Today on the merch as a nerd podcast, episode number 16. We finished off our 4 part series dedicated to my co host, Mister Murphy, with 2 key risk mitigation strategies. The first is why you need to walk your venue before race day. Well, the second is why your brain needs you to build pre race checklists.
Spoil alert is because they're gonna forget stuff without it. By the way, Mister Murphy just called. He said since it's race day, he thought he would lock the gate to the park. But he decided not to tell you until you arrived. Ring, ring, is the park manager? No, it's not. It's going straight to voicemail. Why? Because of Saturday, everyone knows government officials don't work on Saturday in the off season, silly.
Thank you for joining me for the Merchants of DIRTT podcast. I'm your professional recognier, your coach, your merchant of DIRTT. Your host, and someone's still looking for his right Solomon Speed Cross 3 Trail shoe. Somewhere out in Okanistee Park. Kyle Bondo. 1 day I will find that shoot. Our website, merchandisinger dot com. And if you're new to the merchandisinger podcast, welcome aboard.
This is your post personal trail guide through the complex world of recreational engineering, where I help you simplify the business of off road race promotion, and make the art and science behind building promoting a recurring off road racing understandable.
Along with me is the man of the hour, Lisa's the last hour he gets to have. For whom the whole month has been dedicated to, the topler of poplers, the beater of seaters, the burning pine cone of Benu Kayos, and the other kind of Rechinir, the 1 that serves the w. My cohost that everyone loves to hate, Mister Murphy. And together, we're on a mission to teach you how to build better races.
And to build a better race, you need to understand the elements of a race that can go wrong so that you can prepare for those eventualities and make them go right. So with that, I welcome you to part 4, our last in the series of cautionary tales dedicated to topics, that I like to call that Mister Murphy doesn't want you to talk about. And in today's final spin of Mister Murphy's Wheel of Woe has to do with race day strategies.
To be specific race day risk mitigation strategies, kind of the thing we've been talking about all month long. And what you need to be thinking about if you want to protect your race from things that can go wrong or Mister Murphy's case will go wrong. And if you're saying, Mister Murphy, who is that? You talked about him all week all month. You talked about him constant laser coals and everything. Who exactly is Mister Murphy to, you know, tool or race promoter. Well, Mister Murphy,
if you're not if you're not familiar with who Mister Murphy is, let me introduce you. When I was in the Navy, When things went wrong, it'll often blame on this superstitious entity known as Mister Murphy. He's literally the personification of bad luck. Mister Murphy comes with from the belief that if anything can go wrong, it will. It all military operations are built off the premise that you need to plan for Mister Murphy showing up with the way they call it Murphy proofing.
For example, if you carry a GPS system into the field, If you carry just 1, chances are that 1, when you need it the most, you're gonna find it broken. It's gonna be lost. Could be out of batteries. There's all sorts of things that'll go wrong because you only have 1. So to a Murphy proof that you might, if it's a critical piece of equipment, have 2. 2 is 1 and 1 is none. That's the element that the foundation that most Murphy most veterans call Murphy's law, is based upon that principle.
So what does this have to do with race promotion? Well, consider this example. If you have your preregistration list on your computer at home, and you print it out the night before, like a good little race promoter, then you show up to the venue a hundred miles away. Only discover that no preregistration list. You left it on the table at home. And on top it off, There's no mobile service either. So you can't even download it off of the cloud.
No. You're in trouble. This is a perfect Murphy's Law moment. And this is Murphy's, you know, Mister Murphy's law firm, Murphy, Murphy, and Murphy. And they just sued you and wrecked your race. But no worries. I'm here to help validate your parking and get Mister Murphy off your back. I'm gonna do that by teaching the 1st of 2 very simple risk mitigation strategies.
