Up and Running: What Goes On Behind the Scenes to Put On a Marathon Makes Training to Run One Look Easy

By Gloria West

Having served as a new marathon director not once, but twice, an uncommon distinction in itself, I am in a unique position to assure every runner that the anatomy of a marathon is as complex as the human body, with its intricate network of arteries, veins, and capillaries.

And most marathon directors would add that the event not only has this visceral complexity of the human body, but it also contains the mystery of the soul. After 10 years of directing marathons, the mystery is far more understandable, but no less intricate.

It is no simple task, and yet the beauty of this beast is so exquisite that the best way to associate this endeavor is by remembering your experience of training to be a marathoner.

First comes the Initial Phase, when you say to yourself, “Hey, I’m gonna run a marathon. No longer will I listen to those naysayers telling me I can’t do it! I’ll show them!”

Next comes the Operational or Training Phase, the long, hard process of preparing to show yourself and the world that you have what it takes to run 26 miles without being chased. Then comes the Final Production Phase, where you actually do it.

Now, multiply your level of effort and commitment to that first marathon 500 percent, and you begin to understand what the race organizers go through. This is the level of intensity a marathon director works at on a daily basis. So where’s the bumper sticker that asks, “Have You Hugged Your Race Director Today?”

Perhaps it is time to describe the work that goes into putting on a marathon so that each runner who runs one can have a brief glimpse behind the scenes at the often fraught, underpaid, overworked marathon directors and their race committees.

THE INITIAL PHASE

The first phase simply electrifies you, very much like that rushing, inexorable voice that said to you, "Hey, I can run a marathon." This time it's saying, “Hey, I can organize a marathon!" The excitement is so high that it carries you along at full speed like a hungry cheetah. Unfortunately, within this high state of excitement, you are often immune to common sense. You soon learn that motivation and speed are hardly enough - no, this cheetah must wear several hats. You find you need to be a politician, a sales person, an experienced runner, a marketing expert, a community relations person, and a media spokesperson. You also need the savvy to find financial security to ensure your dream’s longevity – and at this point it is still just that, your dream.

Early in the planning stage you must give the event definition through a well-thought-out marathon course. Where the event builds its home is imperative to success because, as in real estate, location means everything. A marathon in Green Bay, Wisconsin ("Titletown, USA"), has an appeal that a marathon in Sugarbush, Wisconsin, home of two bars and a softball field, does not.

Even before the course development, marathon organizers need a crash course on creating a budget, event marketing, and proposal writing. A race budget will be a reflection of the organizers' vision and marathon expertise. Obviously, an experienced marathoner will automatically know to add to the budget such details as safety pins, mylar wraps, garbage bags for water stations, media vehicle stickers, and volunteer amenities. There is basic research that needs to be in progress in researching some of the larger costs of items such as insurance, advertising, printing, mailing, T-shirts, medals and other premiums, office operations, staffing, timing company fees, rentals, and city expenses.

Event marketing is key to this production because a marathon simply cannot break even through registration fees alone. Small or large vision, no marathon can operate without the help of outside funding. The $40-50 entry fee is quickly swallowed up by such fixed expenditures as timing company results and resultsbook ($2.00-3.50 per runner), volunteer T-shirts ($4-5 each), marketing (design, printing, paper, banners, program books, advertising) of roughly $4 per entrant, medals at $2 each, mylar wraps at $1 each, rentals (portable potties, timing equipment, signs, scaffolding, tables, chairs) to the tune of roughly $4 per entrant, police and city services (remember that a Sunday event earns time and a half for each officer you see!) that comes to $3 per runner, insurance (about $1.50 per runner), numbers/pins/bags (50 cents per runner), and postage for entry confirmation and results book (50 cents per runner). These are just a few of the fixed costs that the event coordinator works tirelessly to fund through in-kind sponsorship. And let's not forget food, water cups, and course equipment.

