Up the Hill Race and Party Notes
Planning |
Ribbons and Trophies |
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Overview
As of 2002, the Up the Hill Race and Party has been held for 23 years at UCAR's Mesa Lab. It consists of a bike race, a foot race, a relay race, and a party with awards presentation following. It is one of the most detailed events to plan and involves coordination with many other groups at UCAR.
I've written a lot of instructions since people aren't always in contact right before the races. And I've included a lot of my notes beause they helped me a lot the second time around. In addition to these web notes, I am also passing along 2 binders with a lot of the same info you see here. Future race chairs should feel free to add or edit as they see fit.
--Emily
Event Chairs
I would suggest always having a chair and co-chair for this event. It's very hard to do it alone. Also, the event usually occurs near fiscal year end, so staff with significant year-end duties may want to consider volunteering for a different event.
Selecting a Theme
In the past, we have selected a theme each year for the race and party. This isn't always very easy. In 2002, for example, we chose 'the UCAR olympics'. Relay participants got extra points for wearing togas, runners carried olympic torches, and we aimed for mediterranean catering.
To Do List
UTH chairs may find it useful to make an exhaustive to do list since there are so many things to keep track of. I've provided one of my lists as an example (MS Word doc).
Meetings
I found it useful to have several meetings with the other groups that are involved in the race. It's true that most of them have been helping with the race for many years, but they like to stay in the loop during planning.
- Food Services: discuss how to organize crowd flow so there aren't huge lines as the buffet; review cleanup duties; discuss menu ideas and budget.
- Organizers Meeting: all groups involved in the planning discuss their duties, new ideas, etc. I sent out an e-mail before hand so everybody had some idea of what we were going to discuss. These groups would include: PPS, Food Services, Materials Handling, Transportation, AV, Safety, Security, the MERT, EAC chairs, and key volunteers. These groups will rely on each other for various tasks, so it's a good thing for them to work out the details and for Chairs to hear the plans. EAC Chairs organize and lead this meeting.
- MERT Meeting: the MERT will handle all race emergencies (and the EAC Chairs will take a back seat and offer assistance as requested.) Each year the MERT makes a detailed plan of how they will deal with injuries and it's a good thing for the Chairs and key volunteers (such as the volunteers in charge at the start and finish lines who carry radios) to attend so they know what to expect. We typically have a few small injuries each year, but prepare for serious problems. MERT organizes this meeting and EAC chairs request to attend.
- EAC Briefing and Request for Volunteers: Chairs will brief the EAC periodically at monthly meetings and sometimes use this time to generate ideas. A month or two out from the event, Chairs will present their list of needed volunteers to the EAC and assign responsibilities. UTH requires virtually every EAC member plus some other volunteers from staff.
- Volunteer Briefing: make some time to go over volunteer responsibilities with each volunteer. You could do this by phone if you need to. On race day, volunteers can get confused about what they're supposed to do and Chairs will be busy with other things. I tried to make a detailed handout to help with this.
- Timer/Data Recorder/Number Caller Practice: this is important! Schedule a time for your timing teams to practice. I did this in 2001 and everything went smoothly. I ran out of time for it in 2002 and we barely had a usable set of data. (And, choose your teams carefully--you want people with good eyesight to spot the race numbers, people with legible handwriting to record the data, and people who are calm and focused to use the stopwatches.) Set up a little practice finish line and make sure they understand. There are pretty detailed instructions for the timing teams. Chairs will need to supervise the timing carefully and will probably want to recall the times from the watches themselves. Before the race starts, let your stopwatch operators practice using the watches again so they haven't forgotten.
E-mails
Here are some examples of e-mails that I sent out. This may give you an idea of some of the things to keep track of.
Budget and Costs
Since the UTH Race and Party is the last EAC event of the fiscal year, funds are often tight. Begin by discussing how much you have to spend with the EAc treasurer. Use account key 310074 for everything but alcohol and use 309010 for alcohol. Since you probably won't have signature authority on these accounts, you may want to have the EAC president sign off on your PaymentNet statements. Here's a sample of what I spent and budgeted in 2002.
