What I learnt organising my first running race
Clandon Park Run - Part 3 - Adventures and Lessons
Part 1 - The idea, the landowner and my first steps
Part 2 - Hold my hand as 750 people turn up for my first ever running event
The Clandon Park Run was a community organised charity event
This first event was held in 2007 and it continued until 2022
It is was a cross-country run
There were 10k, 4k races and junior fun run options
The runners and helpers had disappeared – quickly like the tide ebbing over a flat sandy beach. Six months of risk assessments and planning meetings, e-mails and talks with the aristocratic landowner to set this up: and the races were all over in a splash. It’s just two years since I’d run my first race, and today I’d organised one. I’d brought together a team of 75 to make it work – and 750 people had gone home having had a good time. I was running on top of the world!
I wanted to enjoy the route around the private parts of the estate one last time before it became private again. So early the next day I walked around the course. Walking quietly on my own, letting it all sink in. In theory I was there to sweep the route of any litter or forgotten signs but the marshals had done a thorough job of clearing up. I was struck by the trampled long grass next to the tracks and imagined the competitors running five abreast like I'd seen in the photos. As I returned and climbed over my stile, the pleasant musty smelling woodlands took me back to where this all started. No time to dwell: I had thank you messages to write and kit to return. I wrote to all the helpers and marshals with some photos and told them what a group of novice runners who were supporting a local hospice charity had written in to say: “From the moment we arrived in your car park to the moment we drove away, the experience was a very special one. Thank you for all the thought you had clearly put into the organisation and for the warm atmosphere you created on arrival and around the whole 10km course.”
Video of 2011 Clandon Park Run
I would find out so much more about what happened on event day in the weeks that followed. Most of it made me smile, some of it didn’t. Like Tom and his little group of football friends who went wrong on the 4k at the last junction before the school and ran uphill till they spotted their primary school. They then realised they’d gone wrong and turned round to head back down to the finish. Had the marshal at this important junction been having a chat and missed them? Another marshal who had been posted out on a residential road, on the way to the park, told me how people had brought deckchairs out to sit and cheer and had even supplied her with cups of tea. Jo, who organised the water station next to the subway, recounted how all her neighbours had come out to help pour water, refill containers and pick up stray cups.
I learnt two big lessons at that first event: Scrap the goody bags! I’d felt that we needed a way of acknowledging the sponsors and organisations that had helped us. My team of goody bag assemblers had stuffed a piece of paper with this info into a branded plastic bag to give to finishers. Seeing the runners eat the snack, drink the drink and drop the bag in a bin convinced me this was not the way. I also radically changed the way we managed 40 marshals. And my marshals, nervous too, are phoning me in relays to tell me they are ready out on the course. For the following years I organised marshals into groups each led by a “marshal captain” and we gave these captains one to one training. What didn’t change was people’s enthusiasm to marshal. From the start we organised lift shares and we gave everyone a drink and some cake - maybe that helped!
Staff, local residents, parents and students embraced the Clandon Park Run. The event had a happy unintended consequence of breaking down barriers between this large educational establishment and its surrounding community. It got easier in future years as more and more people understood how the event worked and then they helped with bigger and bigger roles. In year two, I recall George, our younger son, still at primary school, pedalling round the estate on his mountain bike with his own small rucksack of arrows, shadowing and helping Rory mark up the route. A couple of years later he’d started at the secondary school and I put him in charge of setting up Race Registration. He knew how it worked and had all the kit, and I heard back how calmly he had reminded the volunteers, including some of his new teachers, how to follow the steps in the registration process. With up to 1000 people collecting race numbers and, by now, timing chips, we needed the process to flow efficiently or runners would still be queuing at start time. We also needed the runners to wear the right number and chip.
Some family groups inadvertently pinned the wrong number on the wrong child. Some grown ups deliberately ran with someone else’s number. This can have serious safety consequences if there is a medical incident and caused red faces the year a man came third in the women's open race.
