Epic Rocky Mountain Relay

The Epic Rocky Mountain Relay is set to take place on July 22-23, 2011. Teams will travel 180 miles through four national forests while passing four 14ers to Colorado's wild flower capital and last great ski town, Crested Butte. Click here for the official press release.

Epic Growth Strategy

The Epic Rocky Mountain Relay is set to take place on July 22-23, 2011. Teams will travel 180 miles through four national forests while passing four 14ers to Colorado's wild flower capital and last great ski town, Crested Butte. Click here for the official press release.

Many have asked about the method behind the growth strategy of our relays. For instance in 2009, our inaugural year, our team numbers were in the low double digits and this year we’ve capped each relay at 50 teams. When other relays are allowing anywhere from 200 to 1,000 teams why are we keeping the lid on it? The answer is simple; safety and the overall participant experience come first. Without controlling the growth of our events we have less control over those two variables. In starting small we can make real time changes during the events, we can personally meet and get to know each of our teams and obtain invaluable feedback about how to get better and we can know that the course (roads and exchanges) itself can handle a particular volume of participants, i.e. runners, volunteers, spectators and vehicles. Before even organizing our first relay we spent two years surveying relay participants across the country to understand their likes and dislikes and spent an entire semester of an MBA program researching best operating practices. After all that research what stood out the most was that most problems, in one way or another, resulted from events starting too big and growing too big too fast; too many runners on the road, too many vehicles at exchanges, major traffic congestion, not enough room for people to sleep, not enough water for showers, not enough attention to the minor details etc. Your safety and experience come first. We’re by no means claiming to be perfect and we get there’s an art to these relays and that most of the fun will be derived by you as the participants and teams but it’s our job to perfect the science and that’s what we’re committed to doing.