The spring-summer road race is in place and more and more runners are picking and choosing a race to run. The task for race organizers is how can they get the runners to enter their race and not go to another race in the area. What makes the race they are putting on different from the others that will have the runners choose their race. Thinking over the years of putting on races I always tried to have something a little different that would set my race apart from other races. It turned out that there were several different parts of the race that at the time made it slightly different.
One thing was the race tee shirt and design. Early in the race director’s career I had a sleeveless hooded tee shirt that even now it is the only race that I have ever seen a race shirt like that. I tried a fluorescent orange shirt that runners – and bikers – like because of the visibility benefits it provided when they were out on the road. The next year the color was a fluorescent green that was also popular. The trouble with these brightly colored shirts is that it was not long before other races and even other sporting events started using the fluorescent-colored uniforms. Last year at the Kiwanis Pumpkin Dash 5K, I tried a high tech hooded long sleeve shirt that I had never seen at other races. One year instead of a tee shirt I gave a runner’s jacket. I even had men’s and women’s jackets for the runners to choose from. The jacket can be worn for many years after the race in cooler race weather.
Another factor was the race location. In the big cities races were held downtown or at a famous location that tourists visit. We are at an advantage living in the ‘hill country’ in that we can put races on that follow county roads out in rural and country scenic locations. Before development took some of the locations away, we had the River Roads 15K (the distance was different to try and draw runners starting to train for marathons) that headed out Staples Road and then turned down Old Bastrop Highway and then through the old neighborhood near the old high school. What made the race so memorable is that it crossed the river three times and during one cool fall race there were fog banks over the river. Runners would watch the runners in front of them disappear into that fog bank and would comment on that unusual scene. The Better Half Marathon was almost all country roads. Runners passed old antique tractors, cows, windmills and even some llamas that came close to the road to watch them. It made the run one of the most scenic runs in the area.
Another thing was the awards. The standard victory figure or a figure of a runner on a pedestal was what most races gave. One race we gave a small desk watch in a wooden case with the race name and place finish on it. Another race we gave a pen set that the award winner could place on their desk. The last few years of the Better Half Marathon I gave a plaque with a picture on one of my paintings on it. Nobody was going to copy that as I was the only one that had the paintings. Every year I would put a different painting on the plaque so that any repeat award winners would have a different painting. The overall awards were larger but even the age group winners had a smaller plaque with the painting on it.
The standard practice of giving a medal to all finishers we did for the first few Better Half Marathon. When other races started handing out medals we gave a very nice ball point pen to the finishers. Then we tried a mesh runners cap that everyone received at the finish. The 15-ounce coffee mugs were the last finishers award. Different colors and logos each year to drink morning coffee with. I still have my morning coffee from these mugs – some are over 20 years old.
Moe Johnson Running with Moe
