Ultramarathon Daily News | Thurs, Mar 19

SCMP: Excellent piece on Dylan Bowman and how is injury caused an identity crisis that eventually helped him focus on himself. Great read.

Slowtwitch: Why can’t I just get a refund?!? I’m appalled at some of the comments I’m seeing online and hope RDs are taking names of the offenders.

Sabrina Little/IRF: Are logical fallacies inhibiting your runs or workouts? Are you afraid of turkeys?

Such a short news day. Tough to report on the MUT (Mountain Ultra Trail) scene when there are no races, right?

ORM: Has your race been cancelled? Probably.

Ian Corless: Get to know Tom Evans.

Remember to support your local independent running store, but also remember your local brewer!

Trailrunner Mag: Go ahead, run outside.

I’ve put the athlete salary piece on hold for a few days. Stay tuned, it’ll be good.

I’ll be on Billy Yang’s podcast this afternoon (not sure of release date) to talk about life and running. Gotta figure out my tech issues first. Better run.

5 Responses to "Ultramarathon Daily News | Thurs, Mar 19"

Andrew Brodsky says:

March 19, 2020 at 9:33 am

Hi folks, love the podcast and glad you’re continuing to keep things moving during all the weirdness. I’m posting a series of posts about ultrarunning, COVID, and general sanity on my website — thought today’s might be relevant.

The link is: https://runningphilosopher.com/2020/03/19/how-im-staying-sane-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/

Please tell me if this feels to spammy and I’ll cease and desist! Just trying to keep us ultrarunners talking 🙂

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Todd says:

March 19, 2020 at 10:30 am

On the RD issue,
Looking at the example, do events really run that lean on what they take in vs paid out?
That event had $100 in the fund and still hadn’t rented the porta johns.

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Paul says:

March 19, 2020 at 11:48 am

For me, the refund policy speaks for itself. When I signed up, I agreed to no refunds and I’m fine with that. If I don’t like those terms I’m free to not register.

I don’t find the “we spent all the money” argument compelling at all. Let’s say the timing company got into a car accident on the way to the race and never showed up or the tee shirts were never delivered because of a fire at the tee shirt company after all the shirts were printed. Do you think these RDs would say fine, go ahead and keep my money to their vendors?

Or more generally, if the RD is at a restaurant and another customer accidentally trips the waiter and his food spills on the floor. If the restaurant said sorry, we already spent all our money making your meal, and this wasn’t our fault, would you like to pay for another meal? How would that go over?

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Jay D says:

March 19, 2020 at 12:57 pm

“Do events really run that lean”

In a lot of cases, YES. Even the big race organizations in our sport, like Araviapa, aren’t that big. I’d be shocked if they had a massive amount of cash cushion, and your lines of credit are only going to last you so long when your revenue is down 80%. My calendar this spring was filled with small races where the total gross revenues are not much more than a couple grand – and I know that’s all gone to t-shirts and swag and porta-Johns already. I’ve reached out to a few RDs that I know to tell them – it’s fine, I have zero expectation of a refund. On a lot of these events, refund means paying me back out of their personal checkbook. Good people putting on these events that I would like to keep running with in the future, so it’s the worst possible time for me to be a jackass about a $50 or $100 entry fee.

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Kristen Lodge says:

March 20, 2020 at 5:01 pm

I completely agree about “it’s the worst possible time for me to be a jackass about a $50 or $100 entry fee.”
I don’t expect a refund but if it can be deferred, that’s great and a bonus. I want to see all the races return next year.
I’m an ultrarunner and endurance athlete. I’m in it for the long haul.

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