Oh, yes, and how about staff?

Sponsorship offsets this huge budget. Sponsorship sales through event marketing is all about convincing a business that buying into an event is a stronger way to market than the traditional avenues of print and media advertising. Fish for the big one. The trend in today's corporate world is "Big Splash" sponsorship - throwing serious money at one or two public events rather than doling out small dollars to many organizations and getting lost in a school of tiny contributors. Consequently, your proposal must sell the overall picture of the event, the details of the event, and most important, the benefits to the sponsor. Even when the sale is made and you have dollars in hand, you remain at the starting line, as now you must ensure an endearing relationship between the marathon and its sponsors.

CREATE A COURSE

During the Inspirational Phase, you enjoyed the task of finding the course for the marathon. You've created a route that is interesting, scenic, manageable, and not too complicated, and you had a good time doing it! Now it's time to pay the price for that enjoyment. Your goal is no less than trying to win over an entire community to buy into your glorious vision. Never mind the people who live along your course; you've got to deal with the police department, city planning department, city public works department, state highway department, railroad officials, and political officials, just to name a few.

Then you've got to learn to schmooze the political entities into cooperating, pretend to minimize existing power struggles, affirm the importance of the official folks with whom you're working, not ask permission but beg forgiveness, watch out for gender issues (the subject of another whole article in itself), and put together a medical and safety committee.

In defense of society's civic complexities, I need to clarify some matters. Quite frankly, this is an area where we see a huge difference in race directing today as compared to a decade ago. This year when it was time to make up this committee, I found my job considerably easier since marathons have become more prevalent in our society. To my surprise and delight, some of the officials with whom I dealt are marathoners themselves and thus ready to embrace the idea. Most important, you need to remember your position is defensive. You absolutely cannot take the offensive line. Usually, after the event is history, if you have given everyone in sight T-shirts, been polite, established good paper trails, and paid your bills, the people with whom you are dealing will come to accept the one thing that is most important: the marathon itself.

At this stage the marathon course needs to be measured accurately, which is a laborious process that takes the ability of an experienced course measurer who will need to make a lengthy fundamental paper trail with the United States Track & Field Sanctioning Board before the course can be certified. Don't even consider measuring it with a car odometer like some race directors did 25 years ago. Consequently, it is best to put this wheel in motion early. The process needs to be done about nine months ahead of time so you can take into consideration any of the city's plans for construction or development that may alter the course or slow down the process of the certification. If you can accomplish that goal with your dignity intact, the next big step is securing documentation. The paperwork really piles up at this point, as event permits, certificates of insurance, and other official paperwork proliferate. And don't forget to have a course map drawn up. If you think doing things in triplicate is a bother, realize that some official entities (such as public works) often want paperwork (especially course maps) in dozens of copies or more.

GET THE COMMUNITY BEHIND IT

Having the community embrace your vision-in-the-making involves determining whether the event positively or negatively affects local businesses. You must try to make the race a positive for businesses, and then you must help the businesses perceive it that way. The local media is a great place to start when you need to convince both Proctor & Gamble and Cousin Bob's Seafood Shack and Video Station that closing the road past their location is a good thing.

At this point in your marathon vision, you'll need help and encouragement in order to keep pushing. This is the work of promotions, publicity, public relations, and advertising. You'll need to map out a strategy of just how this illustrious event will find its market.

The first task, because it is a lengthy process, is securing a database of runners who might respond to the registration form. This includes the art of careful negotiations with other Race Directors to swap runner names, followed by the process of cleaning up the database to tease out obsolete addresses while constantly adding new ones. Finding someone who is comfortable with database manipulation is a must!

The next promotional step is setting an advertising plan and seeking the right publications for your advertising. This includes collecting the data of how much, when, where, and how ads will be placed. To let the world know this great event is coming to town, organizers must work closely with local media on as much free coverage as possible, while feeding the media with a consistent diet of up-to-date race developments and giving them leads to interesting stories associated with the marathon. It's always an advantage if you can get the local TV station, radio station, and newspaper onboard as sponsors.

