is weather, especially for those who didn't come. You get the social media kind of replay that you have to be you have to be kind of watch carefully. What happens is you start to to see dissatisfied customers Some of those racers were not thrilled that either the call was made too late or that they consider what they saw on the trail to be extreme trail damage. What do I mean by that?
Well, these are the people that that thought that it was unsafe conditions that it was a race that maybe maybe should have been called earlier. Not calling out any names, but these are some of the people that that say it's unsafe while they move on to continue lap 2. So there's that. So it's it's kind of a it's kind of a little hypocritical about having it's being safe, but they're not dropping out or d n f. Other people who d n f on purpose, who said it wasn't unsafe, did so voluntarily.
And then participated in helping maintain the safety by by being course marshals jumping out there to shut the race down when the call was actually made. So it it it spans it spans the the group of of racers where you're gonna get some people who are just No matter what, you can't make them happy. This is just just the way of racing is.
You can only make 50% of the people happy, 50% of the time. So you're gonna get this kind of mixed. People are going to, you know, what they call that, the the Monday the Monday morning quarterbacking. Or they're gonna go and review all your decisions. They're gonna review what you did, and then they're gonna comment about it. And not everyone on social media is kind.
And some see that bikes riding on just a little bit of wetness on a trail to be extreme trail damage. There's an extreme point of view on what trail damage is and what's just natural wear and tear on a trail that after it gets done raining, all the ruts go away. The dirt settles down, and when it dries, you can't even tell there was even bikes there.
And so this is the challenge you have to face as race director. Because there are those who love to race and who race at any cost. There are those who love the trails and protect the trails at any cost. And then there's this confictional this this conflict in the middle, this friction between the trails are more important than anybody and everybody. And then there are the people wanna race and have fun on the trails. There's a friction there. Some people
it's it's strange. It's almost that the trails are more important than the people using the trails. Which is kind of counterproductive when the trails are there for the people to use. I mean, you don't want them walk them through the brush. You don't want them creating their own paths. You want them to stay within the designated areas. Not bushwhack. Not create bandit trails or or wreck other foliage or do whatever.
You want them to stay on the trails. But then we also want the trails to be useful for everybody. You don't wanna to and when they're talking about trail damage and this is a a bona contention and the definition is not anything solid. You know, it's not anything solid. It is a fluid definition of what trail damage is. What is trail damage? Well, I talked about in the first segment, you know, it's that running. It's that that big grooves cut into the ground that makes travel sketchy.
So if you're a novice rider, you come upon a big groove like this, you're going to you could fall into the groove and wreck your bike. Or you could trip on it as a runner. But really, and and this is kind of a a definition I like to go on, is trail damage tends to be the place. Or water pools. And when water pools there, people go around it. And when people go around it, they create more trail on either side.
And the more damages in the middle, the more water that pools there, the bigger the puddle gets, the bigger the trail gets, and you start to encroach upon the boundaries of trail and expands and expands, etcetera. Right? It gets it gets overwhelming. And this this happens during races, And during events or just during our normal wear and tear. I mean, water finds a way. Water finds the least
what is it they call it? How they say this? So that water finds the least objectable path. It finds the way to the lowest point. And if a rut causes my non bike on some soft dirt, is the lowest point water will pull there. Now, the ground naturally absorbs this stuff, but sometimes it's clay, it's hard pan, it's it's kind of a surface material
that is not conducive to draining. So it gets trapped. And when it gets trapped, it gets stagnant. When it gets stagnant, the water and then mud and stuff never really goes away. And people don't wanna ride their mountain bikes through mud, which is kind of kind of curious. That you would not wanna get your mountain bike dirty, but there are there are people out there, recreational riders who see a mud puddle, nope, and go around it.
Definitely runners don't wanna get their shoes wet, or walkers are walking their dog. Don't wanna get their dogs wet or their shoes wet. They go around. And, quote, going around is what causes the trail damage. And this is really it's kind of a cascading effect, the domino effect, of how trail damage can kind of creep in over time.
