Discussion: Support Crews

In the ARWC thread there is a lot of talk about the support crews. I fondly remember the days when the races in our region had support crews as my wife happens to be a top shelf crew chief!

I'm just curious about whether or not typical races in your area require support crews.

The Canadian Maritimes: Haven't had support crews at races since 2006... and that was a race I hosted, and the only supported race that year.

Depends on the length. I have yet to see a 36 hour race around here run unsupported. It would be tough to do unless the course had lots of loops or the infrastructure around the race was incredibly deep. Race the Rockies (18 hrs) has been unsupported but it is short enough that the race organisers didn't have to move stuff more than once or twice. Shorter races are all unsupported. Not to many expedition length races in these parts lately but they seem to have been mixed between supported and unsupported in the past.

I still think needing a support crew is one of the biggest deterrents to 36 hour racing. It isn't a very sexy job and you don't sleep much. I've done 5 day races supported and I am still amazed we managed to find someone to help us out.

Interestingly the amount of strategy at this years worlds actually would make it more appealing to be a support crew member on my part compared to typical AR events.

We run our 3-day Untamed New England event without support crews. Here are our reasons:

>Finding parking areas for 50+ big vehicles is impossible in the remote back-country our race goest through

>Support crews are a big detterent to teams coming from far away ($ & time)

>Support crews are an amazing drain on race staff, peppering organizers with questions, directions, updates on teams, they get flat tires or run out of gas and it often becomes our problem

While it is a pain lugging around gear bins and bikes for teams, it's far easier than the alternative.

Around the Maritimes it's typically hard enough finding two teammates let alone a support crew. It was definitely a deterrent.

www.racethephantom.com is going into it's fourth year. It was a 24 hr race twice, 30 hrs last year and word is it might be 36 hrs this year. It's always supported, and done so in fine form. The drag is that (as we all know) renting the trucks and finding the volunteers to manage such a thing isn't easy! It can be done... like Revy said, with the right infrastructure / race course. I have seen the concept fail, but there were many circumstances contributing to that fail... circumstances well outside of the race director's scope.

What are the race dates for the Phantom race? We're about to announce offiically for Untamed NE Aug 12-15 but I wanted to check with you first...

I'll get NSAR to contact you... they mentioned a tentative date for the race will be July 30th to August 2nd to take advantage of the (Canadian) long week end.

I'll let them confirm that though, they might get mad at me for posting!

Untamed's comments are interesting - I hadn't thought of the drain on the race organization. I've also heard comments about the environmental impact of all those people coming into remote places.

We've done our best to avoid supported races, although it hasn't always been possible, e.g. Raid The North. It's just too much to ask someone to do support. When an unsupported option is offered, we always pay for it, even though it puts us at a disadvantage. Even some 1-day races, like Logs Rocks & Steel, are supported with an unsupported option. There are several international races that we considered, but dropped the idea upon learning that we needed support.

The last (most recent?) Raid The North Champs near Ottawa was 3 days unsupported with a traditional, linear (mostly) race format. Nothing went wrong with that from our perspective (5th), but Revy might have other insights from higher in the pack. It seemed to work well.

Agreed with Revy - ARWC would have been an interesting race to support at. I supported a top 10 team at Primal Quest one year, and it was hard work but very inspiring to see that we were making a difference in the team's standings. I remember that our team had been in the same position for the initial, all-day 80 km paddle, then they came in for a 25-minute transition that we'd planned in great detail - and they moved up 2 places in the TA, yeah!! We still had the nasty jobs, but we also planned each stage and handed the maps to the team in waterproof cases with routes highlighted and measured.

Cogeyed AR is correct Grant, we have tentatively picked the last week-end in July (July 30th to Aug 2nd) as our race dates. It worked well with the long week end in 2009 as some teams stayed the extra night to rest before the drive home, it was also nice to have a casual social evening to tell some stories.

Ahhh Bash I can't even imagine what we would have been capable of at the Worlds with you in our back pocket, strategizing, calculating complex CP/km ratios in your head and handing us our maps when we woke from our slumber....oh I dream about it!