When I was asked to consider the NSF, I did my homework. The NSF has a 99/100 rating on Charity Navigator. This rating is one of the highest for any charity and may be THE highest for a military charity. I spent several hours emailing and talking to the NSF staff and those who have been recipients of NSF help. What I came away with was the same feeling I have when working with the SOWF, this is an organization that does its very best to use all the money you donate to help our warriors and their families. It feels like the Destin Marathon has joined a family not partnered with a faceless organization. I look forward to working with our runners to raise some serious funds for Naval Special Warfare community that has given so much in the service of our nation!
It's going to be a huge week for the Destin Marathon! We announce our Official Charity today, our Title Sponsor tomorrow and kick-off our Indiegogo crowdfunding on Monday. I'm excited and honored to announce that the Navy SEAL Foundation has agreed to be the Official Charity of Choice for the Destin Marathon and Half Marathon. This is not a decision I made lightly or on the spur of the moment. Most of you know my service history and commitment to helping the special operations community. Over the past five years I have helped raise nearly $200,000 for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. I wanted to continue to help the special operations community but not overwhelm the local community with SOWF fundraisers.
When I was asked to consider the NSF, I did my homework. The NSF has a 99/100 rating on Charity Navigator. This rating is one of the highest for any charity and may be THE highest for a military charity. I spent several hours emailing and talking to the NSF staff and those who have been recipients of NSF help. What I came away with was the same feeling I have when working with the SOWF, this is an organization that does its very best to use all the money you donate to help our warriors and their families. It feels like the Destin Marathon has joined a family not partnered with a faceless organization. I look forward to working with our runners to raise some serious funds for Naval Special Warfare community that has given so much in the service of our nation! It's been an exciting month. I have been freezing my butt off in Canada for work this all month which has slowed my running greatly but that doesn't slow down our Destin Marathon planning. Unfortunately, our request to close the Mid-Bay Bridge was politely denied by the Mid-Bay Bridge authority. Here is the full text of their reasoning. Unfortunately, the Authority unanimously voted NOT to close the bridge in support of the Destin Marathon. While the Authority appreciates and understands the potential benefits of showcasing the Mid-Bay Bridge by its inclusion on the proposed route, the request generally turned on a few considerations: (1) requirements in our bond master resolution (basically the Authority’s contract with its bond holders) to only relieve tolls for specific users like emergency response and DoD vehicles on official business; (2) the Authority would stand to lose revenues in the range of up to $10,000; (3) trading a sponsorship at the value of lost revenue was not an viable alternative to mitigate the impact of lost revenue; (4) the Authority’s commitment to the users of its system to provide transportation infrastructure to meet their needs all the time (not some of the time); and (5) sustaining the motoring public’s confidence that the bridge will be open when needed (not inconveniencing drivers by having to detour many miles). Although I still believe the this would have been a wonderful part of our course and allowed us a few more options, this brings good with the bad. The good is that now we can look west to the great city of Ft Walton Beach and really get them involved in our event. We have wonderful business partners in FWB and are really looking forward to working with them. We are currently putting together a new route to present to the City of FWB, FDOT, and the City of Destin. Generally it will take the full marathon runners through FWB, cross the Brooks Bridge, then pickup the half marathon runners around the convention center before continuing toward the finish in East Destin. Of course this is all subject to chance based on the approvals and permits process. CROWDFUNDING- We have also been busting our butts putting together our Indiegogo site and crowdfunding video to launch May 4th. Although all that is not ready to reveal yet, I will give you a sneak preview of what we are thinking for the Perks. All the details for each perk will be full explained on our Indiegogo site (so save your questions till then) but the chart below gives you an idea of what you can get by being a supporter of our crowdfunding campaign. As you can see, we have some pretty amazing packages put together for both local runners and visitors. $45 for a half-marathon entry and $65 for a full-marathon entry is the very lowest price we can give these entries away for. Our funding goal is $50,000, so it is going to take aprox 1,000 runners choosing an entry to make this race happen.
I know a lot of you are running great races this time of year and I can't wait for to be writing on this blog next year when we are only 2 weeks from the start of the Destin Marathon on April 17th, 2016! This will be the 5th year of the Destin Beach Ultras and it is one of the most rewarding things I have ever been a part of. When I came up with the idea 6 years ago, I never would have thought I could run into someone halfway around the globe that would know about my race. But even with that popularity in the ultra running world, I have been unable to reach a lot of runner who are intimated by either the distance or the sand of the Destin Beach Ultras. For several years I have been tossing around the idea of putting on a marathon in Destin, but my military commitments didn’t allow me to add another race to my schedule. Now my work has allowed me to move back to Destin for good and build the dream marathon. My distance running started with the Steamboat Marathon over 15 years ago and I have since ran big and small marathons along with several ultra runs. As you all probably know, there is always something about a race that you would like to change. Now it is my chance to take a shot at race directing ‘the perfect marathon and half marathon’. The first year of a race usually involves the race director investing large amounts of his/her own money into the race with the hopes people actually come to run the race. While it is possible to do this for a 5K or minimalist ultra, putting together a draft budget showed it is impossible to do this for a major marathon unless you are independently wealthy. Without that wealth I have decided to take a different approach to building this marathon. Lately the running community has seen a lot of race directors collect runner's entry fees first and then try and figure out the details later. Not only has this resulted in thousands of runner's losing their entry fees to races that never happened, it gives race directors a bad name. I tend to do things differently, I get everything 90% planned and ensure I have enough runners/sponsors to meet my budget needs before taking any runner money. So this blog will be based around that planning and the challenges race directors face. Choosing a date is difficult. There are already races almost every weekend competing for runners. In order to allow for enough planning I targeted a date somewhere around two years out. First I consulted with local lodging and tourism professionals. These folks pointed out that April is a low time for tourism in Destin with occupancy rates averaging around 65%. But if you break the month down further, you can see there is a dip between Spring Break and Easter/Passover. And unlike the winter months when occupancy rates are around 45% and many businesses cut back seasonal staff, businesses are fully staffed in April. The April date will help us keep it affordable by both allowing the runners to take advantage of lower transportation/lodging rates and hopefully allow us to add more sponsors by taking advantage of a temporary slow period. Runners, sponsors, and volunteers are the life-blood of any event, so it is important that a race director keep those three things in mind when making any decisions. Many runners are worried about the heat, but the graphics below show the highs in mid-April in Destin for our marathon(left) are very similar to those in Nashville at the end of April when the Music City Marathon (right) is run. While I will guide the progression of this marathon, the race will be created and mostly funded by those runners also in search of ‘the perfect marathon’. As you may have already seen, we are going to let the runners design several aspects of the race. This has started with voting on our logo. We commissioned several logos, narrowed them down to seven and allowed anyone to vote for their favorite. This template will be used for all kinds of things from course features to the medals. The top 3 logo choices, chosen by potential runners, are below and voting for the final logo from these will start just after Christmas. Next up is securing a large sponsor or two and getting the word out to as many potential runners as possible…
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AuthorZane Holscher tells you what it takes to put on a successful running event, including a step by step checklist. In archived blogs, you are taken behind the scenes for a peek into the making of a marathon through the eyes of the race director. Categories
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January 2019
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