Now this is, in particular, some of the trail damage that some of the more avid mountain biker people worried about are features, bumps, jumps, tabletops, berms, that when it rains and you ride over them and things get squishy, you wreck those features, you knock them down, they erode,
they become less fun to ride. You get ridding and stuff inside features like downhill paths that can cause you to wreck it creates gravel and new debris in places they shouldn't have it. You start to get new things get created all the time. Now, nature, winter rains, massive amounts of water come down on a trail. Nature will just redirect or recreate your trail for you. You can't do anything about that. But you can do something about bikes
and horses and runners for more spec. Mostly it's bikes we're really talking about here, where the trail is impacted by the mechanical movement of the bike and the tire and the weight of the rider going through soft dirt. It's really what we're talking about here. So when people are racing, especially in this race right here, and they're in the midst of soft ground because it's been raining for about half an hour,
and it rained the day before. It was dries, some soft in some places. You're gonna get You're gonna get some places where you're gonna see the ruts. You're gonna see what you think is damaged. You're gonna see all the mud. You're gonna be caked in the mud. You're running through the mud. It's gonna look bad to you because the the ground is all soft. Everything's moving around. Nothing looks like it's supposed to anymore.
You see in tires and dirt being kicked up by the right in front of you. You see people go down. It's raining. You're miserable. You're gonna see all this up, and your first reaction is gonna be, oh my gosh, we're destroying the trails. I cannot believe I'm doing this. It's a guilt. You feel guilty.
And this is just a natural thing that happens to people who care about this stuff, especially those who get involved in taking care of this stuff. It's hard work. Building trails, fixing trails is hard work. And not a lot of people come out and help, not a lot of volunteers happen. You get plenty of people who claim to be trail advocate, to never show up. So when you're in the midst of doing this, you feel bad. You feel like you're contributing
to something bad. Like, almost like throwing your candy wrapper on the side. You know, if you're contributing to the delinquency, to the destruction of the environment of the trail, and you wanna be that person. So when you come off of mountain bike course like that when it's wet, course you're gonna be upset. And that upset turns into this passionate argument that oh my gosh. We should have stopped this earlier. I can't believe we did this. We're so we're so bad.
The only problem is is that when it comes to trails, especially like this this park, the Wakefield, not all trails are created equal. So these these types of damage that you're seeing or that you think you see during a race, when the rainstorm's done and the sun comes back out and you go and look, It's nothing there. It's a completely different environment than you saw when it was raining. And this is what happened. So the social media
bubbled up with I cannot believe we did this. We should not have done this. We should have stopped it earlier. That's why social media bubbled up. So this caused a huge concern. I was really worried that I'd made the decision too late, that allowing them to do the 1 lap and then allowing the experts to do the second lap was a was a decision that was done too late. I hesitated too long. So I was concerned. What do you do when you're concerned? Well,
what kind of damage you're talking about here? We have to go see it for ourselves. You have to visually see What is the totality of the damage? So you know what you need to do to fix it, and this is what I did. So the day after the race, I went out to the course, put my running shoes on, put my foot in my pocket, and I started running. I started
pretty much at the beginning of the race. So I jumped on the course, and I started running the course as if I was an actual racer, only on foot. So I'm moving slow and I'm paying attention.
And as I worked through the course, I discovered some things. First off, all the ruts gone. Nothing there. Everything's gone. The damage that that I was expecting to see, I didn't see, and I was actively looking for this damage. Are there puddles? Sure. It just got done raining. Was there a water moving to the course? Yes. The water folder flows all sorts of places, and water finds away. Can't get away from that. Where are the where the creek's high? Absolutely.
Acutin Creek was just bubbling and overflowing. So high, but it just got done raining. And that water comes way upstream,
all the way up Northern parts of Fairfax County. So that water's coming down from all sorts of people's lawns and all sorts of run offs, not just the park itself. So you have that creek being being swollen is gonna be this just happens after the rainstorms. But that's no big deal. Didn't affect the trail any. I ran the whole trail. I found some I found a discarded tube. I found some some bike levers, a couple water bottles. So I picked that up along the way. But for the most part, What I found after hearing
about all the devastation, because remember, this race start gets done at 8 PM. So going out there in the dark is not really an option. You have to see this in the daylight. I was expecting to see rudded out trails and just just devastation everywhere. What did I find? I found nothing. I found a trail system that not only took a punch but kind of was laughing at me by saying that's all you got. I got a little bit of rain and some bikes and that's it. Yeah.
Tell me, come back when you got something else, buddy. That's what I found. So to prove that point, took my camera with me, my phone, taking pictures of different places where I expected to see damage. Instead, I saw a nice flat trail. Now there was a tree down. There was brush in some places. Some branches fell. I found trash. But what everything told me was that, 1, I made the right decision. I base my decision off the safety of the riders, and the trail was still okay.
