10 Years of Putting on Races :)
Reflecting on the 10 Year Anniversary for BROR
Well hello, and welcome to a first ever entry for a Broad Run Off Road diary of musings. First a little introduction I suppose. I decided to start this tiny new “blog” simply as a way to share some occasional thoughts and experiences on things about racing; both from the side of race directing but also as a racer as well. I don’t know how regularly I’ll post here, but figure if I at least create the space, then maybe it’ll at least motivate me to use it.
Back before I got into race directing and forming BROR, I actually used to have a website/blog (“Putting Pins in a Map”) to document my experiences trying different outdoor sports/racing, from my first 5K, to eventually my first triathlon, adventure race, tough mudder, trail running, etc. While that website is no more, I believe one of my last posts on that site was actually my first ever adventure race. Life got busy and I just stopped posting on it and the site eventually went away when I let the domain lapse but the purpose for it was really just meant to share my own experiences in the hope that if anyone else stumbled upon it, they could read and maybe learn something from my experiences trying, failing, learning and trying things again; and maybe it’d inspire them to go out and try things too. And that’s sort of all I’m going for here.
So yeah… it's been 10 years of putting on races now with the first ever
Leopold’s Trail 5k happening 10 years ago on a chilly November morning in 2014.10 years have gone by real fast and I’m blown away that to date through races we've been able to raise over $70,000 donated across 16 different local community non-profits, and best of all gotten 2,500 different racers out over the years for some fun outdoor adventures. But I genuinely didn’t start with any of this scale in mind.
For those who know me or see me out at races, 10 years ago was a very different time in my life. These days I put on multiple adventure races and a mountain bike race each year, I’ve become the trail builder/manager for a local park and also put on a very successful annual trail race for about a decade; on any given week you're 95% likely to find me on the trails riding, hiking, running, building just about every week, but it's worth noting that none of this was even remotely in my sphere until much later in life.
I grew up in New Orleans playing baseball almost exclusively from age 6 all the way into high-school until a bad arm injury derailed that plan. I finished out high school on the golf team and some track & field but the reality is I didn’t really have another sport after baseball. My college years were basically void of sports outside of some occasional intramural flag-football/softball type stuff, this was partly because I spent those years playing in a band (story for another day). I graduated, then I met a girl, we got married, and then a few years later we moved to Virginia. That's a lot of life crammed into a few sentences, but all this is to say that running, cycling, climbing, paddling, orienteering, etc. were completely nowhere remotely in my life until after turning 30.
When we moved to Virginia (for work) we effectively moved away from all of our family/friends, and when you’re no longer playing pick-up sports or playing tons of shows in a band in hot/sweaty bars/clubs in New Orleans, then you’re no longer burning calories, and when you’re from New Orleans you also like to eat food… While I did some occasional hiking as I love a good destination/waterfall hike, they were mostly infrequent, only happening on vacations or on occasional weekend trips, so I quickly found myself at the heaviest weight of my life…
While moving to Virginia did mean moving away from 99% of the friends/family we had, Kelly and I did have 1 friend in Virginia at the time; it was a co-worker of hers (Zac) who was roughly the same age as us. Zac was super into running having run his whole life including winning high-school state level, etc. He was now getting into marathons and triathlon, and asked us one weekend to come out and cheer for him as he tried his first big triathlon, the DC triathlon in 2010. I distinctly remember being on the sidelines watching all the athletes go by and just thinking about how fat I was getting and realizing I needed to do something with myself.
So in 2010 I finally signed up for my first ever race, a 5K :) A story I’m sure is so similar to many others, I started by thinking I could never run a 5K; but then 5K turned into 10K, which turned into a 10-miler which turned into a half-marathon… but honestly once I hit my first half-marathon I just lost the itch, I was bored… Running on pavement has sort of always been that way for me, it's a chore for me, it was a chore to try to stay healthy, I never “wanted” to go for a run on pavement, I just knew I should. It also wasn’t like any of these races were in exciting locations or anything, just running up and down streets you see all the time anyway, and because they have to close the streets down all the races are stupid early in the morning, which is especially hard for young 20-somethings with no kids who sleep in half the day, hah.
But then in 2013 our buddy Zac got married in Asheville, NC. He, his groomsmen and family were all generally runners or at least game for a run, cause they found a 5K/10K to do on the morning of his wedding as a fun group outing and I got asked to join. What I didn’t learn until literally minutes into the race was that it was 95% on trails. While I had done some regular hiking in Shenandoah National Park for waterfalls, I’d never even considered running on a trail before... By the end of the 1st mile I was hooked, it finally made running fun for me, it was taking this somewhat mindless fitness activity of running but matching it up with something I loved: the great outdoors. I loved that I had to always consciously be watching/planning my steps/stride instead of mindlessly maintaining a pace on flat pavement, and loved all the sights and sounds that came with being on trails. I finally wanted to find running races, more trail races.
