RACE CALENDAR
BUILDING A NEW CALENDAR
We ’ re busy revamping our Race Calendar completely , with an exciting online version in the pipeline , so I thought I ’ d keep you in the loop about our thinking , and what to look forward to . – BY SEAN FALCONER
I
have been compiling a monthly running calendar since January 2000 , when I started working on running publications , and the job has grown massively over the past 24 years ! Back in 2000 , I used to simply take the fixtures from Tom Cottrell ’ s Runners ’ Guide website ( with his permission ), do a bit of minor formatting , and that was the calendar for the next edition done . It sometimes fitted into one page in the mag , and the work took me about an hour . I didn ’ t even need to source pictures , as the layout was kept clean and simple .
Back then , trail running barely existed , so the calendar was basically just the official road running fixtures from each of the running provinces , with a tiny handful of off-road events sprinkled amongst them , as and when we found them . However , in the next few years we saw a massive growth in trail running events , and I thought the running community should know what they could choose from , so I began scouring the internet for all the fixtures I could find to add to my calendar . The challenge is that there has never been a centralised , official trail running calendar , due to most trail runs not being affiliated to a national or provincial running structure , so one has to source fixtures from each individual organiser or event company .
I also decided to add multisport ( mainly triathlon and duathlon ), orienteering , adventure racing , obstacle racing , race walking , colour runs , and anything else that involved running . Later , I added links to online entry portals , as more and more events began using this option , and this added a whole new dimension to the job ! That ’ s why , today , just putting together a monthly running calendar has morphed from a one-hour copy-and-paste job into a mammoth task that literally takes several days . And since last year , our calendar here in Modern Athlete has been a two-month compilation , so you can just imagine how much time goes into that !
That said , I have always been proud of our calendar , especially since it has been the only full calendar published by a running mag in SA for quite some time . ( I know of one other mag with a calendar , but it is basically just a six-month highlights calendar that barely scrapes the surface of all the events out there !) Meanwhile , the online calendars that I know of tend to only ( or mostly ) feature road running fixtures … pretty much for all the reasons I just mentioned above … so I have always found them lacking , in the sense .
Bigger , Better , More Interactive
For this reason , the Modern Athlete team has decided to undertake one of our biggest projects to date , to create a super-calendar that will live online , with interactive and customisable functionality . But as you can imagine , after reading this article , it requires a ton of work , not just because of the actual data collection for the calendar , but also because we are building and coding the new system .
Besides a listing of fixtures , as we have always provided , our system will have a search function , and users will be able to set up their personal profile in order to get just the fixtures they want , such as in their area or within a specific driving radius , or just events of a specific type or distance , or a combination of all or some of the above . The point is , we ’ re taking the time to get it right , so that you will have the complete picture , and can make an informed choice of where next to line up to race .
It ’ s very much a work in progress , and we will keep you in the loop as we make headway , but for now , I ’ m just going to say that I ’ m very excited about this project . After 24 years of doing the calendar , this feels like really taking it to a new level !
Images : Kevin Sawyer , Peter Kirk & courtesy Comrades Marathon
82 ISSUE 162 | www . modernathlete . co . za