I probably could have run the whole race and not stop the race and still been okay. But instead, what it told me is I made the right decision at the right time with the information I had at the time. The weather changed on me in the middle of the 2nd race. Had it stayed light rain? Probably would have been okay. But because it got a little heavy in the middle, it was the right call. And this is a difficult thing for race directors to to come to grips with is did you make the right call?
And I think about this and I say, I did the right call because, a, trails are fine. And I kinda knew they would be. But seeing it for myself definitely helps solidify that it reinforces that decision. And 2, no 1 was badly hurt. There was a couple bro you know, bruises and cuts and scrapes, and 1 of my friends
bashed his leg up pretty good. But other than that, Everyone's just muddy and full of smiles. So this is this is kind of the the thinking that goes through. When you have to make these decisions, and you have to use the information you have at the at the time and you have to stick to that decision and not be concerned so much about the way people feel and about the social media or the the feedback you're gonna get afterwards of some some
hurt feelings or people upset that had happened or people upset about the trails. Because you're gonna find out that it's better to be safe than sorry. It's almost should be a principle of of race directing, is that it's better to be safe than sorry. If you feel like a race is starting to become unsafe, it's your responsibility to make the call. And this I hope illustrates what it's like to make a call in a position
where you have to you have to evaluate what you with all the information you have to hand, all this information you have at hand, you have to evaluate that. You have to get advice. And there are people pro and con all the time telling you stop the race right now. I can't believe you started it. Other people going, what are you worried about? It's gonna be fine. You have to evaluate all that with the information you have at hand, and you can make a choice. This is what it's like to be a race director. This is what it's like to be inside the race director's
head. Inside the Racer Racer Studio. That's what I call this 1 in the last episode. These 2 together should give you some insight on what goes on what things you have to worry about, the things they don't teach you about. And hopefully, this will help you when you come to these decisions to know how to evaluate that. And the next segment will go through
recap the lessons learned. But for now, just understand that what you think is reality what you think will happen, what looks bad at the time, sometimes isn't. And what you think, if your gut feeling or your understanding of the weather and how water works and the amount of water going on a trail system may look bad when it's happening, but sometimes it's not. And safety becomes the key reason to make a decision.
And when you base it base it off of keeping people safe, then what they feel or how much of set hopes that they are really is is secondary. Alright. To complete this episode, I just wanna go through I guess the top 5 points that you need to really consider as a race director when you're you're you're in countering these kind of difficult decisions.
And these difficult decisions being the the race day operations on whether or not you have the race, if you stop the race in the middle and all the fell out from that. So let's talk about number 1, making the call. You really need to have a policy, and everyone needs to know what that is, and where you will communicate that and when you will communicate that. In this case, we make the call at 3 o'clock because it's a it's a weekday race. So at 3 o'clock,
We do go no go. Now we might call the race later on, but at 3 o'clock, we made the first call that We'll let everyone know that there's a race happening, that we're gonna close and set up, and we think that conditions are are set and safe for us to have a race. And this includes not destroying the trail. Now when the trail is all dry and that we understand the way the park works, we know that a little bit of rain ain't gonna ain't gonna be a problem. We also
we watch the weather, and we make sure there's not some big, huge storm coming at us. Because it really really is really not a good thing. When you set everything up, just about ready to start the race. People are there. They've paid their money. They're setting up. And then the storm hits. If you're not watching the weather, then
you're not paying attention. You wanna be present. You wanna be paying attention to things like weather. Gonna be paying attention to the conditions on the ground. And you wanna be paying attention
to when you let everyone know this stuff. You can't just put this in your head and kinda like, no, well, wait and see. That doesn't work. You need to be communicating. You need to be telling people, hey, look. It may be raining where you're at. It's not raining where I'm at. Look, at 3 o'clock, we'll make the call. We may call it later, but 3 o'clock, we make the call. So you decide. I mean, you can't remember. There's some personal responsibility here. A racer doesn't have to race, he doesn't want to. About forcing anybody to come race. So if you don't like the weather condition outside, well, that's up to you.
