RD INTEL

Canadian Running Magazine 2025 will mark 24 years of me hosting events... and what an adventure it has been. I am never quite satisfied with just sitting still, and the crew at Sinister Sports has had an itch to do more. In case you missed the news, we're going to expand into Ontario with two new events. The SOO 200 will be our second 200-miler, and it will take place in the third week of July in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The Blue Bully Ultra is a three-day stage race that will happen the first weekend of October at Blue Mountain Resort, north of Toronto. Rather than me going into great detail, check out this excellent article by Keeley Milne of Canadian Running Magazine. We go through a painfully long assessment process when picking new venues. We try and balance both our schedule, and other regional race schedules to be sure we minimize any conflicts. We look for locations that have great amenities, and helpful people. I hope we'll see a lot of you out there for the firs...

Food is undoubtedly a big part of the race experience. More so, getting nutrition into your meat sack is critical for a successful race. We spend a lot of time trying to decide what foods to offer at each event, and we actually look at eight different values when we are deciding on aid station menus. We get a lot of requests for different things; sometimes it's an "ah-ha" moment, and often it's just not practical based on our requirements. Here are the eight values we consider when selecting food options. Satisfaction Basically, will people like it? We want to be sure we have stuff that is easy to consume and palatable, as well as having broad appeal. When we try something new, we always assess after the race to see if people actually enjoyed it. If there was a lot left, it means it was either not popular, hard to serve, or people just didn't know it was an option. Usually it's the former, and it gets taken off the menu for future races. Racer expectations ar...

There are people who are naturals in their sports and they rise to conquer every challenge... I am not one of them. Like most, I've fumbled a lot in my various sports over the years and managed to do well at a few things, just through a lot of really hard work. It wasn't flawless or efficient, but I managed to get it done. I always see a lot of questions about coaches and for a long time and sort of dismissed that as an option for those who are elite or really trying to podium at a specific race. More and more, we are seeing runners at every level of ability using coaches to achieve their goals, and what a difference it is making in the sport. Let's talk a little bit about what coaches can bring and what you should expect.  Setting Goals A coach will look at what you want to do and figure out a plan to get you there. They will also help you to be realistic and look at the big picture. Sometimes you will be chomping at the bit to run a specific race, but it might make more s...

There is no rest for the Sinister, and we are in the thick of planning for 2024. I follow a lot of race director forums to keep tabs on what's happening around the world, and there are always a lot of questions, both profound and basic. There is one common strain of questions asked by new RDs: can you plan a perfect race? And then I laugh and laugh because I love the naive optimism. 😂 I need to tell someone to get off my lawn now. So I'm pondering what would make a perfect race for me, from an organizer's standpoint...  My perfect race would have flawless registration and it would fill up really early so that we can plan our expenses for the year, and know how much swag to buy. Everyone would fill out their shirt sizes and not make any swaps last minute. All of it would be within our budget and vendors wouldn't increase our prices at the last minute. The permits would be a breeze and everyone would welcome us with open arms. There would be no course changes due to logg...

Hi Folks - it has been a while! We were all wrapped up in race season but it's time to get back to blogging.  Rather than repeat what has already been written, check out this article in the Globe and Mail where I had the honour of being interviewed regarding my thoughts on how climate change affects outdoor events.  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-marathon-races-climate-change/

Trail running is for everyone It is in that spirit that we are officially launching our new Gender Policy, which includes a non-binary category.  https://www.sinistersports.ca/gender_policy This has been in the works for a couple of years, but we had been waiting for better guidelines from World Athletics . We had hoped for a more comprehensive, global vision, but most races have been making up their own policies. We have recently seen races like the Boston Marathon add a Non-Binary category, and Ultrasignup posted an update this fall, allowing race directors to do the same. This is a tectonic shift in the world of sports and the recommendations will undoubtedly continue to develop each year.  As I mentioned above, our crew has been discussing this off and on for years, and lately, we have had more inquiries about a formal gender policy. We have always had this sort of inclusive nature, but it was never in writing; we just treated people with respect. We sought out input from ...