Their first 1 centers around your need to check your venue before race day. Races are very special events. Most times, you cannot set up or stage gear
at a venue the night before the race. I mean, some parks will let you do this, but usually means you have to pay extra. Other parks won't let you set up until the morning of the race. So on race day, you need to have your race venue set up at least 1 hour before anyone is due to arrive, at least at a minimum. Depends on the sides of your event. You have a lot of gear to set up, then maybe you need to arrive in earlier, maybe like 3 hours earlier. And that's hopefully if they have the gate unlock. But certainly before you reach your registration is due to open. And that may still be not enough time. I mean, maybe thinking 3 hours. Why is 3 hours not enough time? When you arrive that morning before registration opens, you need to know if all your gear made it to the venue, where everything is, where everything goes,
and how long it'll take to put it on place. If something was forgotten or breaks during setup, you don't have any wiggle room to figure out the solution or replacement. You also need time to make sure your course is still good. This may include replacing missing course markings, putting up race day boundary tape, and spotting course changes like downed trees. Thankfully,
your race day course check should shouldn't take you that long unless you didn't do your pre venue scouting before race day. To scout out your venue beforehand is an essential part of any kind of course design process. You need to add that into your planning. Not doing it is asking for trouble. If you're not doing that, that critical step now, no worries. It's not race day yet, and there's still time. But that time is now. You need to force yourself to take that 1 last trip out to the venue today. If your race is this coming weekend, you need to be out there at least a couple days, if not the day before, and understanding what's going on. And there's there's 2 very important reasons why you need to do this and build it into your your process. And the first 1 is that you need to make sure everything is right where you left it. I mean, you have to make sure nothing has changed. Trees fall, streams flood, and the park You can start construction without anyone even knowing about it, and the same could happen to your venue. Always check out the location before your race. And then again in the morning of the race and make sure everything is still clear. Better to know you have a problem early than to find out the morning of your race. Nothing will ruin your race, like finding out that a 50 year old tree with a 4 foot trunk has been laying smack down in the middle of your course for a week.
Which just happened to me twice now. So other issues that could impact your event too is is the lock gate. At a mountain bike race we did last year, there was a particular vehicle gate that sat in those main
straight away that we were gonna have the start finish on, and I had a giant padlock on it. And the park manager did not share that information and trying to get them on the phone, was impossible. In the weekend, no one's gonna answer their phone, no one's checking their voice mail, so we had to figure out a workaround. And luckily, we were able to to reroute the trail just enough to satisfy the officials, to allow the race to continue. But having a locked gate, a simple locked gate, is something that if I had gone out to the course, a few days before the race, I probably would have seen that lock. I probably would have have done the course my course inspection. I would have seen that lock and known that that lock was going to be a problem. So this is the kind of things you need to be thinking about. I mean, some parks share an easement with power companies. A lot of parks have mountain bike trails, rail, running courses,
they share land with power pump. Big power poles go through their land and they're out there, sometimes powers out, they're fixing it, they're doing all sorts of all sorts of power related things. Now their trucks are huge. And if you have spectators
and racers coming through a certain turn turn on your course which is all taped off and now there are 6 construction guys who, by the way, aren't going to be very friendly to you because they didn't want to come in on a Saturday either. And now they have to drive their truck through your venue that you will have to rip down or stop the eraser and let them go because they come first. That's just the way the park will feel about it too. So you have to be be understanding that these eventualities can take place and then know that you can mitigate those by. 1st, even knowing that exist. 2nd, by knowing that if truck does show up. How and when you can change things. Another eventuality you have to prepare yourself for is the possibility
of bandits.
Encomp bandits, to be able to call them jerks. But these are the folks. They're usually locals, and they don't care that you're racing. They often tear down your arrows and tapes and have even been known to drop tree limbs and rocks on the trail just to mess up the race promoter. Now why do people do this? Who knows? But they do. So you need to prepare yourself. Mean, course, Marshals can usually deal with these kind of people on race day. But before race day, they can cause havoc on a course that you've already marked especially if you're doing multiple races on that course and you had arrows up the night before and you go out to the course that morning and find out how your arrows are missing. That's a problem. And that takes a lot of time to go out there and reattach
those arrows if you brought more arrows. So these are the kind of things you'd be you'd planning for. Another eventuality is something that that doesn't happen too often, but still can be a problem is double booking. Some parks art managed very well. And you show up to a race only to see there's a whole another event happening. This has happened with with some of our events. Where we share a park with baseball teams and softball teams that
also have a ton of spectators in cars where parking becomes a problem. So now you have to figure out where you can park the overflow parking where you're not interviewing the baseball game or there's a farmer's market. Or there is some sort of a here's another 1.
