Favorite awards I have ever received were from the Hepzibah Children's Home Triathlon in Augusta Georgia, when the old race director was still there. The kids who lived in the home the race raised money for used to make the awards. Very cool.



Race Packets: Be sure to include another white, race T-shirt. We don't get enough of those. Don't do anything cool like use an unusual color, or maybe a tie-dye shirt. Don't even thing about giving us something we could really use like race socks, a race hat, or even shorts instead of a shirt.

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"Remember: a bicycle is an elegant and efficient tool designed for seeking out and defeating people who aren't as good as you."

--BikeSnobNYC

Personally, I don't care much about the race packets, awards, and stuff like that. I mostly care about the quality of the race. Stuff like: enough bouys and safety personel in the water (not as much a problem for sprint), a well layed out and racer-only transition area, good road conditions (sweeping gravel from corners, well controlled intersections, well marked corners and hazards), sufficient aid stations. Basically, conditions that just let me run the best race I can.

Good Luck

Here are a few in no particular order:
- Sufficient Porta Potties! I'm not sure what the proper ratio of porta potties to racers is, but man, this is an area where you can't skimp.
- Along the same lines, sufficient number of volunteers for body marking. There's nothing worse than standing in a queue of 500 people waiting to get body marked so you can get in the trans area.
- Good marking of intersections. My preference, is for there to be a sign well before the intersection that says something like: "So and So Tri, Right Turn" with an arrow. Sometimes the volunteers at the turns just look at you and clap and cheer, and people go barreling through intersections.
- I know this is probably pushing it, but I prefer labeled bike racks by racer number. This prevents the @$$holes who show up late from taking your transition spot (even though you hung your race number and back pack on the rack, and had your towell laid out) while you are out warming up on your bike.

Thanks and good luck.

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"The more you sweat today, the less you bleed tomorrow"

In my opinion the best races have clean ant free mud free transition areas, I have seen some portions of transition areas with low areas that are somewhat muddy. This past weekend I saw one portion unusable do to ants in that area. Well marked entrances and exits to the transition area are great. If your transition area is not on mother earth this is not a problem but if it is on cement then those little rocks and stuff should be swept away so that bare feet are not hurt. If the course is out and back a wide turnaround (debris free) for the bike is great, to include any tight turns on the course. Parking close to the transition area is great also. All this may be elementary for you but I noticed that its attention to the little things that make it nicer.

Wow, what a great question- and good of you to ask. I only have one broad suggestion. Remember: You are in the entertainment business. Give your customers (the athletes) good value for their dollar. People will spend hard-earned cash for three-four (or more) hours of athletic entertainment at your event. What will be the quality of their experience? What will they remember? What is the thing that will bring them back? Don't be afraid to charge appropriately if you are returning a good product. If the course is safe and novel, the support better than adequate and all the logistics precisely attended to you should reward yourself in addition to the athletes that will enjoy your race. There is a reason why good races are expensive: They're worth it.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

I'd like to add to the transition rack suggestions. Make sure your racks are plentiful and STURDY. I did a sprint once where a couple of the PVC pipe racks collapsed before the race. (I shudder to think what happened when the race started and people started grabbing their bikes and then throwing them back on the racks... The next year the production company had super-sturdy metal racks.) Also it's very nice to have them pre-numbered, and also labeled with letters at the ends to help racers find them mid-race. Knowing that the racks at all Tri-California events are numbered eases my pre-race jitters about getting a good rack spot.

And make sure there's enough room for everyone, even the latecomers. I once got a flat in the parking lot before a race. I managed to fix it in time, but when I arrived at the transition area 2 minutes before the start there was not an inch of rack space left. The race was laid-back enough that no one minded me setting up in a patch of grass at the side of the transition area.

Although veteran racers may prefer socks or pint glasses to another t-shirt, many first-time racers (especially in a sprint) are looking forward to wearing that triathlon t-shirt proudly. Navy blue t-shirts are nice and a little different.

Having a great announcer can really make a race fun and memorable.

Good luck!

If you're routing your bike or run course through a residential area, keep the people who live there updated about what's going to happen. Leaflets in mail/newspaper boxes a couple weeks would be good. Advise them of any street or lane closings, and if it's looking like it's going to be very hot, ask if they can leave sprinklers near the road on. If there's a neighborhood association, talk to their board. And be absolutely meticulous about trash pick-up. These are the people who can keep the race from reaching year two with one or two irate phone calls.

If you're doing a lot of food, I'll also put in a request for a bit of vegetarian-friendly food that isn't bananas or oranges. It doesn't have to be extravagant, but see if the sponsoring pizza place can throw in a couple of cheese pizzas along with the pepperoni and sausage ones, or the sponsoring Subway can leave the meat off a couple of ham sandwiches.

Race packets: I like ads/entry forms for other nearby races. There are still races that don't hit Active or Trifind, and I like to hear about races that might fit into the schedule. Safety pins are nice. (Don't assume everyone's got a race belt)

Awards: small and well designed beats big and ugly. Maybe something like a paperweight that can fit onto one's desk at the cube farm?

Make sure that the awards start on-time and that they run smoothly an efficiently. My pet peeve from years past was waiting forever for the awards to start and then for the presentations to take a huge amount of time.

The advent of chip timiing means that the results should be ready as soon as the race finishes. Thus the awards should start immediatly.

Best wishes for a safe and successful event.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Regarding starting awards immediately - even with timing chips, you need to allow some slack time in there because of:

- Gaps between waves; some later waves may have faster overall times then earlier waves, which could affect overall awards

- Lost or messed up chip timings happen sometimes, and it may not be discovered until a preliminary posting of results goes up

- If you have officiating, any time penalties need to be gathered and entered into the timing system.

In addition to everyone else's ideas, have you checked out USAT's race director's sanctioning guidelines? Whether you sanctionor not, you might pick up some additional ideas from it. It's available on the USAT website.

Good luck, and have fun!

for god's sake keep team in training out of it. those purple shirted thugs are spreading like cancer.

i go for socks instead of mugs and plenty of space for family to wait for finishers.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

With all these great suggestions this might be the race of the year... Where and when is it?