Some people like to race in that kind of like sketchy weather. So that's number 1. Number 2. When you make the call during a race, you need to collect the information. You need to collect the information from a couple places. First off, The whole reasoning, of course, marshals out there, they're your sensors. They're the ones that can see beyond your point of view or your your line of sight. And you need to collect that information from them and have an ability
to talk to them. You need to be the communications channels may be open. If you don't have communication channels, you need to build them. I mean, not having them and I've had races or didn't have them. We use cell phones that didn't work very well or
or worse. We just kinda winged it. In the early days, that doesn't work. There's no reason to have a course marshal out there if you can't talk to them. The whole point for a course marshal is to be your eyes and ears out there in the field. But place you can't be everywhere at once. So of course, Marshall, not only is a course to make sure people don't cut the course, and everyone's okay, and There's an injury to be able to report it. But coarse mussels are also your eyes and ears out in the field, and you need to be able to talk to them. But next,
When you make the call, when you decide that a race is gonna be shut down, when you decide that it's not gonna happen anymore, you've collected enough information, First off, don't go research paralysis. Don't be collect information and collect information and collect information and never make a decision. Tell the race is over. What's the point? Or until someone gets hurt, what's the point? Collect enough
and then make the call. And don't hesitate. Don't hesitate to make the call. Make the call. And once you make the call, don't go back. Even if even after I made the call and it had stopped raining, which it did, stuck with it. Once you make the call to call the race, call the race. Now we're not gonna get into,
you know, whether or not we had enough race to do refunds or we had enough race, so everyone got a chance to race. And is that really can and count as a race. And, you know, we still did an award ceremony, so I guess that I guess it still counts as a race. They don't wanna get their money's worth. It takes months to set up a race. It takes all this planning, all this timing, all this kind of effort to put a race on. If you only get to do 1 lap,
20 bucks for a race is a tiny amount of money to pay. For the amount of time it took the setup to even get you to take 1 lap. So people ask Do I get a refund? Because I only do 1 lap? No. No. And the reason why is because you're not paying for your 1 lap. That 20 bucks or 30 bucks or 40 bucks, however, you're paying for all the things that went into place to make that race happen. And if it was only 1 lap, then it's only 1 lap. I can't control the weather and your safety is more important.
And this is this is a bonus contention to some people. Some people think they should get their get a refund because,
you know, they'll they didn't get their full race. But that's my counter to that is as a race director, you need to understand, you put all this time and effort for them to have the opportunity to even be at the starting line. And if you give your money back, then basically you said all that time and effort you put in there really wasn't really wasn't worth all that much. You really didn't take that much time. You really didn't put that much effort into it, which is totally untrue. So you need to stick to your guns
and know that if you have to call a race, then you call a race. And if you feel I mean, case by case, you feel you need to to to do that. That's I mean, that's on you. By my personal opinion, is because of all the work and effort that went in there just to get to the starting line, doing 1 lap, still not in a word so many, You still get points for the series.
Sometimes these things happen. That's just the way it is. Plus, 20 bucks from Outback races is pretty cheap. Just saying. So putting that all together, that that kind of when you make the call, don't reverse yourself. And don't and don't make it don't make it as if it's, you know, the end of the world because it's not. People coming home safe and alive after having some fun out there, hanging out their friends is way better. Than people being hurt and going home and hot and ambulance or worse.
Plus, the the community and the involvement on stuff, it's basically a giant party. And you should you should cultivate that. But that's just make the call, stick to it. Number 3. The reality on the trail depends on the trail. You should know what your trail looks like before and after race day. Because Wakefield is a very popular park just outside DC. It is a trail system in which I've seen every type of weather. I've seen snow. I've seen rain. I've seen sun. I've seen fog.
I've seen giant deer. Think we call that the wolf bouncer because there are no wolves in in Wakefield Park because the giant deer kicks them all out. And in some cases, people too. But this is a park or I've seen everything. And the park is just a way it's built. It can take a punch. Now, is there places that need to be fixed? Absolutely. Are there people who ride after a rains and wreck the trails a little bit? Sure.
Every time. Because it's a community park. There's all sorts of kids and stuff come off of different neighborhoods. They don't care. The only people really care of the people who are racing it The people who are enjoying it as the mountain biking community, they know, trails are wet to stay off them. In the middle of a race, when the trails become wet, well, you you take it by you. You kind of work that balance until
it's we comes out of balance, which is what we did. But the reality is The trail can take a punch and that means that the trail, a little bit of water on a trail, it hasn't had any water for weeks. The the crown absorbs that. It needs that. It keeps everything kind of in place intact. It doesn't erode. So know what it looks like before a race and after a race so that when it happens in the middle of your race, You don't you don't you don't do extremes.