Registration and Results Database
For the past several years, Becky Ruttenberg has been assisting with the UTH by developing and maintaining a registration and and results database. Contact her to get a preview and discuss how everything works. Her database is a great help.
Maps
You may find it useful to make a map that shows how everything will be laid out to distribute to all the groups who help. Here's a blank to work from and one of the ones I used as an example.
Relay Race
In the past, we've been asked by SASS to try to slow down the relay. We've tried to do this by choosing a clever baton for the relay. The problem is that it still never works. And relay teams will try whatever they can think of to get around the rules. So do your best, I guess. You should stress to all the teams and participants that they can participate at a level appropriate to their fitness level. Some people even just stand in place and pass the baton. There's a sample pre-race safety message included that may also help.
Organizing the relay teams is tough and I don't know if I have a good suggestion. Just give it some thought, try to keep in contact with the team leaders and make sure they understand the procedures and rules, make sure they get their results to you in time, and start early. Here's a sample e-mail to get teams started and here's the safety note e-mail.
Setup Request to Materials Handling
After your organizers meeting you'll have good idea of what each group needs to have set up. You will need to request to have Materials Handling help you. They will deliver, set up, and put away tables, chairs, trash, etc. Typically the EAC will want a couple of tables near the finish line and start line and chairs. The MERT will usually make their own request, but will want water stations and parking areas for their emergency vans.
Food Services
I'd say to be really specific about what you want and how much you have to spend. It's easy for catering costs to go high if you let them, but you can cut costs quite a bit and still have a nice selection. And you should probably try to meet with them very early on for ideas. Also, you should give some thought to the set up of the buffets and how to keep the crowd moving. I've been to parties where people spend 1/2 hour in the food line only to find that there aren't many interesting things left, so you will want to discuss ideas for keeping things moving. Remember to include vegetarian and possibly vegan choices. An alcohol license must be obtained for the day. Basically, you go get the form from Food Service’s web site and send it to Bob Roesch and a few others, as indicated, to sign. You can indicate how much alcohol you want to purchase to limit costs as well.
Safety and Site Services including Security
SASS will naturally want to help make the race as safe as possible. They will attend the organizers meeting and keep in contact. One of the major things that they ask if for us to try to slow down the relay race (to reduce the risk of problems with participants of varying fitness levels). This prove sto be quite a challenge.
Security will control traffic on the course and assist with any problems. They will stop traffic during the races at the top and bottom of the hill and allow trafic through briefly between races.
Music
Some sort of music is expected of late. Most of the time, we have bands for parties. Make sure they can work cheap! If you find that you need to save money, you might shop for a DJ. You may also want to make sure they aren't so loud that people can't enjoy themselves. AV will provide a sound system for announcements and music at the party. If a band is hired, they will often allow us to use their microphones for announcements instead of setting up our own. Make sure to have a contract administrator review any contracts for music. You'll need to have PPS arrange for appropriate power. I used Digital Entertainment DJ in 2002 and everyone seemed pleased.
Contests
To advertise the event, you may want to think of quizzes or contests that fit in with your theme. In the past we've done scavenger hunts for all the buildings that have been pretty well received. In 2001, we gave out the contest prizes at the party. That might not have been the best idea--someone had to watch and give out the prizes and couldn't enjoy the party and there were a lot of unclaimed prizes. So you might want to give out the prizes beforehand.
Ribbons and Trophy
In the past we have ordered ribbons from Arrowhead Awards for 1st, 2nd, 3rd in each race for men and women as well as ribbons for each participant. We have considered an Ironman type award for those who participate in all three events but have never been able to get in organized in time--it's hard to get all the participant info soon enough. We do a different color each year for the participant ribbons but we need to try and figure out what’s been done in the past and keep a list so we don’t duplicate colors. We've been ordering big fancy rosette ribbons for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for the men's' and womens' bike and foot and for the relay and simple ribbons for participants. (There's a roving trophy for the relay winner. You'll have to retrieve it from last year's winner before the race. I think it may be engraved. There's something that's engraved, a plaque or something.) This is a big chuck of money, so you'll probably want to shop around. The place I used in 2002, The Trophy shop of Boulder, had a good deal and they will have our information on file. I bought enough participation ribbons to cover all racers, but we had almost 3/4 of them left unclaimed, so maybe cut those back or advertise them more aggressively. I had the rosette ribbons printed with the year, the ordinal, and mens or womens and bike or foot race. It wasn't too much more expensive for that printing.