This initial stage of marathon organization involves a tremendous number of phone calls, memos, and meetings to cultivate relationships with sponsors, media, city officials, and the public. If the marathon director does not begin this process with the skills of a multifaceted thinker, he or she will develop the skills out of pure necessity. The old saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention" applies here.

THE OPERATIONAL PHASE

Having pulled into the fold like-minded visionaries during your Initial Phase, you can now leap to the next phase with both feet. This phase begins when you put the marathon into the hands of the participants. At that point it is no longer an idea but rather a living, breathing, serviceable product. The Operational Phase begins with the first piece of production: the registration form. One part of this is to build a race Web site, complete with on-line registration. Some marathons these days are getting more than half of their registrants through online registration services.

Building the registration form means making concrete decisions aimed at herding all the related events into one major site or artery so that the weekend events are accessible for the runner. In conjunction with this, or leading up to it, decisions must be made on organizing the start area, the finish area, services along the course, the schedule of events, transportation, hotel information and special rates for runners, placement of sponsor logos, and registration details.

As far as the registration form goes, you need a creative design but one that is functional and easy to fill out for the runner and easy to read for the person feeding the information into the computer. You also need a competent printer whose prices are reasonable and who can translate your database into labels for mailing to potential participants. Besides the registration form mailing, you also need to find other niche markets for distribution: health clubs, athletic stores, retail stores, sponsor outlets, or anywhere else you can reasonably get a registration form into the hands of the public.

Then, before considering the area of "human potential" (i.e., your staff and volunteer team), a few engineering calculations need to be put into place. These engineering plans are more like strategic feats. Using a course map, you need to estimate where both the first and the last runner will be on the course at all times during the race so you can assign volunteers who have an essential question orbiting in their heads: "Where do I need to be so I can help?" and "What time do I need to be there?" Other calculations include approximating when the first runner will finish, the flow rate of runners, peaks in the curve of finishers, wheelchair and walker timing considerations, and so on. Multiply the complexity with each related event you add to the bill of fare.

BUILDING YOUR TEAM

With all of these considerations swirling around you, it's time to develop your team. The team includes an Event Director, a Race Director, and teams and team leaders to handle sales, marketing, and community relations. Using a traditional diagram of hierarchy (see figure below), the first major division of labor is dividing the tasks of the Event Director and the Race Director. The Event Director keeps the overall picture intact and stays on top of everything. The Race Director focuses on the race itself and is responsible for the technical operations of the marathon.

Weekly meetings are necessary to keep the committee on task and make sure that each part of the event has been massaged with attention. To be able to hold the delegation of power together is an artful process since you're dealing mainly with volunteers. Some volunteers are in it for the long run and have the prime directive in their minds of putting on a high-quality event, while others may be commingling a variety of ulterior motives. Consequently, race directing becomes more of an art than a showcase of traditional skills of management. As loathsome as it may sound, it's also necessary to learn how to release volunteers who are willing but unable to perform a task, or able but unwilling to perform on schedule.

As the marathon draws near, the operations side intensifies. A blown-up map of the course needs to be made and circulated so that all parties involved (the race committee, the police, city officials) know exactly what each street corner on the course will contain: volunteers, police, cones, a sign? Committees become further broken down into subcommittees: course operations, medical and safety, registration, finish area production, ancillary event operations, and publicity/public relations development.

IMPORTANT SUBCOMMITTEES

The course subcommittee meetings involve major coordination of police, race officials, and medical staff. These three entities need an acute awareness of the marathon route, as they must establish medical emergency routes, media vehicle routes, and spectator patterns and routes.

Water station placement, split timer locations, medical stations, traffic control, and spectator viewing must also be made an integral part of the subcommittees' tasks.

