So, You Wanna Organize a Race? How the Seattle Super Skate Was Put Together

Every skater knows this scenario: you’re skating your favorite route, over smooth asphalt and under sunny skies. You’re feeling particularly good and you find yourself thinking, “There ought to be a race on this course. I wonder what it would take.”

I recently posed this question to Ricardo Sitchin, a 39 year old Senior Engineer for the National Industries for the Severely Handicapped in Seattle, who for the past few years has organized the Northwest’s largest skating event, the Seattle Super Skate (the “SSS”). Here’s Ricardo’s advice to wannabe race organizers:

HW: What is the most important factor to pulling off an event like the SSS?
RS: First, organizing an event like the SSS, where we had almost 500 skaters, is too much work for one person. So, I’d say that the most important thing to do is to get help. You need a group of volunteers that you can rely on. For example, we had an organizing committee of four people that did most of the planning and we also had a small army of people delivering entry forms to various skate shops in the area, which helped get the word out about the event.

HW: How many volunteers did you use?
RS: We had about 25 for the day of the event. Leading up to the event, the committee I mentioned had four people with whom I did the planning, logistics, and publicity.

HW: What is the first step to organizing a skating event?
RS: The very first step is to pick a date for the event. Ideally, you want good weather (something we cannot take for granted in Seattle) and no major conflicts with other events. We picked August 9th this year because it’s usually dry here in August and there were no major events on that day conflicting with ours.

HW: What about permits, insurance, etc.?
RS: If you are talking about an event like the SSS that goes from point to point, then permits are likely to be more of an issue than if your course is simply a loop around a parking lot. The reason is that a parking lot may be private property whereas a 25 mile bike trail, like our course, cuts across various municipalities. Thus, for our event, we had to obtain permits from two separate entities -- the King County Parks and Recreation Department and the Seattle Parks and Rec. Department. In addition, we closed one street at the finish to accommodate 500 skaters and their friends and we needed permits from the city and the Seattle Fire Department to do that.

HW: How much were the permits?
RS: Altogether, about $435.

HW: How about insurance?
RS: Two years ago, we got insurance through IISA. This year, they no longer offered it, but the carrier they used, City Securities, came through for us for only $375 total. Another possibility, which we did not use, was to obtain insurance through USAIR. They charged more than City Securities because USAIR requires that all skaters sign a participant card, and pay a fee, in order to be covered.

HW: It sounds like we’re talking about a lot of lead time required before the actual event. When did you start planning?
RS: I got the permit for the courseas early as the county issued them, which in our case was last January. You also want to try to get on as many event calendars as possible well in advance of the event, so that people will hear about the event and can make plans. But then the pace of organizing really doesn’t pick up until about three months before the skate.

HW: How do you go about getting sponsors?
RS: Well, for me it was sort of easy because Reid Warner, who started the SSS three years ago, had established good relations with sponsors before I came on the scene.[ Lead sponsor in Nov.] I will say that it helps to have a written description of the event to send sponsors and also to have clear expectations about what you want the sponsor to give and what they want to receive in exchange. For example, you may set a minimum dollar figure that each sponsor must meet in terms of product prizes or giveaways, and in return you can offer the sponsor exposure on your t-shirts, water bottles, entry forms, website, etc. Generally, sponsors are more willing to part with product than with money.

HW: Speaking of prizes, how many did you give away at the SSS this year?
RS: We had almost one prize per entry. We were probably the most generous athletic event in the country. And I’m not just talking about hats and t-shirts, either -- we gave away nine pairs of skates, donated by K2, one free pass to an Eddy Matzger Workshop, and forty-three sets of wheels. These are prizes that were worth from two to ten times the cost of entry (which was $22 in advance, $27 day of event).

HW: How did you promote the event?
RS: Through a variety of methods. One member of our organizing committee wrote a press release and faxed it to about fifty news organizations. Reid Warner, who is also the webmaster for the Washington In-line Skating Association, put the SSS entry form on the WILSA website. (And we actually had a person enter the event from Germany because he found out about it through the website.) We also had legions of people delivering stacks of entry forms to health clubs, skate shops, anywhere that we thought potential skaters might see them. Finally, each year, as the event grows, so does our mailing list, which is a good start for getting the word out the following year.

HW: I noticed that the SSS gave $3500 to the Multiple Sclerosis Association of King County. Do you recommend tying an event to a charitable organization?
RS: When Reid started the SSS, he chose the MS Association to receive any proceeds from the event, and they certainly are a worthy cause. Affiliating with a charitable organization helps enlist that organization's help with the event and also gives some people another reason to skate.

HW: Sounds like everything went really well. Tell me about any snafus that a potential race organizer ought to know about.
RS: Well, there are a couple of predictable trouble areas and then there is always the unknown. As an example of the unknown, when I arrived at the starting line at 5:30 the morning of the event, the women’s bathroom in the park where we were located was locked. It took me about an hour and a lot of phone calls to get someone from the Parks Dept. to come down on a Sunday morning at 6:30 to unlock it. As far as predictable snafus, you can always count on skaters showing up without helmets, despite what we tell them on the entry form about helmets being required. If you can arrange to have a local retailer bring some loaner helmets, that’s a nice way not to have to turn away people who may have gotten up early and traveled a long way just to sit out the event. Another predictable snafu is getting preliminary results posted. We tried this year to contact the same computer chip company that the Northshore Inline Marathon used last year, but they never answered our calls or our emails. So we had to rely on tear strips and a video camera. The video camera recorded all the finishers, and ultimately, our results were very accurate, but immediately after the event, the results were based only on tear strips, which of course got out of order. This may have upset some people - and I did apologize - but on the other hand, we stressed many times that the SSS is not a race, it is a purely recreational event and we compile the results not for the purpose of awarding prizes but just so people have a record of their time.

HW: Last question. What would you tell your best friend if he or she was considering organizing a skating event?
RS: Well, to be honest, I’d tell them that they have to be a bit of a fool because if they take the time to do it properly, there is no way that they can skate in it as well. You have to put your skating career on hold, as I did this year.

HW: It sounds like a lot of people were glad you did.