Shut everything down because a couple drops water fell. Or as we say it, and there's a 1 trail system here, we call fountainhead, which is someone dropped a snow cone, so we shut it down. That's a very, very sensitive park. Because they spend a ton of money building the trails out there. And they're really, really sensitive because there's a a large dollar sign to that. Wakefield is a volunteer park. It got built
because people cared about it, not because someone had a ton of money. All of the 1,000,000 of dollars they spent in redoing the hydraulics and Creek bed system, not really any of that wind of the trails except to replace the stream crossings with some rocks. That didn't cost millions. They didn't cost 100 of 1000. May have cost what those rocks made a couple hundred bucks for some rocks like that. Machines put them in there. We'll say a 1000.
But the volunteer hours are put into that park? So the reality of that is your you know your park because you've been out there during rough times, and you know when too much is too much. But you don't you can't know that unless you've actually been there. So I guess what the point 3 really is is don't race a park that you haven't ever been to. Put that put that kind of in your in your back of your mind. Don't race a park you've never been to and that you've never been to more than once.
Let's put it that way. Number 4. Again, not all trails are the same. Are the are the same. And not all wet trails look the same in the sun. And this is this is me walking that trail the next day, and what looked like damage or what sounded like damage was reported as damage during race time. Was not damage after.
And that's important. That was important to me because I didn't wanna be the 1 who wrecked the trail. I didn't wanna be the 1 who messed things up. And I was getting reports back from people saying, oh my gosh. It's so bad. It's so unsafe. Things are just falling apart. Trails being ripped up. It's so bad. I was really concerned about that because I wanna be that guy. I wanna be that guy who had a race there and wrecked the park. Yeah. Remember that time Kyle had their race there? Yeah, man. Parks never been the same. I didn't wanna be that guy. And I was worried about that. I was really concerned
that that decision I made to hold the 65 race would come back to haunt me. That's a there was a little stress. Maybe that's why race directors don't have any hair. We all wear hats. So I didn't wanna be that guy. So I went out the next day after seeing all this social media stuff, all this social media outp outpouring, and seeing remembering what I heard that evening, I wanted to see it for myself. Because if I can see it for myself, I can organize
trail maintenance groups. I can help motivate people and grab people together with levels and stuff, we can fix it. You know? Not more doesn't have to be the only ones that fix this stuff. You know? Regular everyday people can do this too. I mean, more is awesome because they do this as part of their mission. But you don't have to depend on them to do all the park maintenance, and frankly,
they love the help. They love to see their trails all fixed, and they love people coming out there. Now they wanted to be that guy who wrecked the trail, and I wanted to make sure that I fixed anything I wrecked.
Especially since I have a race next week for the final of this 4 race series. I wanted to make sure the course was still good, or did I need to start organizing some stuff? And put some money down and get some people out there. But when I went to look at it, I found out the reality was people exaggerate a lot. And when I went and looked at those trails and found that those trails were, they were just fine.
They were more than fine. I could have really If I brought my bike, I probably could have ridden that. Now there were places that were soft and squishingly yet, and it's all wet, and I know better to do that. But I could have, and it would have been fine. That's how well those trails were. The rainstorm really didn't impact the trails that much. In fact, it almost made them better.
So going back going back to the point, nodal trail system are the same, and they look different in the sun. So I guess the point before is the exaggerations you hear of what people say is damage isn't necessarily damage. Some people say, it's all wrecked, and you go out there and find out what they see, what they think is wrecked. And it could be it could be a believable thing to them. I'm not saying that the people didn't believe the damage was happening. They did.
And I understand that in the midst of this race, they saw things that made them look like the trails are being wrecked. They didn't wanna be those people, and I get not taking that away from them. I'm just saying as a race director,
you need to see it for yourself. You can't depend on other people saying, it got wrecked and go, okay, I need to go buy some dirt and buy some rock and get some people together and go fix the trail. And they go out there and find out there's nothing wrong with it. Not that the trail wouldn't mind, to have new Gurtin rock and things like that? Sure it would. But don't do it as as a knee jerk reaction to reports that are not exactly
totally correct. Look, you should say, back in the military times, is that the first the first reports are usually wrong unfortunately. Because people exaggerate, emotion gets involved, and people think they see something, until they and they didn't really look at it because they were too busy pedaling or maneuvering or
trying to get their bike over an obstacle and they think they see things and didn't see things. They got water on their eyes. They just got done. They're sweating. There's a lot of things going on. But when you're standing there in the sunlight, looking at the trail and it's fine, That is the kind of effort you need to put in to make sure the report is valid. And that's number 4. Make sure the report is valid. And finally, number 5. Check with your racers about this call.
