AARD: What's your biggest fear with an event?

Today's AARD question comes from one of my fellow Sweat Pink ambassadors, Marsha A, who asks: "When do you begin to breathe easy?  It seems every race has that one thing you HOPE goes as planned and then you let out a sigh, either when the race is over or that "thing" (weather, etc) works out like you'd hoped...  What's your biggest fear about/with the event?"

That's a bit of a doozy, Marsha!  But the easy answer to my biggest fear about an event is having a major medical incident occur during the race.  I've had a few races during which a participant was either injured (like being hit by a car) or experienced a serious episode (such as a heart attack) and really, those are my worst fears.  I'm trained in CPR and first aid, and so far I've managed to keep my head in a crisis (even as a participant in a race witnessing a medical incident and taking control), but some day there's going to be something too big for me to handle.  I haven't actually lost a runner to a medical emergency yet, but there's a first time for everything and THAT is what I fear.

But as for beginning to breathe easy...  It's probably when I verify the top finishers.  For just about every race, I manually record the times of the overall winners, to check against my timing equipment to ensure everything is working properly.  Once I know my boxes are reading properly, the weight comes off my shoulders.  I've had every kind of problem you could have at a race: police not showing up (or worse, leaving early), major unannounced construction altering my route, running out of shirts, running out of medals, running out of food, horrible weather, portos tipping over in a storm the night before (grosssssss)...  I can deal with all of that, but if my timing equipment isn't working and the race has more than a hundred people, I'm screwed.  There ARE ways to adapt but I would definitely be panicking more than I have for anything else.

Do YOU have a question for a race director?  Itching to know more about the race planning process?  Looking for some tips or consulting for your own race?  Leave me a message - comments are great and emails work too!  And stay tuned for the next informative Ask A Race Director!