Video of 2012 Clandon Park Run
We had some weather adventures and learnt some more lessons over the following years. For one event we had mud. Ankle-deep chocolate custard mud! That year, Lord Onslow came to present the prizes in the school hall. As he stood on the stage, he opened with “It was a bit of a strange request from Linda a couple of years ago for permission to organise this event, and I’m jolly glad we said yes to support this school. However, looking at the state of you all today, I’m not sure I would have agreed to let you jog round our estate if I’d known you were going to bring so much of it back on your feet!” Luckily Nigel, the Caretaker, who was going to have to make sure the school hall was fit for assembly the following day, was also a prize-winner.
The most challenging conditions, and the year with the greatest number of medical incidents, was the finest, warmest, sunniest race day we’d had. Heat became my biggest worry. Some of our participants were only running because they were motivated by the cause, and this made them more likely to be at risk of heat-stroke and fatigue. “The year of the steers” was another anxious time for me. That year our date was slightly later because of changes in the Easter School holidays, and coincided with the young male cows being let out of their barns after winter. The steers were excited to experience the freedom of galloping around fields just a couple of days before our event. “Ah, they won’t bother you,” said the farmer. I had a sleepless night and visions of the Bull Run of Pamplona. We had to rehang some signs and deploy some extra marshals. It all went OK and, maybe, some runners got PBs.
Dawn, the Head of Modern Foreign Languages, marshalled for the first three years and decided, along with a colleague, to enter as a 10k competitor. Having run a bit at Uni, and then not at all for years this was the start of a new running era for Dawn. She recently told me that “I notched up 1000 miles last year and I’m on the Committee of my running club, and a Run Director at my local parkrun”.
The school became recognised amongst the running community and earnt the coveted “Active School Status”. Dawn describes how the Clandon Park Run “felt like it was ours”. She was proud when people said “Oh you teach at that school that holds the Clandon Park Run, do you.” One year we had a friendly face-off between the Head of PE and the Head of 6th Form. One was a fit triathlete and the other a very fast club-runner. The best bit for me was their tribes of supporting students - running or marshalling - cheering their chosen leader.
Each year, on the evening of the run, a few close friends came back to eat at our house. I remember sharing a very relieved feeling with the people who had been on the journey with me. We sat there, eating and drinking, exhausted and buzzing, and sharing our own takes on the day. Judith, a friend since our boys' primary school days, helped from the start of this mad project through to the end when she hosted a celebration dinner. Each year Judith delivered leaflets to the local primary schools and her husband Dave dismantled and rebuilt the stile - the one between the woods and the estate, to get all the runners through fast enough. As everyone left, picking their way through boxes and banners and race debris in the hall, Judith confided “I was chatting to your mum today. I said to her gosh what an amazing job Linda’s done, aren't you proud of her? And do you know what she said to me? “Mmmm, yes, but you should see the state of her house!” We both laughed and she gave me a hug.
We gained new sponsors over the years, helping with event costs and race prizes. One of these was a local physio and coaching company. After one event I treated myself to a gait analysis session there. “I won this session at a local running race,” said a chatty runner to me in the waiting room, obviously pleased with himself. “The Clandon Park Run - have you heard of it?”
What started as a school fundraiser gained a life of its own as a community event. Local people, school staff, students and parents continued to run or volunteer and some kept coming back long after their children had left the school. In my 7 years as Race Director the event landscape evolved. Timing chips became affordable and online entry services improved. Organisers and participants also became more aware of the wastefulness of medals and event t-shirts. We did raise money for the new music department and over subsequent years raised funds for other school improvements including the technology department and a new gym. The Clandon Park Run grew year on year and by 2011, we set our sights really high - could we build a much needed all-weather pitch?
After we deflated the finish gantry on the 7th, and my final, Clandon Park Run I was struck by what a journey I’d been on. On that journey I’d learnt that you can’t plan for everything. I’d experienced how much people enjoy being involved and keep coming back. I’d worked out how to prepare them, look after them and trust them.
Most importantly, at the end of this journey, I recognised that if I’d known at the start what I knew at the end, I would never ever have been brave enough to organise that first event. But I’m so glad I did!
Loving the lessons learnt 😊