Hello, my name is Mark and welcome to my blog for Alpha Trail Events. My goal for this series is to document the journey of setting up my first trail running event. I started Alpha Trail Events back in 2022 after completing a cycle ride from Sydney to Melbourne raising money for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. 

Since then I’ve been on a bit of a journey trying to establish a way that I can turn my passion for endurance sports into a viable business, as well as continue to support and raise awareness for Alpha-1. This blog is a bit of a way to keep me accountable and to also acknowledge the progress that I am (slowly) making whilst juggling a full time job. 

It took me the best part of 2023 to realise what I wanted to do with Alpha Trail Events. I went down a few different paths until I landed on the idea of creating a trail running event business. I was really inspired by a company from the UK called Maverick Race who are now a well-oiled and established trail running events company, putting on several different events throughout the year. 

Trail running has been around for many years and the market is very competitive especially in Australia. However a lot of the events I’ve seen rely on old school marketing techniques and out of date websites / social channels. Along with opening up my events to both the general public and offering corporate packages, I feel there is an opportunity to target the everyday runner with a more appealing brand message. Let’s see how we go! 

Back in January of this year (2024), I put on my informal first trail running event at Manly Dam. The event cost me around $2000 and I didn’t charge participants for tickets. Instead I used it as a way to generate brand awareness, create some video content and also to gain a few customer testimonials that I could use for future marketing purposes. 

The event was a big success. I teamed up with Joshua Coldray who is an experienced endurance athlete having competed in Ironman events and 100 miler ultramarathons. He was a big help getting runners down through his network and we ended up with 20 runners for the day. We provided a welcome pack that included a free Alpha Trail Events running hat, nutrition and a flyer about the company. The runners set off completing two laps of the 8km Manly Dam course on a sweltering January morning. At the end of the run, we put on a post run BBQ as well as an ice bath to cool off right next to the lake. 

The whole event was filmed by a friend of mine Yuri Jaeger who kindly offered to do it for free. This was a game changer for the event as it’s giving me lots of content to use for ongoing marketing moving forward. 

For anyone starting out on the Race Directing journey I would highly recommend doing something like this if you can afford to do so – it’s a great way to get some experience putting on an event without a big expectation from the runners, and its now given my event some well needed brand awareness and social validity. 

Thanks for reading. Onto the next!

Mark