This blog is 90% about racing from the point of a race director, but there are several perennial issues that racers ask about. One of the top discussions each year is GI health and dealing with gut distress. Few things weigh on racers more than that uncontrollable, gut-wrenching queasiness.  I am excited to introduce one of our newest crew members, Heidi Frehlich, a professional triathlete and ultramarathoner who specializes in these very issues. ~BG

I first started out in endurance racing by crewing a team of coworkers from my former office. I could not believe that someone was capable of racing for 24+ hours and I wanted to see it for myself. I competed in my first race the following year, and 23 years later, endurance racing has become the focus of all my work. It's so common to hear "origin stories" like this from the people we meet at our events, and it shows that the first step into endurance sports is often not through being a competitor. That is why I am convinced that trail running is first and foremost about community. In my last blog post, I talked about how the racers - the people we meet - are what fuels our organization's passion for trail running. The TLDR version of this post - we hold a tremendous power to be a positive influence in the lives of everyone we welcome into our community, so let's be community builders at every opportunity. "Community" is our primary focus for 2023 and...

Love him or hate him, Simon Sinek has a lot of outstanding insights into the nature of work and how people interact (although, admittedly, he seems really harsh on Millenials). A number of years ago I saw a TED Talk where he said something that really resonated with me. It has informed virtually every decision we make as an organization, and it's also the title of one of his books:  Start with Why .  My background is in Industrial Design – designing the goods we use in our daily lives. I am a creator but I need some kind of outside pressure to spur me on, kind of like how a bit of sand irritates an oyster into creating a pearl. I have always had a strong sense of being true to my craft and making sure that I actually felt passionate about the things I was creating. I remember sitting in my office in Calgary, staring at the mountains and thinking "if I really want to be there, why am I here?" So when I quit working for "The Man" and started working full-time as a...

Ultra and trail running is all sunshine, chocolate, and rainbows... until you hit the witching hour* and everything goes off the rails.  Safety and risk management at races is something that few people ever have to think about because injuries are really pretty rare in comparison to the size of an event. Most surprisingly, it also seems to be one of the most overlooked steps in race planning. Everyone thinks about the fun times until they have that "oh shit" moment once something goes wrong.  As a race organizer of 21 years, I've seen a little bit of everything, but each emergency brings its own challenges. Likewise, no two events are the same with respect to emergency management. On many occasions, I've had new RDs ask for a peek at our emergency plan and I get a bit uncomfortable because there is no one formula that works everywhere; it's a process that you have to develop.  So, what makes for a good emergency plan?  KNOW YOUR RESOURCES . You either have to buil...

Here is something that only around  1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women think about. What colour of route marking tape is the best if you are colour blind? This actually came up for the first time this summer; it seems like most colour blind people just suffer in silence, so nobody had mentioned it until recently. We used to use white but switched to blaze orange (for a reason mentioned below). One of our course flaggers could not see the orange tape at all, which posed a real problem when it came time to take it down.  Colour blindness falls into four main categories: red, green, and blue deficiency, as well as the rarer condition of total colour blindness. Using the app Color Blind Pal (iOS and Android), you can approximate what people with each of the three main types of deficiency see when they look at different colours. Keep in mind that there are variations of each, and some people have more severe colour blindness than others.  SO... take a look at the four rows of t...

Someone asked,   "what the heck do you and your crew do in the winter" ? Well, I'm glad you asked. If you want to know more about what we're up to off-season, here's a snapshot.  Personally, I get up with the sun so when winter creeps in so I sleep in, then I work late into the night. I go cross-country skiing after work whenever I can. That said, the work doesn't stop and organizing our events is full-time for me. I did take a two-week holiday for the first time since before Covid - I'm not sure if it helped or not because now I have 500 unread emails! :S    Most of our crew are seasonal, with a few exceptions. Kirsti, who joined us in 2022, is the only other full-time person on the Sin Crew right now, and she handles the bulk of our social media and email inquiries, as well as project work. Alana is plugging away on fulfilling orders from our online shop. Cary gets busier in the winter as we have our year-end in November; he's swamped now. Lynn manag...