Lock in high school events where kids come to the rec center and they're locked in for all night long and they're they're coming out in the morning. Where they've taken up the entire parking area. So now you're having a race the morning doing setup, only there are vehicles where you need to put tents. So these are things you need to be thinking about. You need to understand the schedule of that venue very, very well because you need to be prepared for eventuality
that what you thought was a little baseball game is actually the district championships. And there's a thousand people there now. Now what? And prepare yourself for those eventualities. So the second thing you need to do is make sure everything is flowing. You may consider where your gear is at gonna be placed and how you will get it there. I mean, do you have to hike it in? Can you drive a car to where you need to set up your equipment? And how is it placed
so that your your support team knows where everything's just to go so the customers flow through there without being bottled up. You might be thinking about customers maybe my customers are customer flow. Well, this is how your customers will move through your venue from parking. To registration, to staging, to racing, to finishing, to spectating, to awards, and back to parking in home. You need to think about that entire transition
This is called your customer flow. You should always make guests safety a requirement, and you can effectively separate people who are there just to watch from the active racers of the course, you will decrease the overall risk by a significant factor. You don't want spectators wandering out on a mountain bike course for sure. Good customer flow also puts all your registration elements into alignment to what you need your customers to do to get ready for the race. This is an order that you need your customers to do the activities in. Don't put waivers far away so that nobody can see them when they approach registration. Because you always get that 1 volunteer. It's like, oh, did you fill out a waiver? Yeah. You gotta go back and fill out the waiver. They shouldn't be saying that every 5 minutes. Put the forms and the waivers in the customer's way so they have to walk around the station on purpose. It's kind of
it's like the the stupid proofing it in a sense. People still forget that they're there. People thinking, oh, well, I've signed the waiver last time. Right? But you'll put the forms and those waivers in their way, now they might see the customer. It needs me other customers stop, pick the waiver, they'll like, oh yeah, a waiver. If you need ratios to pay before they get the BIB number, don't put the BIB numbers on the left side of the table and the cash box on the right. The left to right registration just kinda makes sense. Flow your customers from station to station orderly fashion, and you'll keep registration from getting overwhelmed and
confusing erasers and then asking tons of questions. The whole point is not to ask a ton of questions. So to do this well, go stand where you expect everyone to park. Then you're out at your venue, stand in the parking area, then walk yourself from the parking to where you plan on putting registration. Does that layout make sense? Does you flow from left to right in a logical way? And if not, Now is the time to change it. This is the advantage you have by doing this early. Think about your customer as they arrive at the venue where they park. And then where they prepare themselves. And they move to registration. Is there signs? Is registration far away? Can I see it? If music's playing, will I hear it? Or will I not hear it? I might need a volunteer up there telling me where to go. Don't make them guess. So flow your customers through your registration and use post survey tapes and signs that create kind of Disneyland effect, channels are excellent ways to flow registered racers through your venue while keeping spectators on lookers out of the way. We think about work. Everyone's gonna finish too. When racers finish, they tend to cluster around the finish line to cheer on their friends, talk to spectators,
exchange war stories, you know, show their boo boos, and talk about that 1 part of the trailer's hard. This cluster will get dense quick. Especially when the middle of the pack arrives at the finish. So consider where that area might be and how you will need to move finishers away from timing. Into an area better suited for that gathering, don't make your guess think. And I say guess, I go back to the Disneyland example, where we we stop using the word customers or calling them guests. If you think about it that way, if you flow through the course and you'll figure out where finishes
versus maybe laps, so maybe you have like a shoot off to the left and you usher people off the course, or maybe you move timing back. And you think about that now, not when the race is happening. Not go, oh, jeez. These guys are clustering here. Hey, everybody move. You have to tell them every 5th 15 minutes. Hey. Everybody move. Hey. Everybody move. Well, first off, they're not gonna move very quickly. 2nd off, you shouldn't be doing that. You should already have thought this through. Don't make your guess think. Keep it simple and flow. Once you have a good idea on how you will move people through your venue, then sketch it out. This is a plan. So sketch out how you'll do this and then share it with your team, share it with the others, share your plan with everyone involved. Because this is an important step to sharing Everyone on your team knows the plan, race day will go so much smoother for you. It's never too late until it is. And the morning of the race on race day will be too late for you to deal with real problems. And nothing hurts your reputation faster than hosting a race that doesn't start on time. I mean, pre checking your venue is a simple part of of the process. That you should never neglect, make it a rule, that you will never let your course sit too long without checking it out before racing. Your customers will thank you, your guests, I should say it. Your team will thank you. And your stress level will thank you too. Don't make guests think. Always
always always inspect your course and your venue beforehand, and understand how your customers will flow through it. And make changes at the last minute if you have to. You discover something the last minute, make a change. You have the power to do it and tell you don't. Someone famous once said, I love the smell of racing in the morning. It smells like victory.
