Behind the Scenes at the Dragon's Back Race
I love my own runs and I love my own races.
But there’s something about working at races on the other side that I think many of us are drawn to. Perhaps it’s the expectation of paying it forward - that one day when you’re on that start line, you want to know that there’s a team of people behind the scenes, equally committed and enthusiastic as you, gunning for and doing everything they can to help you succeed.
Or maybe I’ve always had an inbuilt desire to be amongst the thick of it all – the excitement of it all coming together last minute or the challenge of having to adapt in a constantly fluid environment.
In my past life in the city, this meant that I was often heavily involved in helping organise expeditions and corporate challenges, understanding the ins and outs and the complexity of just what it takes to deliver a large-scale operation.
Photo courtesy of No Limits Photography/The Dragon’s Back
Fast forward to 2021, and here I was someone fairly new to the trail and mountain running world, but unsurprisingly unable to supress the nagging desire to see how it all came together on races from the other side. The transition across to working at different running events therefore seemed a logistical progression.
The Montane Dragon’s Back Race has the reputation of being one of the toughest and most brutal mountain races in the world.
It attracts not just the elite runners from the ultra-running community but manages to lure in the rest of us into its Dragon’s Lair! Normal everyday runners with jobs, partners, children, pets, and a whole host of other commitments, who have made it their dream to see if they have what it takes to complete the 6 day, 380km, 17,400m elevation journey down the mountainous spine of Wales.
2022 saw 264 people on that start line in Conwy Castle and logistically to pull of an event of this nature is immense. So, when the opportunity to work on Dragon’s Back covering the social media angle of the race emerged, I didn’t even hesitate in accepting.
Photo courtesy of No Limits Photography/The Dragon’s Back
There is often a misconception that “doing social media” is an easy job – I mean all you need is a phone, take a few pictures and then post them, right?
Wrong. If we backtracked to 10 years ago, even 5, the face of media on a race such as the Dragon’s Back would have been very different, I’d suggest non-existent in the case of instantaneous social media. We have become so accustomed to consuming everything about a race at the touch of our fingertips, and the demand for “good media coverage” – live streams, aerial footage, dot watching - has grown with advances in technology.
But good media is more than just that. In an age where social media has as many ills as it does benefits, it is important that for us acting as the gate keepers of what we see on our screens - that the messages that we convey are used as a force for good.
For race directors, social media can open up creative possibilities to not only showcase what is going on behind the scenes of a race, but to use marketing in an effective way – a means of getting out the correct messages that we want to see in a sport like trail running, especially where a gender, socio-economic and diversity refresh is long overdue.
Photo courtesy of No Limits Photography/The Dragon’s Back
Because in order to affect change, we need to see it, hear it, and live it – as Sabrina Pace-Humphreys correctly said, “You can’t be what you can’t see”. To engage the audiences and pull in a host of new runners to races, fundamentally we need to be able to identify ourselves in the photos, videos and coverage on races before we even contemplate if we have a cat in hells chance of being on that start line.
I am not one who likes to tick or be shoe-horned into boxes.
But there is no denying the fact that I am a runner who falls squarely in a couple of those under-represented categories. More to the point, 2022 saw me doing my first (tough but rewarding) mountain ultra, and being near and close to the back, working my socks off to make cut-offs is something I got fairly accustomed to!
And perhaps it is that which makes me instinctively drawn to showcasing the underdogs, the people who don’t usually get the coverage, the people who train relentlessly with no guarantee of a finish but nonetheless train every day to be the best runner they can be. The people who are just like you and me.
The ability to cover all those people with a small media team (and one social media person) is logistically however another matter! Not to mention difficult across all that distance and terrain! And not more so for that fact that we were trying to chase just 39 female starters.
I do believe it takes time for change to also filter through - we have started to see some races making more concerted effort to encourage under-represented groups – especially when it comes to females. But the nature of the Dragon’s Back Race and the time and commitment it takes to train for it as well as a host of other factors, means that I think we still have to wait a few years for that change to take real effect. Which means that finding that content from purely a numbers perspective is hard and requires a lot more planning!
This is not my first rodeo working with incredibly hardworking and committed media teams.
I was fortunate that in working with the rest of the media team on the Dragon’s Back Race, that all of our aims and objectives of what we wanted to convey were all aligned. The talented team of photographers, videographers and bloggers had also made it a mission for this year to really get out the stories of the different people on the race, and not just those of the front runners (though it is no denying that what the guys do at the front is phenomenal!).
Photo courtesy of No Limits Photography/The Dragon’s Back
Yet in the pursuit of changing up the narratives - to showcase the right messages and content we are trying to get out there to the users at home – takes huge amounts of planning, time and resources. If you’ve never worked on an event team, you will not have experienced the fact that typically the event team wake up earlier and go to sleep later than any of the runners.
And the media team is no exception, and I have witnessed the long hours and hard work put in by the team to create content that is exciting, creative, yet also well thought through coverage of what is going on. To pull that off in an authentic, genuine, and heart-felt way is no mean feat!
There is still a lot to do, but a lot that we can do.
And perhaps if I had one message to race directors of my experience of working at the Dragon’s Back Race it’s this.
Pulling off effective social media and overall media coverage on a race is not hard - if you get yourself the right team of people to do it. Hire the people who live, breathe, love and want to consume every second of the race as much as you do, and who have the creativity and ability to turn that passion into a story to the audiences at home.
Perhaps most of all hire people who understand that the coverage is more than just chasing a load of runners on a screen. But who understand that by getting the messages right out there will signal you are in tune with the audience. And with that most likely secure you a host of new runners for the foreseeable future.
Marie is a freelance consultant in the outdoor and running industry and is an avid runner, hiker and skier. You can find her on Instagram and on LinkedIn.
Photo courtesy of No Limits Photography/The Dragon’s Back