Latest Race directors Podcast Episodes
Race Insurance
Head Start - June 10, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIf there’s one thing you can’t have enough of as a race director, it’s race insurance. Particularly - knock on wood - when the unexpected happens and you’re faced with a dreaded lawsuit that threatens to take away your livelihood and your piece of mind. So how can you best protect yourself and...
Crisis Communications
Head Start - April 22, 2024 12:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsWhen doors start dropping off planes mid-air or your favorite online retailer gets in touch to let you know your personal details may have been compromised, it’s tempting to think you may have done a better job handling that crisis were you in their shoes. But how well-prepared are you really ...
Race Trends 2023
Head Start - March 05, 2024 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIt’s that time of the year again. RunSignup’s annual RaceTrends report is out for 2023, and it’s larger and more comprehensive than ever before! Among the most notable trends highlighted in the report we see registrations for 2023 races up from 2022 and tantalisingly close to 2019 levels, entry...
Instagram & Influencer Marketing
Head Start - February 06, 2024 07:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsWith more than 2 billion monthly active users (MAUs), Instagram has secured a comfortable lead as the social media platform of choice for the vast majority of online-active almost-30s and 30-somethings out there. And with Instagram’s core audience slowly aging to match running’s demographic swee...
Designing a Race Course
Head Start - December 12, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsAs a race director, few things in the race planning lifecycle can be as exciting and enjoyable as designing a brand new race course. From picking a start area to mapping out race distances and figuring out where to place amenities, such as aid stations, race course design constitutes an importan...
Building a Race Series
Head Start - November 08, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsBuilding a race from the ground up, as anyone who’s done it will know, is a tough business. But what about planning, coordinating and growing a whole series of races, all with a common theme and brand identity? How do you finance and grow multiple races from scratch? How do you choose when and...
Spotlight: Hood to Coast
Head Start - October 16, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsFirst run on a whim in 1982 by Oregon Road Runners Club president Bob Foote with only 8 teams participating in the inaugural race, Hood to Coast has grown from modest beginnings to become a huge success story. More than 40 years on, the race that has come to be known affectionately as “the mothe...
Supporting Female Athletes
Head Start - September 19, 2023 13:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsRacing has come a long way since the days when women were being told that running the marathon would cause your uterus to fall out. And with women now making up 54% of all race registrations in the US, according to RunSignup’s 2022 RaceTrends report, you’d think there’d be very little holding wo...
Spotlight: Boulderthon
Head Start - August 23, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsNestled in a valley in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder, CO, is often referred to as the fitness capital of the US. So it was a bit surprising to Phil Dumontet, a young East Coast entrepreneur moving to Boulder in 2017 to launch his smoothie bar business, to realize that Boulder, in...
The 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing
Head Start - August 01, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsOn April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs planted by brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tarnaev exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. In the devastation that ensued, three innocent people lost their lives, while 281 others were injured, in what was, and still remains, the biggest ever te...
Sponsorship Proposals
Head Start - July 12, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIf you’ve done the hard work of prospecting and soliciting sponsors, and got some of your prospects to engage with you, you may be forgiven in thinking your job is done. Actually, that’s where the real work begins - understanding your sponsor’s needs and closing the deal with a sponsorship pro...
Race Merchandise
Head Start - June 26, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsSelling merchandise is a great way to increase brand loyalty for participants outside race day, and, of course, a very good way to increase revenue from your event. So, how do you get started selling race merchandise, both online, on packet pickup and on race day? How do you pick and test merch...
Race Medical Planning
Head Start - June 12, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsFrom the minute the first participant shows up on race day till the time the last one leaves, responsibility for the wellbeing of everyone on and around your race course rests with you - the race director. So, how can you make sure your medical preparations are up to scratch? How do you figure ...
The Business of Trail & Ultra Races
Head Start - May 29, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIf you’ve been following our industry updates on race and participation growth, you may have picked up on the fact that trail running, and trail races, have been doing particularly well over the last few years. In fact, trail racing seems to be one of the few spots within racing still growing at...
Mastering Social Media
Head Start - May 15, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsOver the last decade or so, lots has changed in the social media landscape. Facebook has gone from exciting upstart to the mature granddaddy of social media, Instagram has grown by leaps and bounds to become the platform of choice for visually engaging content, and TikTok has emerged as the new ...
