Running a Run: These Companies Get Paid by the Miles

If you think that putting on a running event in San Diego County is a labor of love, guess again. It’s big business.

There was a time when volunteers did it all, but no more. Road racing has become so sophisticated that three corporations and one individual in the area operate full-time in staging everything from five-kilometer (3.1-mile) runs to marathons. Kathy Loper is the independent race consultant. The other organizers are companies called Breaking Forty Race Consultants, Inc., Elite Racing Inc. and In Motion Inc. Breaking Forty and In Motion started in 1981, Loper in 1985 and Elite Racing in 1988.

Breaking Forty is headed by Toni Deal and Linda Flounders, Elite Racing by Tim Murphy and In Motion by Lynn Flanagan. Murphy was Flanagan’s partner before forming his own company two years ago.

In addition, a corporation named End of the Line Race Consultants Inc., owned by Judy Stolpe, handles registration, scoring, timing and finish-line operation. Loper, who unlike the other directors doesn’t have a full-service setup, works with End of the Line on a regular basis.

Nobody involved will say how lucrative these businesses are, but their offices--Deal and Flounders work out of their home--suggest that they do well.

Why is a company able to profit from organizing events that may get no more than an agate-type listing in the sports pages? Because the sponsors and charities that put up the money want to make sure the jobs are done right.

Each of the four firms runs about a dozen local races per year. Elite is proudest of its Carlsbad 5,000, which was run three weeks ago and ranks with the premier road races in the country. In Motion’s crown jewel is the San Diego Marathon, Breaking Forty’s the La Jolla Half Marathon, and Loper’s the Running Wild 10K at Wild Animal Park. Each has several other showcase events as well.

Anyone who has played even a minor role in putting a road race together realizes how complicated the procedure is.

Loper, 47, ran down the list of details that compose a race:

“You have to design the course and get out your application forms. Then you have registration, T-shirts, advertising copy, volunteers, refreshments, awards, gift certificates and other drawing prizes, police permits, medical insurance, committee meetings, water stations, marshals, the finish line, scoring and timing.

“There isn’t any one thing that makes a race go. All these things have to be put together. You can have a well-established race and not have it go off well because of poor design of your T-shirts. People not only want to run and socialize, they want to take away nice T-shirts. They don’t want a T-shirt that looks like a billboard.”

Asked how organizing races could become a full-time profession, Loper said, “When an event has professional direction, it shows all the way from registration to the finish line. It’s not just a matter of getting out application forms. Nickel-and-dime things can make or break a race.”

Loper, who has a master’s degree in education from Eastern Washington, first directed races in Omaha in 1980, when she was president of a track club there.

“I started doing race results and organizing little runs, and it grew,” Loper said. “When I came to San Diego five years ago, End of the Line needed a full-time race director.”

Breaking Forty got its name--and its start--from a novel birthday party thrown by one of its eventual partners.

Flounders, 35, tells this story:

“Toni (Deal) was working for an accounting firm and decided there was more to life than that. Her 40th birthday was coming up in December of 1980, and I got the idea to organize a run to celebrate it. I called it the Breaking 40 Surprise 10K Birthday Run.

“We had only about 30 or 40 runners, but it went over real well. Not long after that, Toni realized she didn’t want to be an accountant any more. With our love for running, we decided to turn it into a business.”

Deal was asked to pinpoint an organizer’s greatest concern before a race.

“I just keep wondering if we have enough volunteers,” she said. “I don’t stress out like I used to, but you’re never quite sure if everybody will be in the right place. Linda and I try to free ourselves on race day so we don’t have anything specific to take care of.”

Flounders added, “You have the dread that one of those hundred people won’t do what he or she is supposed to do.”

After each race comes a meeting at which staff members critique their work.

“We call it PRS--post-race syndrome,” Flounders said. “We discuss the race and talk about ways of improving it the next year.”

To a sponsor, the advertising value of a major event such as a marathon can be tremendous.

“A race may cost $100,000 yet be worth that much to a sponsor,” Flounders said. “In the New York Marathon, a company has its name on the finish-line banner. A representative of the company said she invested $100,000 every year for the simple reason that her company’s name was on the banner. It was on the front page of every sports page in the country. In a split second, that makes $100,000 worthwhile.

“Most races cost a lot less than that, but you have to have sponsorship. The entry fee (generally $12 to $15) barely covers the cost of the event.”

One might get the idea that there is heated rivalry among the four race organizers, but Flounders said, “In terms of directing being competitive, I don’t think so. Each company approaches races differently. Some are interested in promotion, and we concentrate on execution. We don’t look to create new events.”

Occasionally, a sponsor or a charity interested in backing a race will put the job up for bid. This is how Breaking 40 acquired rights to the Light the Night Against Crime 10K.

“The first two years, Los Angeles people ran it,” Flounders said. “Last year, the sponsor sent letters to all the race consultants. It turned out that the L.A. people hadn’t even fielded phone calls. We stay on top of everything.”

Murphy, 41, said that Elite Racing preferred not to engage in bidding contests.

“We make presentations,” Murphy said, “but more often than not, we lose, because our prices are significantly higher than the other people’s.”