It will survey your audience. Get involved with the aftermath and kind of figure out what's going on. I mean, don't apologize for making the call. But when it comes to safety, I mean, their feelings are really secondary, but most of them understand. In fact, I found that to be the majority of the responses I got back is, anyone got it. In fact, because of the mud, because of the rain and the kind of the the kind of, like, rough conditions,
Some people are happy not to have to do multiple laps, but check with them. Find out what the what the come of the vibe is of your race environment. And this is where you find out that most people were okay with the decision. They gotta lap in. They got to to to participate.
So in a sense, they did get a little bit of racing in, and they got to hang out with their friends, and they got to enjoy the enjoy the park for what little time they could enjoy the park. Most were okay with it. This is a good thing. So you need to put that as remember those comments and the people who appreciate
that happening as a race director and take the the onesies or twosies negative comments or people who are who are extremists in sense of, like, oh my gosh. The world's coming you and in because bike's road went in raindrop. Take that and put in the back of your head and kind of ignore that stuff. Focus on the positive responses. And when you get an overwhelming amount of positive responses, then you know you know that you made the right decision. You know that the that decision,
not only did it help keep the trail pretty much intact, in this case, totally intact, but most people were okay with the decision. They were okay with the minimal amount of racing they gotta do. And they know they're gonna get to race again next week. They raced the week before. And so this is what it's like. These are kind of the 5 things that go into it. This 1 is like to to do real race direction. Not classroom webinars,
you know, the top 5 things. You need to know about race direction, that kind of thing. This is real world stuff. This actually happened. These decisions are have to be made. Rain actually happens on a race course. You need to be prepared for these kind of circumstances.
It's when you are not prepared, when you are winging it, when you're just like, oh, let's figure out how to go. That's when things go wrong. Because I could just have easily just said, it's rain. I don't care. And let everyone race. And it could have turned out just fine. The trail still could have been fine. Everyone would have finished. It would have been just fine. But it could have also been horrible. It could have been the worst day ever.
It could have been the 1 or 2 bikes who went off a bridge somewhere and hit a tree, it could have been the worst possible experience possible. Which 1 would you rather have? Would you rather have to have to get lucky and hope everything turned out okay or would you rather have kind of your ducks in a row make the call, get your advice, get your reporting, Know your trail system, check with your racers, get all the information and make the call, and then be okay with it afterwards.
Because that's what race directors do. This is the process for doing race direction and being around to do it again. And now you know. Do you wanna build your 1st race? Or need help making races better. I'm sure where to start. Well, today's sponsor is Rechinir, and [email protected]
is for you. Rechinir is the number 1 resource for race for owners who didn't major in business. And the result is over a 100 free lessons, strategy, and tools to give you a better way to build off road and endurance races. Enjoy some of the best lessons learned in event design, race management, and race promotion that will help you grow your business and give you a place to start on the path to becoming a successful race promoter. Rekenier can also partner with you. They'll help you get your race off the ground. So go to rekenier.com/start
and learn more about what Rechinir can do for you to help you build better races. That'srechinir.com/start. In our next episode, we're gonna talk about Mister Murphy. Now I've been covering the Race Director Studio over this past 2 episodes. This is kind of part 3 in that sense of the community around the park That's
not everyone likes mountain biking. And that 1 guy who doesn't like mountain biking? Yeah. He's called Mister Murphy. It's not his real name. But we're gonna get into his antics and all the things that he did to make this for his really interesting. That's on the next episode of The Merchandise Podcast. Thank you so much listening to The Merchandise Podcast. I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at [email protected].
Or if you'd like to send me a tweet, tell me about what you're working on. Or maybe you have a question, that's at merchants of dirt on Twitter. I really appreciate you listening to this podcast and for giving your feedback. And I shout out to Scott, thank you for helping me fix my volume problem. I'd really hope I sound better. I think I do. But your feedback definitely helped make me a bitter podcaster, and I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. I'll see you on the next episode of the merch store podcast and tell then go build better races. Take care.