Race Bibs
Order race bibs. In the past, we have used http://www.marathononline.com. It makes sense to group the participants by number for each race/category (ex: 1-35 for women’s foot race, 36-60 for men’s foot race, etc.) Also, throw out any numbers that could be put on upside down like 66 or 99. This makes it easier to figure out what number someone has if we can’t quite see it at the finish line. Don’t mail the bibs out ahead of time; people lose them. Instead, assign each participant a bib number and write the names on the back of each bib. Hand these out before the start of each race. Insist that all bibs be attached to the chest; it’s way too difficult to guess where they might put them otherwise and would make identifying people at the finish line very difficult.
This Week Announcements
You will probably want to use TW to generate excitement and advertise the races. You can also do a call for volunteers and registration, announce your quizzes and contests, report results, advise of road closures, etc. Here are some of the things I used TW for.
Volunteer Duties
You will need some staff members to help. Volunteers can count toward the participation total for their divisions' relay team. Here's a sample of the instructions I used.
Timers' Instructions
The timing teams are so important to the race. Choose carefully. Most of the details are in the instructions, so I won't bother with a lot of details here.
Start Line Duties
I won't say too much about this since there are a lot of details in the start line instructions. Choose someone you can rely on and who can handle all the hubbub in a calm manner to be in charge at the start line. When announcing the start of the race, minimize the number of electronic devices you’re announcing over. For example, you will only be able to use the radio or the bullhorn, not both due to interference. The radio is best because everyone involved will hear it and you can shout the start to the racers while using it. The person in charge at the start line will need at least one other person to help hand out race bibs. And don't forget to buy a lot of safety pins to attach them.
Finish Line
It will probably work out best to have the chair at the finish line. Try to delegate all the tasks you can think of so you can remain free to handle whatever comes up, talk on the radio, supervise the timing teams, etc. I haven't written any instructions for this; maybe something for future race organizers.
Crowd Control
Crowd control is one of the hardest aspects of the event to control. People will ignore barricades and walk right onto the race course even during the races. It's even harder during the relay. For some reason that that pavement is just too tempting. Security will control traffic and assist with the crowd, but most crowd control is up to the EAC. Physical Plant Services will rent barricades for us, but it is generally up to the EAC to place them. Last year I also purchased caution tape to help. You will need to do your best to keep people off the pavement , so the racers have room, and so traffic can go up and down between races. You will also need to prevent people from trampling the grass. I would suggest that it might help to get 6 volunteers in orange vests to go up and down the course and tell people to clear the pavement. This would be especially helpful during the relay. People waiting to participate get in the way and we discovered last year that people just stopped in the middle of the finish line once they crossed and blocked it for the remaining racers--something to try to prevent for next time.
Radio Usage
Security is very nice about loaning us radios as long as we're careful about their usage. Ask them in advance and let them know how many you need (probably 2). Keep in mind that you will be using the same Official UCAR channel as Security and the MERT. Keep your messages short, professional, to the point, and infrequent. You may announce the starts, monitor road closures, etc. Be careful about who you have on the radio; Security provides these radios as a favor to us and it would be very hard to do it without them should we get carried away and lose the privilege. Here's a radio usage guide that MERT uses.
Sample Emergency Response Plan
The MERT makes very thorough preparations for this race. You should probably sit in on their race meeting to see how it's going to work if there's an emergency and to plan space for them along the course. Remember if there's an emergency, they're in charge. Listen to what's happening on the radio and they will ask if they need your help and let you know when you can resume the race. There are usually some minor first aid interruptions at every race (this is part of the reason why everyone thinks it always takes so long to run the races; they just don't realize all the things that go on behind the scenes.) Here's a sample of what their plan is like. They will have several stations along the race route that will include trained personnel and first aid supplies as well as water.