Okay. I know what you're saying. Robert DeVall didn't say that about racing, but he could have. Meanwhile, you're tucked in your warm bed dreaming of fat registration dollars, sold out venues, and beep, beep, beep, What? Did you think you're gonna sleep in a race day, please? You've got work to do. That course is not gonna set itself. Those tents need pop in and those signs need hanging. So many cones,
so much survey tape. Hopefully, you've been out at the trail a few times like we just talked about over the past week. Looking at for downed trees, or for own weeds, trail debris, and your arrows, if they're not up, then you have to you have even more things to do. In the dark of the morning. Long before the sun comes up. You need to have your course mark, your survey tape in place, your intersections close off. If you wait too long, the race schedule will completely get away from you before you can get the chance to blink. And that's when you spell it. Pre racing in the morning,
but calm before the storm. It is the sweet smell of Don trails, Morning Dew, and of course, fresh coffee. You are the most peaceful.
You will be all day in the morning. And how can you be so calm? Because you have a prerace checklist and you used it. Wait. Used it. Right? You have a pretty nice checklist, don't you? Okay. Don't panic. Just another bad dream, and that's why that's why you're here. To learn about the things you didn't know you needed to know before you needed to know them. So this is the benefit of of racing education is you get to learn
how a lot of other race program promoters did it and did it wrong or did it right and use that to make your races even better. So let's know it. I mean, let's learn it now. Okay. So if the victory comes in the form of a list and your prerace checklist is that list. It's like a tool. You're thinking like a hammer? Yeah. Like a hammer. It has a purpose and needs to be short and precise. Don't add complexity to it. There is no point to a tool that doesn't have a use. And our Prius checklist has a very specific use. It keeps you from getting to do something or bring something on race Like I said in the intro, it helps your brain remember stuff because you're gonna shove a ton of stuff in it, especially on race day, and you're gonna forget something. So that's it. That's that's the whole point of a checklist. Very simple process. Right? And, of course, like like anything we do on on merchandising,
there's a easy way to remember this. And it comes in 4 parts. And it starts with read it, see it, bring it, check it off the list. See, simple 1 to the point. So what is was this got a victory smell like? Well, it's different for everyone. But when you smell it, you never forget. However, before you can shape your
pre race checklist, you should probably need to see what a 1 looks like first. Right? So let's let's talk about that. Here's a good example of a prerace checklist. Let's think about our prerace checklist for 1 week before your race. Okay. So let's think about some of the things you need to have. So by water jugs. Do you have those? Maybe don't. Create directions and parking signs like we just talked about before. You're gonna walk in your course, you find your flow, you may need to buy some new signs you can think about. You need to proff all the forms and lists of printing, all the printing. You need to get extra survey tape, cones, and posts. Why? We go back to Mister Murphy. The Murphy proof it. 2 is 1 and 1 is none. You're gonna need them or because you're gonna run out. You're gonna find you need to find those reflective road guard vests. Those are so handy for parking dudes or gals. You throw it for the reflective vest on, especially at 6 o'clock in the morning and the pre dawn right there. The headlights head off their reflective vest. They see the person who's directing them to park, and they're not that expensive, but you should probably have 1 or 2 for the volunteer parking lots of people who can see them. Otherwise, they park anywhere they want to in its whole chaos. Petty cash.