In probably one of the most consequential coincidences in my life, it was within months of that trail race in Asheville that I learned a brand new nature preserve (Leopold’s Nature Preserve) was being created near our home and it would have 7+ miles of brand new trails. The moment those trails opened up my fitness/training running became almost exclusive to those trails because they were so close/accessible. Because the nature preserve was brand new, there was almost a 12 month stretch where I literally may have been the only person who knew any of it existed, it was like my own private getaway. In that first year I probably ran/biked on the trails over 100 times and never saw another person on them.
The only bike I’d ever owned at this point was a Schwinn “hybrid” bike with a fat cushy cruiser seat on it. Regardless I rode the shit out of those trails on that bike for many years, multiple times a week too. I genuinely knew (and probably still know) those trails better than anyone including the people who built and manage them. I was on those trails almost every day running or biking (this was before having 3 kids). As I met other runners in the community I’d try to introduce them to it and so many people would say “I had no idea this was here.” So in 2014, I decided to reach out the nature preserve managers to ask if it was ok if I organized a big group run on their trails the weekend before Thanksgiving, and they were super into the idea because they wanted more and more people to be introduced to their trails/preserve too and thus kicked off what became the first ever annual Leopold’s Trail 5K. 100 people showed up the first year and this “little” group run quickly in subsequent years added a 1-mile fun run for the kids and then a 10K for the more serious runners and soon we were having to cap the event because we were getting 300+ runners…
Nowadays 10 years later, I’ll go out to the trails, or when I bike the nearby gravel roads by the preserve’s entrance, and it is a totally different story, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been out there and don’t see at least 1-2 other people, even mid-day on a weekday. I’m so happy for the nature preserve, it's an amazing thing they did for the area and it's also a bird-watcher’s top visit these days. Due to the popularity they now no longer allow biking on the trails due to safety concerns, but it remains a great place for a run, walk, hike.
A few years into producing that trail race, the timing company we were using got bought out by a competitor, and the new owners were not only annoying/incompetent to work with, we had a particular issue where one of their folks on-site stole one of our very nice cameras (he claimed he mistook it for his camera… only except he had his camera too, I’ll leave it at that). Then on top of that they suddenly wanted to increase their price, a lot… I had just recently participated in a cool trail race in my area from another race organization called Adventure Enablers (run by Mark & Margo Harris), so I decided to reach out to them and ask them who they used for timing only to learn they had their own timing equipment/were doing their own timing. So in short order they became the new timing company for the Leopold’s Trail 10k/5k race. As they were on site for the next race, Margo saw me using my bike to get into and around the trails during the event, and she mentioned that if I liked mountain biking that they had a mountain bike race I should try, and also that I should try out adventure racing as it was a combo of running and mountain biking with paddling...
I asked when their next adventure race was and signed up knowing absolutely nothing of what I was getting into, hah. I mean that literally I did not research one bit, but on April 13, 2019 I did my first ever adventure race, the
Shenandoah Aquablaze; a “no biking” race ;)
2 weeks after that I also did my first ever triathlon (a sprint triathlon) and shortly after did my first ever OCR/Tough Mudder that year too. But adventure racing really struck the chord for me, especially the navigation element. So when I finished that first adventure race, I immediately signed up for my next one just 1 month later in May, I also signed up for my first ever MTB race. These 2 registrations led to me buying my first actual mountain bike; and then shortly after I did my 3rd adventure race later that year in October (a race that went sooo bad that I still talk about it to this day as an example of what not to do, hah), so needless to say I was hooked on adventure racing.
On the RD side of things, I had actually by now announced plans for BROR to expand to a trail racing series in the next year and I had worked out all those permits when COVID put a halt on everything. While activities mostly went dormant, my mind kept going to producing an adventure race. As a racer, I was having a hard time getting other people to join in when every race was 8+ hours + I had a perfect spot for a short/beginner race and I just wanted to introduce the sport to people.