Results and Data
As your waiting between races, you'll want to check your data sheets, transfer names over to match the bib numbers and get as ready as possible to determine the winners. During this time you'll have a whole bunch of people stopping by the finish line to try to get you to look up the results. You will probably want to withhold any results until the awards ceremony because there are always a lot of issues to resolve.
Right after the race, the chair should dash off to go over the data (leave someone else in charge of wrapping everything else up). You'll want to make arrangements to have a computer with an internet connection available to you at the Mesa Lab so you can run the results portion of Becky's database. Typically Becky will help you go over everything and enter the data. Relay data gets entered right after the race, but bike and foot race data is usually the next day. And don't forget to hurry because everybody who's enjoying the party while you're calculating is getting impatient and somehow thinks you can resolve all the problems and announce the winner in 5 minutes! You'll have to compare each timing team's data and see if they've agreed on the finish order and see what bib numbers they couldn't see. This is why it's really important to choose your timing teams carefully and impress upon them how important it is to be very attentive.
It's pretty straight forward to figure the bike and foot race winners, but the relay is a little different. You should meet with Becky Ruttenberg ahead of time and ask her to see the formula that determines the winner. There are 3 factors that are used to determine the winners: percent participation, time, and the third special factor. For percent participation, you will need each relay team to give you their number of final participants and you will need to ask HR to give you their division totals. Time is just the time it took to finish. And the third factor is whatever fun idea you come up with. In the past we've used amount of sand left in the olympic torches, weight of dry ice, etc. Make it something that you can quickly and easily measure. You'll want to discuss with Becky beforehand how you want to score this third item. The formula that is used has been carefully thought out by scientific types and includes some fancy statistic functions that Becky can explain. You can also weight the three factors to place emphasis on the thing you think is most important. You'll find that many groups are dissatisfied with the results--'We had a hundred people; why didn't we score higher in participation?'--We finished first, how come we weren't in the top three?' It turns out that big groups like UOP have so many people in their division that 160 participants is still a small percentage. And time is just 1/3 of the picture, so be prepared to explain.
Awards Ceremony
You will probably want to arrange to have Rick Anthes or Tim Killeen present the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ribbons for the mens' and womens' bike and foot races and the relay trophy. You'll probably want to have a list of the winners for them to read and then help hand them the ribbons. Guests get really impatient waiting for the results, so you'll want to have them ready as soon as possible.
Wrap Up
After the race, you will want to think about what's left to wrap up. You'll need to get those results entered, collect your supplies, resolve any data issues, thank all the organizers and volunteers, make notes for next year, reply to any concerns and complaints, distribute the fancy ribbons to participants who skipped the awards ceremony, etc.
Reporting Results
Make sure and plan to report the results as soon as possible or you'll find your voicemail and e-mail getting overrun. You can get a link from Becky Ruttenberg to the results page of her database and prepare a This Week Announcement to post the following workday with all racers results.
Problems
Crowd control is always a problem. You may want to try getting 6 volunteers to monitor this as I mentioned above. Pay special attention to the relay finish area.
In 2002, the number spotters had a lot of trouble seeing the racers' bibs and that led to us not knowing who some of the racers were at the end of the day. Becky and I ended up having to call several people and ask who they were near (and they don't remember this very well.) It would be very inexpensive to add a second bib to each racer. For ex, bikers could have the chest and helmet or bike frame numbers. Runners could have front and back. You might also want to have additional number spotters. It's just a pretty bad thing to finish the race and not know who finished in each spot.
Be sure to be prepared for last minite sign ups in the races. Have some sort of list at the start line with extra bibs and then make plans to get it to you when it's time ot figure the winners.
Ideas
If we find ourselves needing to generate some money to pay for this event, we could sell race t-shirts or hire a photographer to snap photos of each racer to purchase (like they do at rafting companies).
You can find a lot of advice on organizing a race on the web. It really gets you thinking.
last updated: September 4, 2007 by Emily Doremire