Split timers or those announcing times at each mile need to be coordinated and trained to proclaim the times slowly and clearly. Additionally, the duties of individuals at water stations and course marshals must know their jobs intimately.

A Communications Center needs to be set up to serve as a clearinghouse for authoritative information and coordination of medical stations, emergency ambulance services, hospitals, race officials, course radio operators, finish line coordinators, and so on, all serving to funnel race communications while keeping them succinct, vital, and clear. Local HAM radio clubs are trained to do this.

The timing company is key to the success of the event. Their competency must be established, and what is expected of them must be spelled out in order to produce adequate and quick results defined in terms of age divisions, corporate teams, and overall winners.

Although it was not a major factor in marathons 25 years ago, part of running a marathon these days is creating "hoopla" along the entire route. A rousing crowd of people along the route gives marathoners the psychological support they crave and often need. Creating this spirit is essential in a modern marathon, be it through musicians, costumes, themes, or simply making sure people are present to share the event with the runners. This aspect requires quite a bit of attention, since a production like this will not just come together a week before the race; it must be nursed along. Plans must be made months in advance to give the hoopla troops time to pump up the local population to seek out the best viewing spots along the course.

During the months of Operational Phasework regarding registration, course development, and so on, race products must also be ordered, including T-shirts (keeping in mind the development of eye-catching graphics), race numbers, mylar "space blankets," medals, trophies, and food. You must hire the timing company, find a pace car and pacing groups, and schedule postrace entertainers, an announcer, a cleaning company to restore the venues to their former status, and a crowd control company; all of these involve writing up contracts and setting payment methods. Other equipment pieces that must be found or rented include a sound system, banners, bleachers, staging, barricades, signs, overhead clocks, tables, chairs, and tents. And this is just the beginning.

TO HAVE ELITES OR NOT?

During the Operational Phase you must also consider whether your race will include an elite field. How many elite runners will you invite? How much will you pay them? How far do you take their amenities such as lodging, food, and travel? It's a media fact that any sport not involving a ball is outside the somewhat narrow interest of most newspaper, radio, and television sports departments. You must work to develop a link with the local media, and you may sometimes have to get to them through the back door-such as promoting your marathon to the lifestyle editor rather than the sports editor. You will likely get more attention from the sports editor if you can offer interviews and contacts with established running stars.

To handle the entire area of elite runners, it's best to assign an Elite Athlete Coordinator, preferably one who speaks the language of the athletes you invite; perhaps a seasoned regional marathon star in your area would be willing to take on this task. The Elite Athlete Coordinator is responsible for negotiating to sign the athletes, transporting them from the airport, preparing them for the course, entertaining them, acting as liaison with the media, ensuring the athletes' special drinks are on the elite athlete tables at the various aid stations, and getting the athletes back home safely.

During the last week before the event, staff coaching becomes the focal point. All volunteers must know their own part and also understand the nuts and bolts of the entire event to appreciate where their role fits. Invariably, they will be asked all sorts of questions on the weekend of the event, so they'll need an understanding beyond their specialized area. All upper-level staff should wear designating clothing to make their role apparent to participants.

The various directors need to spend the last week meeting with their race committees to review last-minute details and distribute volunteer T-shirts to their troops. During the final days the course must be prepared with signage and the street swept and spray painted. Newspaper publicity about the course is crucial to suggest to the public alternative routes to avoid the congestion, while also offering routes potential spectators and family and friends of marathoners can use to maximize their enjoyment on race day.

All necessary race equipment must be collected at a central site, including cones, barricades, signs, flagging, rope, PA systems, scaffolding, banners, tents, clocks, and timing equipment. These are the essentials the race cannot do without. The modern race director often wants to go beyond the mere essentials, though, to include balloons, music, and costuming around the expo to lighten up the anxious runners.

