The 2020-21 Desert Runner Trail Series, or DRT Series as we like to call it, was a wild ride. Aravaipa Running as an organization went through some real challenges with the abrupt arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 that essentially shut everything down. As an event company, the idea of holding large groups of people in one space was daunting to all. Heck, being in a grocery store with a lot of people was daunting for many as we tip-toed through the Spring and Summer.
Our Cave Creek Thriller Trail Runs, typically held on the second weekend of October as the DRT Series kickoff, was pushed back to December 19th. Our Pass Mountain Trail Runs in November didn’t receive a full approval from the County until a matter of days before race morning. It brought on a unique set of challenges with planning, staffing, and garnering enough participants to keep the races going.
However, by the beginning of 2021 we started to see some momentum build with the series. San Tan Scramble kicked off the New Year with a bang as we saw our largest field ever. Two weeks later at Coldwater Rumble, we enjoyed similar numbers with our largest 100 mile field at this race and Elephant Mountain led us through February with more than 500 entrants as we had a true sellout following our Covid capacity restrictions. With a month between Elephant Mountain and the finale at Mesquite Canyon, we watched the wave of runners build to a number we found ourselves capping for safety reasons with covid in mind.
Writing this wrap-up a little more than a week after safely holding all seven races within the series- five of them eclipsing more than 500 runners- it’s hard not to feel sense of pride for being a small part of what our team was able to accomplish. We remained diligent with masks, social distancing, and a slew of changes to how our aid stations would operate without sacrificing what you all needed to be successful in your race. Everyone pitched in where we could to make sure our event was successful.
Our packet pickups went from two hours at a local running store to a 5 or 6 hour endeavor based at our Aravaipa Running headquarters as a “drive-thru” style pickup with everything packed in a little bag ready for the handoff.
Our race headquarters would include a starting line corral that was entirely separate from our finish line as we held wave starts that would last anywhere from three to four plus hours. Runners would finish their race as others were just toeing the line to begin theirs. It’s not a situation I ever envisioned as an Aravaipa Running Race Director but here we are. It brought on more work for us internally to ensure everyone was able to enjoy their races and it undoubtedly made all of us better because of it. Totally worth it to see so many smiling faces throughout these last couple months as runners completed their first trail race, ultra-marathon, 100 miler, you name it.
All in all, we owe a big thank you to a lot of people for helping make this race series successful. From the Maricopa County Regional Parks trusting our organization to pave the way in permitted races during the Covid era, to every one of our staff and volunteers powering through all of our event safe guidelines, to all of you runners trusting our processes and procedures to mitigate the spread of the virus and keep everyone as safe as possible. All while keeping the roots of our race atmosphere.
We have a number of runners who had a lot of success in the series standings and that report will come either Friday or Saturday as we peruse the results, gather some fun stats, and announce the winners. If all goes as planned, we’ll plan to have a bit of a podium ceremony at our Dam Good Run on April 11th as usual and give these runners the praise they deserve.
Thank you to everyone for joining us even one race throughout the series and I hope to see you out on the trails soon.
Noah Dougherty
RD
