Hampshire Hoppit, Mid Sussex Tri and South Coast Mighty Hike Galleries 2022

 Here's a list of recent galleries that are now all there and live for you to get your race photos from for free downloads - all thanks and courtesy of the event and the sponsors !

Date	Event	Gallery
Sun-08/05/2022	UltraX Scotland SUN	https://sspimg.com/UltraX-Scotland-2022
Sat-14/05/2022	Mighty Hike - Norfolk Coast - images live on mightyhike.photo	http://sspimg.com/Mighty-Hike-Norfolk-Coast-2022-Gallery
Sun-22/05/2022	REP Arundel Tri	http://sspimg.com/REP-Arundel-Tri-2022-Gallery
Sat-11/06/2022	Mighty Hike - South Coast Weekend - images live on mightyhike.photo	http://sspimg.com/Mighty-Hike-South-Coast-2022-Gallery
Sun-12/06/2022	Hampshire Hoppit	http://sspimg.com/Hampshire-Hoppit-2022-Gallery
Sun-12/06/2022	Mid Sussex Tri	http://sspimg.com/Mid-Sussex-Tri-2022-Gallery
Sat-18/06/2022	Mighty Hike - Lake District Weekend images live on mightyhike.photo (available on SSP Gallery from thursday)	http://sspimg.com/Mighty-Hike-Lake-District-2022-Gallery

I could bang on about how fantastic all these events are, but you know we only work with good event organisers, so you know they're great because they made the list...

Lots going on in the event industry, including an event organiser of some 30 events listed on an entry website having all entries closed and according to the contact at the entry company - apparently hoping to sell them on as a going concern. That's not really been done before, and would be interesting to see who would want to buy up a load of debt and entries, when they could just wait and contact the local council for the license later...(as one race organiser told me) Which brings us on to the results of our participant survey...

If you entered the survey you *should* have been able to see the responses to the questions, however the real interesting magic starts when you start to cross reference the questions - are people who have had covid more hesitant about entering events, or is it just club runners ? Is it really a cost of living issue, or are people just not bothered generally ? and is it related to how far you like to race for? Anyway - how many have long covid and are never going to get back to running ? And the fantastic responses of advice to Race Organisers...which are of course all about .... (I will leave you in suspense)

All these and more will be answered factually in the next blog, but it's taken a while to really drill through the data to make sure we have something relatively meaningful - and not just made up of guesses and gut feeling.

Hopefully the conclusions and findings won't come as a surprise, and the advice for races and runners will be very sensible... to the point of being boring - which to my mind is always the sign of a good survey analysis. However I've a feeling the opportunities in the future will focus on the behavioural changes we have had in society, and system/event platform changes that are required in order for the "new normal" to still present functioning cash flow for events to be able to project plan and pay costs leading up to an event with confidence, because what everyone needs right now - is a bit of stability and leadership, and a bit of trust "in the system", because frankly everything else is still far too chaotic.

So as a taster for the basic results - did you know that half of you have had covid !, and of that half, 28% of you have not recovered yet. So when you're wondering why society as a whole is struggling - think that roughly 15% (almost a sixth) of the population are not back to normal and possibly have long covid. That itself is a massive stat. with massive implications for society, let alone running events.

Anyway, more to come...

Here's some fun pictures from the past few weeks in no particular order then, I'm not feeling particularly caption capable as I type this, so lets do this and see if options magically open up !

Macmillan Mighty Hike - Along the South Downs - all pictures live on the day during the event direct to competitors personal galleries with pic2go technology !

The Hampshire Hoppit - a fantastic trail half and full marathon (on very different courses), along watership down (yes the rabbit place), near where Bombay Sapphire gin is made, and views including Andrew Lloyd Webber's house, and involving part of the route along Clair Balding's family horse farm. So quite scenic !

The nearest event that happens to our HQ - the Mid Sussex Tri - indoor pool swim for 400m and then a bike and a run, unless you're doing an aquabike, in which case you don't have to run... again some lovely sussex countryside to ride through !

The Macmillan Mighty Hike up at the Lake district. They have different pre-walk rituals there compared to the south coast. Again, all pictures live out during the event with pic2go technology (for anyone showing their barcodes properly!).

Lovely weather, lovely views, great event for a great charity.

Sorry, didn't get the necessary inspiration for captions, but will let the pictures do the talking for themselves this time, fantastic to be part of these events, have live and free photo sharing with free downloads for all the events we cover makes a massive difference to the post event atmosphere, social discussions and indeed fundraising (Justgiving say using event photos increase fundraising by 14%).

So, I'll get on with doing the write up of the survey, and recommendations.  

Until next time, which is after the Giants Causeway mighty Hike and the REP Arun Swim on Saturday...

Anthony