Early Call Time

As the calendar turns to October, the month of the 2020 Bank of America Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience, the ECT Pod has on David Waskowski, Director of Participant Services for Chicago Event Management, organizers of the Chicago Marathon. Before you read any more of the summary of what was truly an interesting and insightful interview, please listen to the ECT Pod jingle(!) that our talented guest wrote for and shared with us after recording!
David is a lifelong runner, and the guys wax nostalgic with him about running cross country before this industry veteran walks us through his career path at CEM, the early days of which included a job Tony can commiserate with him about: flyering the Chicago Marathon course. David shares the most Chicago story ever from his days doing race operations--getting approval to place a tent outside a union hall where whoever answered the phone didn't have any time for nonsense. He explains his transition from the race operations side to the experience side, and along the way tells us about the biggest changes he has seen in the industry over his decade-and-a-half of varied experience at an industry leading event management company.
The interview then veers into the esoteric, as Tony and Eli ask their guest of many talents about his much-ballyhooed musical gifts, comedy chops, and whether he has any other super powers that they should know about (he demurs). As inevitably happens when anyone learns that someone plays the banjo, a long digression into David's banjo-pickin' ways occurs. Wazko also shares some insight into the musical breakthrough he has made due to the regular deep practice the pandemic has created space for for him, which is something we all can and should learn from.
There have been some interesting projects going on at CEM recently, and David shares his perspective on a couple big ones: the inaugural Bank of America Chicago 13.1, a major event that planned to bring racing to a new part of Chicago that was planned for this past June but ultimately was canceled due to the pandemic. And the aforementioned Bank of America Chicago Marathon Virtual Experience, which takes a different tactic than many virtual races by opening up new virtual distances to all comers but limiting access to its longest event--the virtual marathon--to only existing registrants.
David, a loyal Early Riser, is prepared for the final question and tells us about his end-of-day on-site ritual of cheering in final finishers (and becoming an unofficial photographer) and then, after taking advantage of the running water at the after-party before ghosting, settling in with some fellow Cheesehead buddies to watch a Packers game.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].
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Continuing their international interview series, Eli and Tony welcome the man with the coolest name in the running industry, Johan Tigér, Chief Technical Officer of Göteborgsvarvet, to the Pod. And what a welcome they give him, as Eli greets him by butchering both Johan's and his race's name.
Although our American listeners may not be familiar with it, Göteborgsvarvet is a big deal, the largest half marathon in the world with over 60,000 registrants in its peak year, starting in 30 waves from 1pm-4pm on what's usually a beautiful spring day in Sweden's Second City, Gothenburg (Tony can't get over what these start logistics must look like). As its CTO, Johan is charged with keeping the race ahead of the curve in all areas technology, with a major focus on registration.
Johan came to running a bit later in life than many of our guests, but has immersed himself in running culture over the last decade-plus of his life, since a co-worker at the Swedish equivalent of the NSA asked him to go for a run during and he finished the run with the taste of blood in his mouth. He ran his first Göteborgsvarvet in 2006, and has since run 32 races of marathon distance or longer (definitely not a member of the "just one marathon club" like the co-hosts).
After getting his masters, Johan bounced between e-commerce and working at jogg.se (which he describes as Swedish Strava) before starting a small registration company which Göteborgsvarvet then brought him on to customize as their registration platform. And as the architect of that platform, Johan was recently able to construct a three-click Covid-19 transfer function for its 40,000 runners when it Göteborgsvarvet went virtual.
Eli gets sidetracked when Johan mentions a one-off marathon being held in honor of Gothenburg's 400th anniversary next year, which currently has 6,500 registrants of its 15,000-cap event registered over a year in advance, grilling him about the details of this high production-value, mass participation, one-off event. Johan then gets us back on track sharing the details of what Göteborgsvarvet did when it went virtual, including a custom video (with voice-over work by a national celebrity!) for all finishers. (In the process he drops a sick burn on Eli for his failed hashtag attempts. If he's not invited back, you know why...)
Johan then brags about the Swedish events community, including the multi-sport Swedish Classic series of events which Johan himself completed in 2013. And he also mentions another very cool-looking Swedish multisport event, swimrun. Johan then lets us know right at the end of the pod that we have to wrap it up so he can go home to prepare for the ultra he's running the next day!
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].
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In this month's interview episode Tony and Eli get to talk to Matt Helbig, CEO of Big River Running, whose Big River Race Management arm is producing The Marathon Project, an elite-only, 100-runner marathon in Arizona on December 20 which the guys have talked about before on the pod and are very excited about.
After the guys learn a little about Matt's early days in the industry (which include a collegiate connection with one of his partners in The Marathon Project, Hoka One One Northern Arizona Elite Founder and Head Coach Ben Rosario), Matt then tells them about The Marathon Project's origin as Rosario's idea to create a competition opportunity for elite athletes who haven't had many other racing opportunities this year. He outlines the risk that Matt and his partners in this endeavor (the aforementioned Rosario as well as athlete agent Josh Cox) have taken on in producing this event, and how Big River Race Management is taking the idea and making it a reality--from venue-sourcing and course certification to COVID protocols and virtual technical meetings. And in the process Matt almost breaks news on the pod, teasing that there may be an announcement about a TV deal for the race coming soon.
