Event 

A “set and forget” attitude about course certification is understandable. But even the largest and most important races can make mistakes in this important area.

Even as your runners celebrate finishing their big day, your work as a race director isn’t over yet. A start line can be as simple or as complicated as the size of your race dictates, but the finish is usually a lot more elaborate.

For Marcel Altenburg, a leading crowd scientist at Manchester Metropolitan University, who’s worked with all the biggest sporting events in the world, the start of a race is the most important time of the whole day.

While many of the issues with creating a course are the same no matter how big or small your race is, once you start to crack 500 runners—and certainly by 1,000 athletes—the venues and hiccups change

When small mom-and-pop races, as he calls them, come to Jim Gilmer for help with course creation, operational set-up, and logistics, they almost always have a general idea of what they want to do.