You thought about that? This is a a huge deal because bringing petty cash, because you have to get change, You need to make sure you have enough fives and tens in order to do that. I mean, have you printed out all your paper permits, all the ones that the park gave you and with your rear sanctioned event planner gave you, You wanna have those on hand. You don't wanna go to your event and not have your permits. And if someone could challenge you on where do you have permission to be here. And then you wanna, of course, like we just talked about before, visit the venue, walk the trails. You need to put that on your list so you don't forget to do that because you're gonna get overwhelmed. So that's that's a list for a week before the race. How about the night before the race? This is this is a this is a critical list and you've kinda run your race just the days before the race buy these kind of list. And go on the you build this before you even get close to the list because you come up on the week before and the night before and race day. You will forget stuff. There'll be too much too many things going on, and you will forget. So what does a what does a night before the race checklist look like? Well, things that I put on my list are things like put gas in the vehicles.
Oh my gosh. How many times do you get up and you think I got some extra time? And you load the car and you start off to the venue, you'll only find out you'll have a tank. And it's a hundred miles away. This is important. Do it the night before. Check the gas and the generators. This seems like like no brainer, but you wouldn't put on this list if it hadn't happened before. You need to pack shovels and axes. Why? Well, they're analog. Chain saws sometimes don't start.
It's shoveling an axe. They'll never let you down, but you wanna have them. You need to inspect your alley boo boo bag. And if you've never heard me talk about the alley boo boo bag, it is the medical kit. You need to make sure that the last time you did a race, the last time someone got in the medical kit, they didn't leave you with just a couple dinosaur band aids. You make sure all your stuff's in there. You need to grab your checkbook.
Why? Well, if you have a sanctioned event, You need to pay those officials and you don't wanna pay it with cash, pay it with a check, you want to stage and load your vehicles that I before. Don't do it the morning of. Do it the night before. Give yourself some time. Relax. You wanna check the weather. 12 hours for your event. Keep an eyeball on that weather. And lastly, bad by 9. If that's even possible, I can't sleep the night before a race. If you can get to bed by 9, especially if you get about 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning to to start on the way to the venue, that will do you a huge amount of good to have a good night's sleep. And that leads us to, of course, to the morning of. Now, morning of, this is a special checklist. This is not necessarily
your checklist for the race itself. This is a checklist before the race itself. This is like your prerace prerace checklist. So the what's on what's on that list? Wake up at 3 AM. That might be something you do. Maybe you have a little more time, if you don't, depending on how far we have to go. Coffee and breakfast.
This might be the only time you get to eat all day. You need to make that a priority. You need to buy some ice because that's gonna be important. You need to, of course, drive to the venue and arrive at a reasonable time. I try to aim for 5 AM. So you have a 3, scrub around, get breakfast, get everything ready, get to the car, drive to the venue 5 AM. If they let you, some parks may not let you. So this course but this arrive at the venue, the earliest you can possibly be there. Prep your volunteers. This is the thing where you tell them
your pitch, your speech about what you expect from them and what their authority is, and where
they can get answers if they have questions. And if you don't have a volunteer captain, then you yourself will be prepping these guys. You need to prep your parking people, your parking volunteers. On how you want your cars parked, where you want your cars parked, and where you don't want cars parked. I mean, some courses, the parking lot's right next to the starting line. Sometimes you don't want cars anywhere near there, especially how you wanna start things. So you wanna you wanna prep those guys. You make sure that's on your checklist because if you forget to tell them they're gonna park the cars any way they want to. You also need to make sure that all the gear is up at the venue and it's in the locations that you said you wanted it to. And if you sketch out the plan based on our previous topic, then your volunteers or your staff already know where you want everything. And they could do that without you, which is fantastic. You need to make sure the course is marked and you sent out your checkers to make sure none of those bandits took your arrows. And you need to set up registration correctly. With the trusted person, your registration paperwork, making sure it's getting the right people into the right places and the right databases, and that bib numbers are being presented in the right way. You need to set up timing. You need to make sure timing has everything they need and no 1 forgot the power chord or the computer and making sure that they are set up correctly. You need to turn on the music. Be surprised how many times the race has already started. People are like, Man, it's all but quiet. Yeah. You're on the music. If you have music. Yeah. If somebody just don't have music, it's okay. Some people in the races that do. Hey. Music's cool. You need to open your registration. Hopefully, by 7 AM. No. This is on my list. Right? So get by 3, arrive by 5, open by 7. It gives me 2 hours. Of registration of setup, and then my first start's at 8 AM. So that's my morning race checklist, pre pre checklist. Which then would roll into my schedule for race day activities. So those are the 3 checklists