So as COVID restrictions started lifting, I reached out and the park was willing to let me put on a socially distanced adventure race… and thus the Spring Bloom Adventure Race was born. I’m sure in part due to the success of “World’s Toughest Race Eco-Challenge Fiji” Spring Bloom sold out months ahead of race day with tons on a waiting list. By popular demand we added Fall Foliage later that year as a “no biking” option for Girl Scout Troop 90088. We’ve expanded those adventure races and set new attendance records every year since then. In 2022 after 8 great years with it, I decided to hand the reins of the Leopold’s Trail race off to another race org; it was partially due being tired of continued permitting issues/jumping through hoops unrelated to the nature preserve, but moreso it was just because of falling in love not just with adventure racing, but also the adventure racing community.
In 8 years of putting on the Leopold’s Trail race I genuinely cannot think of a many/any instances in which a racer stuck around after getting their finish medal and said a word to me unless it was something to complain about... People ran the race and then immediately went home, volunteer interest decreased each year too. Outside of RD’ing, just as a runner, I ran with various local community running groups/outings over the years and I can’t say any of those folks stay in touch or remember my name when I run into them. I know its not everyone and I am trying not to make a sweeping generalization but to me it just seems for the large majority to be much more of a personal sport/activity.
With adventure racing and more outdoorsy based racing/endurance racing, both in participating and race directing it was and still continues to be this genuinely amazing community: we all get to know each other, we share our stories and discuss our route choices, we love talking about our bad decisions, people we race against in one race become teammates in another, and also it has this great element where generally it's everyone against the course.
With race directing for adventure races, it scratches this real big itch for me too because I get to exercise my creative side all the time and create a new “work of art” each race with the courses and get to see everyone experience them. I find some cool park/area and get to use a race to introduce everyone to it, and then we chat about it after too. It feels much more like sharing an experience, and less of a rigamarole of putting on another forgettable event. Adventure racing has truly been one of the best things to be introduced to my life well beyond keeping me in an active lifestyle because I have made so many great friends through it.
I’d also take a moment to shout out the MTB community too. After seeing some of the trails we used for that first Spring Bloom go into disrepair, I volunteered to take on the role of managing/maintaining them; but it wasn’t alone, the MTB community shows up every time we do a trail work day; so much so that we have now built miles of new trails which then led to BROR’s first ever MTB race. It's almost like the more niche an activity/sport, the more connected and protective the participants are with it and with each other.
So, why am I rambling on and telling you this story? Well firstly it just felt nice to recount how in the heck we got here to the 10th anniversary of
Broad Run Off Road; but also because the rest is not just history from there… It’ll be nice to share some stories along the way in the future.
Progress isn’t a straight line and it's nice sometimes to reflect and look back on it and remember how we got here. Surely producing the races have all gone perfectly, right? Hah, no way. And if you’ve seen Team BROR on a podium at an adventure race, just know there’s less than stellar results in our history too, including most recently DNF’ing the National Championship. I have raced in a LOT of adventure races, triathlons, cycling races and OCR stuff, done countless orienteering meets and produced a lot of races in this recent timespan, but it would be an understatement to say it's been without its lessons learned; and that’s partly the point of creating this space, to repeat what I said at the beginning. I’ll be writing this stuff down for anyone who is wanting to get into any of these sports, to let you know that it's all about trying, failing, learning and trying again.
For now I’ll just cap this entry off by saying as a Race Director I am super thankful that having some acumen for events/logistics and some great friends/volunteers and vendors/partners has meant the production of races that has largely gone 10 years without any major issues.
Thankfully one major thing is different than 10 years ago: I am not fond of how hard it was in the early days to convince people to come out and volunteer for a race they never heard of by an organization they never heard of. I have also learned to check, recheck and recheck trail run intersection markings because someone might decide they own the trail and hate your race or think it’s funny to go out there and remove that stuff… I have also learned that just because the forecast says no rain doesn’t mean you can’t get a torrential downpour mid-event…
But if you realize all this stuff is part of a larger journey and take it in as experience, learn lessons and try again, you end up with so many many more ups than downs. Also you get a heck of a lot of amusing stories (after the fact). 10 years into putting on races I’ve had the pleasure of getting great volunteers to come help me put on these events, many of whom have become racing teammates and even more that I consider to be close friends now.
This caps the 10th year for
Broad Run Off Road as an organization putting on race events, but I genuinely feel like it's only just gaining momentum. I’m already giddy to show everyone the courses for Spring Bloom and Fall Foliage next year; and fingers crossed we’ll be MTB racing at Long Park again too with a brand new trail to add to that course. Believe it or not we’re already scouting about 5+ more courses for future races too I might be hooked on racing AR, but I’m more in love with putting on adventure races; I truly cannot wait to bring racers to all these awesome courses/places… and just think of all the prologue challenges we’ll get to have too ;)
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