Everything about this event sounds like it will be world-class, and the guys are stoked for there to be a professionally-produced, elite, criterium-style marathon featuring some of America and the world's best marathoners competing for Olympic berths, contractual bonuses, and (hopefully if the sponsors come through) a substantial prize purse before the end of the year. Listen to the full episode so you'll have all the behind-the-scenes details when you (hopefully) watch the race on TV with them on December 20! And consider showing your support for this event (and Matt) by participating in its virtual event.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].
Facebook: @EarlyCallTimePod
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In the final episode of an October jam-packed with bonus content Tony and Eli interview a man of many hats, JT "Just Truth" Service, the founder of Soul Focus Sports (parent company of Run Local and the Silicon Valley Half Marathon), the CEO of Silverback, a podcaster extraordinaire, an ex-agent, and one-time running media start-up founder. His audio track isn't the clearest, but we all have a lot to learn from him about how he juggles all these balls--plus finds time to take care of himself by starting every day of with a bit of movement--so listen carefully!
The fastest ECT Pod guest yet, with a strong collegiate career at UCSB and a 2008 Olympic Trials marathon qualifier on his athletic CV, JT went to law school with hopes of becoming the Jerry Maguire of endurance and action sports athletes before realizing "that 15% of very little is even less." While that phase of his career may not have been very remunerative, he did gain some great stories involving Dean Karnazes, whom he represented, and nudity in the desert.
After that chapter, JT started building his empire, which he kindly takes a moment to clarify the many intertwined different arms of to the guys: Soul Focus is his production-for-hire arm, Run Local and the Silicon Valley Half are Sole Focus-owned events, and Silverback is his and Kyle's equipment rental and operations for-hire company. He also talks about having Meb and Merhawi Keflezighi as business partners in the Silicon Valley Half, and how a piece of advice he didn't take from Merhawi has helped his businesses thrive during this time when so many traditional organizations are struggling (Hawi's advice was not "a con starts from the shoes up"--that's a JT original).
A theme that runs throughout this whole interview is the strength of JT's team. Anticipating this like the professional podcasters they are, and also knowing that no one would have better stories, after a brief diversion into JT's newly-discovered Jewish heritage the guys secretly invite Silverback COO and JT's partner in crime Kyle Meyers to join them halfway through the podcast. Kyle doesn't disappoint, sharing stories of JT being "a really good sport" while barely making it through a weekend working the Chicago Marathon, how he regularly cuts his hand while working, and his deep love for a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco karaoke joint. There's one story specifically--that sounds like it involved criminal activity--that Eli can't drag out of him, but he lets Kyle off the hook and lets him finish by saying something nice about JT instead.
Kyle is quite the industry pro himself, so Eli promises to have him back on not just to talk shop but also about Minneapolis (since Kyle was raised in Eli's new home), but everyone agrees he should stick around for the evergreen closer for this episode, too, so the episode wraps with both JT and Kyle talking about their team's post-strike traditions.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, guests you would like us to invite, or want to try to stump us at Virtual Race Balderdash, please send us an email at [email protected].
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In September's second banter episode, Eli and Tony realize that their homework before the next banter episode is to find another way to open the podcast than asking each other "How ya doing?" since that has become such a loaded question during 2020.
The guys then move onto their topic for this week's conversation: with in-person races slowly returning but demand remaining low, what does the industry have to do in order to make runners feel comfortable and want to return to in-person races? They discuss the actual appetite for in-person demand right now and whether people complaining vocally on social media about the lack of in-person races are a minority (they are), whether these smaller events cater to only a certain type of (mostly-speedier, no-frills) runners but are less interesting to the social-runner masses (they are), and whether races have to make a concerted effort to establish a baseline trust with their runners that their event is safe but then communicate beyond that (just like in the "before times") about what elements make their race worth a runners' while (they do).
Tony compares putting runners at ease about post-pandemic safety measures to putting them at ease about post-Boston bombing safety measures, and Eli proposes that some sort of "contract" between runners and race organizers is necessary, laying out what the race's responsibilities are and what the runners' responsibilities are in helping to assure an event is safe. The guys touch on the idea that not every event needs to happen right now, and that organizations like Eli's that are putting on smaller events right now are both achieving their mission and also doing market research and taking one on the chin a bit for the rest of the industry. But for smaller organizations that aren't capable or willing to do that at a loss, it may not make sense to put on an in-person event right now at this time when, even if we build it, runners aren't coming.
There is strong agreement that, as we return to racing, we're going to need to take the lessons we've learned in creating community in the virtual space and find ways to translate them to our new in-person environment, and also that we should all be kicking ourselves for the money and engagement we've left on the table over the years by not embracing virtual alongside of in-person before the pandemic forced us to. And Tony notes that to know what lessons we have learned we should all make sure our surveys are done the right way, and that if we don't know what a survey done "the right way" looks like, we should consider hiring a professional.
Lastly, astute listeners may note that early on in this conversation Eli, to the surprise of no one who knows him, takes over a minute to realize that he's talking to an empty room as Tony experiences some technical difficulties with their new recording platform. But Tony returns to only moderate criticism, and your fearless co-hosts go on indomitably shouting into the void to wrap up another successful ep of the pod, technical difficulties be damned!
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe. If you have any questions, comments, or guests you would like us to invite, please send us an email at [email protected].
Facebook: @EarlyCallTimePod
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Twitter: @EarlyPod