Murphy’s activities are not confined to this area. He also has an office in Orange County, and in the last six months he has directed the Chicago Marathon, the International 10K in Santa Ana and the Tom Sullivan St. Patrick’s Day 10K in Los Angeles. All told, he handles about 25 events per year.

“Actually, we’re working on a different level,” Murphy said. “We’ve grown so quickly that we’d be out of control if we had any more business.”

Murphy relies heavily on the assistance of Kathy Kinane, 31, former track star and coach at UC Santa Barbara, who serves as Elite’s event manager.

“I’m the boss, but Kathy does all the work,” Murphy said. “I do athletic and sponsor recruiting, and Kathy is the operational director of a lot of events.”

While at UCSB from 1976 to 1981--she sat out the 1979 season--Kinane qualified for the NCAA track meet in the 3,000-, 5,000- and 10,000-meter runs and finished 16th in the NCAA cross-country championships. While in graduate school at San Diego State--she earned a master’s degree in exercise psychology--she qualified for the 1984 Olympic marathon trials. Her best marathon time is 2 hours 49 minutes.

“Tim (Murphy) invited me to a race one time,” Kinane said. “Later, I joined him and Lynn Flanagan in their company, and then I came over here with him.”

As successful as the recent Carlsbad 5,000 was, Murphy said, “We have to improve every year to keep the events going. I could tell you hundreds of things we could do better.”

Asked why he chose the term “5,000,” which generally is confined to track meets, Murphy said, “When we created the race, we felt that we had to give it a name that was special. The 5,000 is an Olympic event, so I figured it sounded better than 5K. It’s the same distance, but 5,000 gave the race more prestige.”

Like Deal, Murphy got into race management because he grew tired of the work he was doing.

“I was a marketing executive with the American Hospital Corp. in Rochester, N.Y.,” Murphy said. “They kept moving me around, so in 1980 I came out to San Diego.

“Everybody was running in San Diego, and nobody was running in Rochester, so I started running and got interested in it. I had been a half-miler in high school in Lincoln, Neb. Lynn (Flanagan) was doing some timing in a downtown race, and eventually we got together and became partners.”

What caused Murphy to break away from Flanagan?

“We just had different directions we wanted to go in,” Murphy said. “We had gotten pretty big, so we were each doing our own events. She’s a very, very talented director, but as a partner, I had to get her to agree, and that was stifling to me.”

Flanagan said she had gravitated into the race-direction business by accident.

“I just kind of fell into it,” she said. “I was running a lot, and somebody asked me if I would put on a race. It was the Extend Yourself Red Cross 15K, and it was so successful that I decided to start a company.

“I worked out of my house at first, and moved into my first office in ’85. It has been a steady progression since then.”

Flanagan has a senior partner, Rick White, and two daughters who also are key members of her company. Ellen, 22, is vice president and director of operations, Christine, 21, event manager.

“Rick and I are primarily involved in marketing,” Flanagan said. “We have a sales staff and a loyal group of volunteers who help us in every event. We would not survive without them.”

As if the race and post-race program aren’t enough to handle, directors must make arrangements for things such as parking.

“You have to look at the impact not only on the participants but on the people in the area,” Flanagan said. “You have to allow access for people going through intersections for other purposes. For the marathon, we run shuttle buses from Mission Bay High School and Campland.

“Course design and traffic are probably our biggest concerns. I sit down with my Thomas Bros. (map book) and a piece of string and get a basic idea of where we want to finish. The course has to be certified (for accurate length), and one time the certifier wanted to move the finish line. I said, ‘No way,’ and we made other adjustments.”

As the art of putting on running events has become more refined over the years, the bigger races have grown and the smaller ones have been snuffed out. This has left San Diego County runners with far less variety than in the past. The overwhelming majority of races are 10Ks, so there is a limited outlet for people who either can’t or don’t care to run 6.2 miles.

Many of the 10Ks are preceded by two-mile events, but these are so-called “fun runs” and carry no awards. Even the slowest runner likes to think he has a shot at some sort of prize.

According to Flanagan and Murphy, this situation is likely to be remedied in the near future.

Flanagan said, “I think 10Ks are greatly overdone. Marathons are as popular as ever, but 10Ks are not. I think we’ll be offering shorter events. People are more relaxed about running now because it’s a way of life. They aren’t obsessed with 10Ks any more.”

Murphy concurred, saying, “Running magazines have done surveys that show 10Ks are down a little bit and 5Ks are up 63%. We’ve added a 5K to the Goodwill Games 10K we’re running this summer in La Jolla.

“I’m real proud of the fact that we might have had something to do with this trend toward 5K participation by organizing the Carlsbad 5,000.”

It is no coincidence that all of the full-time race directors are runners.

Loper is among the leading 10K masters in the country. Two weeks ago, she beat women 20 and 30 years her junior to win the Torrey Pines 5K. Dial and Flounders, in addition to Kinane, are marathoners, and Murphy and Flanagan, in addition to Loper, run fast 10Ks.

Chances are that Loper spoke for runners everywhere when she told how she got hooked on running.

“I started about 20 years ago, long before it was a fad,” she said. “I didn’t feel good when I was running, but I felt great afterward.”