Hiccup: Reusable Water Cups
Head Start - May 02, 2023 07:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIn a number of our past podcasts, we’ve touched on the issue of race waste - and specifically a particularly significant and persistent part of that issue which is water cup waste. In an ideal world - or shall I say in a trail running world - we’d all love to put on cupless races, where racers ...
Spotlight: SBT GRVL
Head Start - April 17, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsGravel racing has been one of the fastest growing sectors in mass-participation sports over the last decade or so, particularly in the US, where high-profile races like UNBOUND Gravel, Rebecca’s Private Idaho and Belgian Waffle Ride have grown massively in popularity, attracting a broad range of...
Race Photos
Head Start - April 03, 2023 18:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsBesides race medals and finisher shirts, the one experience item participants have come to expect from a race, particularly in this digital age, is a good set of professional race photos. And perhaps because of the cultural changes that have come with the digital age, the purpose of race photo...
Engaging Local Media
Head Start - March 20, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIf there’s one thing that often sets apart races that go on to do really well from others that struggle to gain traction in their community, it’s the ability of the former - and the inability of the latter - to engage with the non-race world. And nowhere is this more evident than the way in whic...
Building a Race Budget
Head Start - March 06, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsWhether you’re putting on races through a for-profit or a nonprofit organization, having a good grasp of your race budget can often make the difference between a profitable bottom line and days of post-race head-scratching about what went wrong to land you in the red. Admittedly, building and ...
Race Trends 2022
Head Start - February 20, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsWhen you want to know what’s happening and trending in the endurance events industry by the numbers, where do you turn to? Well, for me and many people I know, the definitive source of event data for the industry is, and has been for some time, RunSignup’s annual RaceTrends report. The report ...
Spotlight: HYROX
Head Start - February 06, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIt isn’t every day that an entirely new mass participation racing concept emerges that can take the world by storm. But, that’s exactly what’s happened over the past few years with the rise of HYROX, a new racing format, combining functional fitness and endurance in an indoor mass participation ...
Scaling Up
Head Start - January 23, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsWhen races grow from scratch, particularly as passion projects, there often comes a time where growth grinds to a halt. Participation seems to gradually plateau around a few hundred participants and any progress beyond that seems impossible. So, how do you break through this resistance point t...
Cracking Gen Z Runners
Head Start - January 10, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIn RunSignup’s latest RaceTrends report, registration data showed that less than 13% of race participants in 2021 races fell within the 18-30 age group - a number that used to be almost 18% as recently as 2017, and keeps on falling. So why is it that races fail to attract younger audiences? ...
2022 Podcast Highlights
Head Start - December 26, 2022 08:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsToday, we are going to be taking a trip down memory lane, looking at some of my favourite podcast highlights from the past year. It’s been an amazing year for Head Start - our second year on the air - and, as we head into 2023, I wanted to say how grateful we all are at Race Directors HQ for you...
Spotlight: Around the Crown 10K
Head Start - December 12, 2022 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIf you’ve been following the podcast for a while, you’ll know that what we try to do at Head Start is bring you actionable, expert advice you can learn from to grow and improve your race - hopefully, with a bit of entertainment on the side. Today marks the first episode in a new way of helping ...
[Bonus] Going Solar
Head Start - December 05, 2022 06:00 - 43 minutes ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIt’s another bonus episode for you today, and as we were discussing reducing your race’s carbon footprint last week, this week’s episode falls quite neatly in the same area of sustainability and decarbonization. Today, I’m joined by race director, race timer and solar power enthusiast Lowell L...
Carbon Neutral Race Production
Head Start - November 28, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsIn a previous episode of the podcast with guest Brian Schmidt of P3R, we saw how it is possible for even a very large race like the Pittsburgh Marathon to achieve zero waste status - that is, the goal of diverting more than 90% of total race waste away from landfill. But what about carbon emis...
Designing Actionable Race Surveys
Head Start - November 14, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsMost races only come around once a year. So when you’re working to improve a race for your participants, you’ve got precious few opportunities to receive feedback from them. How do you use those opportunities right? And what feedback should you look to gather from them? Well, my guest today, La...
Starting Out as a Race Director
Head Start - October 31, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsLooking into the business of putting on races from the outside, as a passionate runner and racer, you might be mistaken in thinking that putting on races is a fairly straightforward, relaxing, comfortably profitable thing to do. I can hear some of you chuckling there… Well, my guests today, bro...
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