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Are you ready for the 2020 race season?

GSRS Race Director Blog

1/28/2020

Your 2020 Race Timing Contract with GSRS

It's the end of January and most of you probably aren't spending a lot of time thinking about the race(s) you are putting on later in the year. But now is a good time to review and agree to your timing contract with GSRS and to make sure that the information we have on you and your race is correct and up-to-date. If you are one of our current race directors who hasn't yet agreed to the 2020 contract, go to our website at http://www.gsrs.com, click on the Race Director's menu, then select "My Contracts." That page will give you instructions on how to procede. If you get stuck at any point along the way please don't hesitate to ask for help. We usually have next year's contract for all of our races up on our website and ready to review within a week after the event. So in the future you can go ahead and do this at any time throughout the year that is convenient for you.

Jumbotron!

An exciting new service offered by NovusMage can really enhance your finish line and results area. From the same workshop that brought iResults display technology to so many of our races comes a setup using large video panels that can hang over your finish line displaying multiple times, names of runners as they finish. sponsor logos, and other special photo and video displays. In the results area they can be used as 'selfie stations' where runners can take a great shot of themselves with their finish time that they can share on social media. The best part is that the cost is nothing like what you might expect for such an expensive technology. And if you play your cards right with your race sponsors, you might even be able to arrange to get it for free. For more information check out their website at NovusMage.com. Don't hesitate because dates are booking up quickly!

Tidbits

Through our work we often hear of interesting ideas that we'd like to share with our clients...

  • Hard up for race volunteers? Do you have a college or university in the area? Local fraternities and sororities are sometimes looking for public service work opportunities and might be able to supply a large number of students to help out. What other local groups might be doing the same thing? Local service organizations like Rotary or Kiwanis? High School clubs? Scouts? Local businesses looking to give back to the community?
  • Do you have a lot of local businesses that sponsor your race and are you looking for ways to promote them? Have someone create a map with all of your sponsors on it, then share that map on your race website and in paper form at your race.
  • Encourage your runners to come back next year by offering some special perk. One race reserves numbers 1-100 for the runners who finished in those top 100 places in the previous year's race, and awards them a special starting corral in front of the rest of the pack. What other perks might you be able to come up with to reward your top 100?
  • Looking for someone to do graphic design for your race? Check out DesignCrowd, which crowdsources your needs to a large number of designers, after which you get to pick your favorite submissions.
  • Runners are often confused by the difference between net times and gun times, and which are used to determine placement in your awards. Have some information on your website explaining your race's policy. If you are confused yourself, ask us for advice on what to say.
  • If you are struggling to find enough prizes to give to all your age division winners, or haven't been giving out age division awards because of the lack of prizes, consider offering "age graded" awards. Age grading uses standard tables to compare a runner's performance against the best times of his or her age and gender for different distances, and assigns a percentage value to their performance. This allows, for example, a 70+ local woman to compete with an Olympic-caliber athlete on a somewhat level playing field. Give prizes to the top age graded percentages and you'll be rewarding the best performances of the day, whether or not they crossed the finish line first, and you don't need to have dozens of prizes for lots of different age divisions. Or use a combination of age divisions and age graded, so that your older and younger age groups, where every year of age can make a significant difference in performance ability, are all competing on a level playing field. For more information on age grading look here.

Links

Here are some links you may find interesting:

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