PRERACE AND EXPO

The prerace packets will have been collated several days or weeks in advance and are now made available to the rush of runners. The expo coordinator must be everywhere at once seeing to the needs of the exhibitors, making sure the talks on the course are on time and running well, seeing that the elite runners are part of the festivities, coordinating medical talks and bus tours, as well as making sure sufficient maps and printed materials have been distributed throughout the expo. The coordinator also needs to ensure any seminars, roundtable discussions, or keynote speeches are on schedule with all necessary audiovisual equipment on hand.

The weekend is the perfect time for the Race Director to suffer a nervous breakdown, as he or she is pulled in a thousand directions at once. Fortunately, the race director is experienced and is like a solid rock in the middle of a storm-tossed lake. That's correct, right?

The prime focus is the marathon scheduled for the next day. It is a good idea for the Race Director to have one or two troubleshooters on hand who can be dispatched to trouble spots to solve problems so that the Race Director can deal with the truly important matters.

The Race Director should count on getting no sleep the night before the marathon. He or she will be sweating the details: don't forget the starter's gun, make sure the person who is going to have the honor of starting the race is on hand, carry an extra copy of the announcer's notes just in case he arrives without his, check sound and staging, check in with the timing company, make sure the elite athletes' bottles are taken care of, and, oh, yes, be sure to carry along an extra supply of safety pins, numbers, pens, clipboards, phones, and hammers. Run down the checklist to the most minute item. Detail oriented Race Directors are usually the most successful.

Oh! I almost forgot. No one wants to see an overstressed, overworked Race Director, so it's imperative that the he or she spends the weekend wearing a confident smile. The fact that the Race Director has just pulled an all-nighter is no excuse for neglecting to laugh. If you aren't running around all night attending to last-minute details, you'll be lying awake all night staring anxiously at the ceiling, so you might as well be doing something constructive (my longtime mentor, Fred Lebow, taught me that one).

In the wee, wee hours of the morning, take a moment to be still, look over the finish and start areas (even if it's too dark to see them clearly), and reflect on the thousands of hours of hard work and blood, sweat, and tears that brought everyone to this moment. This is the time to let out along breath and, in a strong, superconscious, confident voice, mutter, "All that can be done is done." Now is also the time to be realistic; assure yourself that there will be some things that will go wrong (there always are), but the majority of the race will come off just fine.

THE FINAL PRODUCTION

Two hours before the start of the race is a good time to take another pass over the checklists to make sure you haven't forgotten anything. Getting a little paranoid is allowed. Go check the sponsors' banners to make sure some vandal hasn't defaced them or turned directional arrows the wrong way. Remember that the night before one New York City Marathon, vandals went out and painted a blue line on the course in an attempt to lead the field off into a dark alley. Smooth out wrinkles in banners. Make certain the starter's gun is loaded. Where is the police captain who leads the field in his cruiser? These are but a few of the miscellaneous details that will come at you at roughly 60 per minute.

Announcements need to begin as soon as the first runner appears in the starting line area.

It's your duty to anticipate and head off problems so that the race can begin on time. A late start is the sign of an unorganized race. The start time is approaching. This is a time when your faith in your key people must be justified. It is a jarring moment when the race director gives the race over to them.

BANG! The starter's gun goes off. Now is the time to believe in all the organization that has gone into the event. So far, everything seems to be going perfectly. But the experienced race director knows that this is an illusion, and he or she must be ready to jump into the fray and put mistakes right. (Every marathoner should attend at least one race directors' conference and stick around to join the directors at a bar afterward to hear all the stories of what went wrong at their marathon. The stories sound like a horror gallery - a sponsor's banner falls onto the sponsor's head, an unscheduled freight train crosses the course just as the runners arrive, starters' guns won't fire, pasta feeds make runners sick, a police chief decides to lead the field off course, a volunteer fails to show up to close off a busy intersection, leading to an accident, and so on and on and on.)

But the race must go on, and it does. You jump in here or there to staunch bleeding, your communications system buzzes with problems found and solved, and time rushes by at an alarming rate.

