August 11, 2010
The Communication Plan
In my continuing look into my upcoming race, the Leadville Trail 100, today we focus on letting everyone know what’s going on during the race!
If you aren’t going to be there, then you are missing out. But we still want to keep you up to date on how the race is progressing. Unfortunately, Leadville race staff does not publish results in real-time. So if you are watching the race web site, you aren’t going to see anything about anyone until the race is over. Way over. Some races (like the Hardrock 100) are doing live tracking and its pretty cool but it hasn’t arrived in Leadville. Yet.
So you can follow the race the way that most of us runners follow these races…via Twitter. Surely, most of you have heard of Twitter by now. A couple years ago that wasn’t the case. But Twitter seems to be the best way to get your information on the race from the “crowd of spectators”.
How does that work?
Well, my crew (Natalee mostly) will have her cell phone. She is a texting kind of girl. So I will setup her phone to my Twitter account. She will then be able to send that text to Twitter during the race. That’s when my network of integrations come in and replicate that information to Facebook and to my blog and more. If you want the updates as they happen, you can join Twitter yourself, follow me, then tell it to text you my updates. You will get them as they happen. Other crews and even racers will be tweeting about their race too. So you can get a taste of who’s up front and where some of my friends and enemies are as well.
In order to find/group these on Twitter, we use something called a hashtag. This means that at the end of every tweet that has something to do with the race, the author will put #lt100 in the tweet. This will make it searchable by that. Given everyone is doing that, you can search for #lt100 and start getting a real-time stream of various race details.
Lots of updates will happen via bib numbers. Meaning people will just post “#313 just came through Twin Lakes #lt100”. That’s me. #313 on race day.
Anyway, I will also see if I can get my crew to do a picture or two during the day and post those live too. They might be kind of busy dealing with me so you never know. Sometimes people do better capturing other runners than their own runner because when you see them, its time to work. Hopefully, they can also meet me at some other places on course for photo-ops and not pit stops.
So what this means for me the runner? I am not carrying anything to communicate. WHAT? Yep, no iPhone, no satellite tracker, no homing beacon, nothing. Some people will be. I am taking the fact that those items are a distraction seriously and not bringing any. This is the race of a lifetime (so far) for me so I will treat it that way. I don’t feel like carrying any of that stuff would aid me in any competitive way. Some people are working out walkie-talkie systems between crews and runners. No thanks. Crews just have to be on their toes. And runners just have to be prepared if the crew isn’t where they are supposed to be.
Oh, and if you are going to be out there and you want to sync up with my crew, let me know. I will pass you the phone numbers. They may be able to use your help for a few minutes here or there as they try fill my water, get me food, take a video, switch my shoes, change gear, take my picture, apply some lotion, ask me how I am or what I need, wrangle my child(ren), check me in and out, and send a text message to tell everyone else how its going. The burden will double on the way back as my pacer, JP, will have needs as well. Should be exciting. Its not a NASCAR event but we will be acting like a pit crew on race day! Go, go, go, go!
