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The G-Rant : Grant's Rants on Adventure Racing

“Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.” - Alfred North Whitehead

Short race inside a long race

We're weighing our options with the race next summer, and a comment to a previous post here continues to spur us on.  We're looking at a 55-60 hour course for Untamed New England and considering mixing in a 15-hour "short" course in conjunction.  The economics are smart: you get more teams on the course, even if it's just part of the course, and the event appeals to a wider range of participants.

My question: is 15 hours "short" enough? 

We have other options, like doing a 6-hour bike race or a 5 hour paddle race or a 8 hour trek-a-thon  . . . I think you get the idea.  There are lots of ways to split a 55-hour, 200 mile, event into smaller  marketable pieces but what is the right balance?  What can our staff support?

Personally, I just want to run the long race so our focus isn't split.  I'm confident we can get 30 teams to the starting line of the long course, which would balance the books and let us just conduct one event.



Comments

Val said:

Our first race was a 6 hr put on by GOALS as part of their 24 hr race. The exposure to watching the teams do the longer race was a definite draw to the sport for me.  A confusing inspiration of sorts.....(my vow of "I'll never do one of those" now long gone)

So I could see the benefit of doing a shorter race for the sense of promoting adventure racing and instilling interest in longer races. But in the sense of race director sanity, as Chris points out, one 55 hour race coordination seems like plenty. Although the enticement plan is clever.......
# June 20, 2007 8:20 AM

Bill Vickers said:

I would say 6-12 hours on the premise that you are attracting another subset of racers.    I think 15hr may be scary to the newbie set, although the longer the easier in my book if you can stay awake.  Just my opinion.  I think if anybody can pull off two races well, you can.  I got to be a spectator at michigan MIX since the team from canada I was racing with pulled the plug.   It seemed like they had multiple races going on anyhow with short coursing, cutoffs, and the way teams were spread out.  It was a new and different experience seeing the race from that angle, and fun.  
     I think it's overall good for AR having two races at once, but who knows.  It hopefully helps the RD's bottom line.   I wonder  what percentage of people doing the sprint race at Odyssey move on up to the 24hr by merely watching.
Bill
# June 20, 2007 1:56 PM

Chris (Crash & Splash) said:

Didn't the graphic on www.untamedne.com say 55 hours before?  The number seems to be growing... ;-)
# June 22, 2007 9:14 AM

gkillian said:

Good catch.  I think it's stabilized at 60-hours now -- a good round number!
# June 23, 2007 8:02 AM

Eric Cone said:

72hr, 96hr, let's keep it growing. The NE has a lot of public land.
# June 26, 2007 10:27 PM
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