As the lead runner approaches the finish line, everything must be running perfectly. There will be the runner whose number fell off somewhere along the course or the obstinate runner who ignores all the instructions and wears the number on his back. The timing officials must cover for these eventualities. Don't have a heart attack when one of the finish-line volunteers drops a fistful of runners' tags.

As the Race Director, it's a satisfying feeling to see the runners streaming in through the finishing chutes, but your job is far from over. You've still got to explain to one of the runners why you're serving lemon yogurt instead of lime. And there's the woman whose kid lost her flip-flops, and she wants you to find them. You're in charge here, aren't you?

The modern world moves quickly, and so must you to get race results posted at the finish area, onto the Web site, and in the local newspaper. The crowd of runners is anxious, tired, elated, and expecting you to have results ready for them immediately. Besides, you need the results quickly so that you can move to the next level of Dante's Inferno: the awards ceremony.

THE AWARDS CEREMONY

A warning: There's probably no such thing as a well-run awards ceremony. No matter how well a Race Director plans for it, the awards ceremony is usually too long, too boring, and in the midst of all the awards being handed out, someone invariably gets overlooked or receives the wrong award. And you will hear about it, if not from the parent of the 18-year-old who was supposed to get a second place award and got a third place, then certainly from the masters runners, who jealously hoard age-group plaques like bits of the True Cross.

A bit of showmanship and the projection of assurance that everything is under control goes a long way at the awards ceremony. The awards area must be set up well in advance so that the stage is impeccable, the trophies are laid out like soldiers at attention, there is an announcer with the voice of an angel, the PA system works with minimum feedback, and the banner placement is precise to maximize the sponsors' impact. A poorly staged awards ceremony is the last part of the weekend's experience that people remember.

You're allowed to breathe a long, loud sigh once everyone has left, but don't back off yet. Remember how your mother always taught you to clean up after you were done playing? Clean up. Pick up. Put stuff away. A huge crowd of human beings is only slightly less messy than a cage full of monkeys, so plan accordingly. Volunteers at this point will be scarce, so if you were smart, you bribed one of the high school service clubs to help out.

Once the place is clean, it's time to get back to the results, which the timing company will still be sorting through. There are plenty of runners who on Saturday said, "I don't care about my time. I just want to finish," who are now camped outside the timing shack, demanding an accounting of just how well they ran. Get the results out in as many directions as you can manage, from posting hard copies to posting the complete results on the race Web site, a process you will of course have test-run several weeks beforehand. Follow-up is crucial. If you promised to get a postcard with an individual’s results within a week after the race, do it; if you promised a results book, keep up your head of steam and get to it. Too many Race Directors and volunteers completely let down after the race is over, like puppets whose string have been clipped. There is a great deal of postrace work that needs attention.

POSTRACE JOBS

Push past the sheer exhaustion to follow up on all the avenues through which the results will be posted, make sure the elite athletes were picked up and taken to the airport, return phone calls that have piled up, and thank your volunteer coordinators as soon as you can find them.

Now comes the part that is a curious by-product of human nature. Field the myriad compliments for a job well done and wallow in them because, as the typical Race Director, the half-dozen negative comments that come in will, in your mind at least, far outweigh the positive comments. “You started the race on time! I was still in the porta-potty. Nobody starts a race on time!” “I lost my car keys. I need a ride home.” “There wasn’t enough entertainment along the course.” “There was too much entertainment along the course. It was distracting!”

Take another deep breath and try, really try, to put all of this in perspective. You’ve pulled it off. Nearly 2,000 runners made it from Point A to Point B (26.2 miles away) safely under their own power and under your direction. Yeah, and with all the hoopla added they even had fun at it. Finally, sometime during the postrace week you have a moment to pat yourself on the back and see yourself as a winner also, perhaps not necessarily of the race, but of your own heart and soul.

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