that will help keep you honest
about what gear, what things, what events can you take place before the race actually happens. And this will help you be victorious. As you read through these lists, you may start to wonder about some of the line items are listed. Trust me. There's a reason for everything on this list. Is it entirely inclusive? No way. I mean, your list will be different. Why? For your venue, it's your course, it's your schedule, it'll change to your needs. Some races require you to stay in a hotel. It's hard to stage gear in a garage if you're a hundred miles away from your house. I mean, other races will require you to stage gear at the venue. I mean, this may mean posting a watch, possibly around a clock guards, or maybe even sleeping in a tent, the weather might mess up your list. Rain is a funny way of slowing things down or pushing things back a few hours. So be prepared
for weather related delays, but do remember the point of a pre race checklist and it's to make sure you do not forget something thing on race day. I mean, like I said on the on the list already, petty cash? I forgot it twice. Banks aren't open on on Saturdays at 6 in the morning. Inspect the Allie Booboo bag. Don't we talk about that? I brought the 1 with only the dinosaur band aids and nothing else. Yeah. Hard to stop the gushing blood from someone's leg with a dinosaur banding. Gas in my SUV. And gas in generator, empty on both counts in the same race. Extra survey tape, read out when some of the volunteers used too much on different parts of the course leaving an intersection without a tape, a critical intersection that the referees, the officials,
pointed out and said, you can't start till that's done. Well, you need extra survey tape for those kind of strange eventualities. So your list will include many of these gotchas.
That brought on by your fight with Mister Murphy in his Murphy's law fame. The Murphy proof you're planning by thinking about What could go wrong if you didn't do it or forgot it? When you know what that is, put it on the list, and you're gonna have this running list that says it constantly keep growing, but then you need to use the list. Say it with me. Read it. See it. Bring it. Check it off the list. It's really simple. So you build these lists. You read the list beforehand. What did I forget? Oh, I know there's nothing to add on there. You can just see it. So you need to physically
see the item that you need to put, the gearing to put the actual thing that is on that list. You see that with your own eyes, not just assume it's gonna be there. You need to bring it. So although you saw it in your garage, did you put it in the car? You need to make sure you brought what you were supposed to bring, and then you check it off your list. Once you're confident
that you have read it off your list, seen it. You've brought it. You can check it off. And then Mister Murphy can be overcome. You just have to start thinking like him to keep him away. And now for some final thoughts. Mister Murphy's Wheel of Woe, will always keep on spinning. But if you've been a listener to my past 4 episodes under the merchandiser podcast, you are now armed with the knowledge of how you can Murphy proof your races.
You started with the Murphy's Law of Racing, and we learned how to deal with race cancellations.
The next, you received a crash course in emergency response planning, and an understanding of how your efforts prepare before bad things happen, 1 day directly could tribute to saving our Razer's life. You were then introduced to the fundamentals of risk management, giving you a very good handle on how to create your own risk mitigation strategies, And then you were finally presented with the race day tactics of venue checking and previous checklists. What we just talked about. When it's all said and done, you're more informed
than most of the race promoters out there today. What's even better? You now have the tools, the bounce back, but everything goes wrong. You just have to be willing to use them. Mister Murphy has plenty of clients already, so take what you've learned here and Murphy proof you're thinking, and it will lead you to building better races. And now you know. That's it for today, and thank you so much for listening to the Merchant Center podcast. In our next episode,
Your race permit is a single most important document of your race. It unlocks access, resources, and liability protection. You can even say it's the lifeblood of your race. So in our next episode of the merchandiser podcast, I'm going to talk to you about the permit process and how do you get your next race permit approved. Because if you don't have a permit, you don't have a race. And if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me on Twitter. I'm at merchandising dirt. And please go to the merchandisinger dot com website. Do all the subscriptions for any kind of device you use, a list of the podcasts over there. I'll see you in the next episode at the merchandisinger podcast. Until then, take what you learned here and go build a better race already. Take care.