The Farewell Tour was posted on our website with the tentative schedule for 2024, and we’ve been asked at the races since, what does that mean? Much like my pre-race emails, this one’s gonna be long. But some people have been asking for it, so for those of you who like my novellas, here you go!
Awesomesauce began as Run Chattanooga – an idea that running and races could be focused on fun, camaraderie, goal achievement; more than just getting to the finish line as fast as you can. It was Saturday and Sunday group runs, the Sunday version of which we called Church of the Holy Long Run. It was 6:30am cross training during the week that we called Tough Love, where we did laps on stairs and push ups and “zombie lunges” in the dark, all over downtown Chattanooga. Our Monday night group runs had route names like Funky Chicken (because when we’d run down to the chicken processing plant in the summer, it smelled…funky), and afterward, we’d take our sweaty selves down to Mellow Mushroom for $5 pizzas and trivia.
Our trivia team name, somewhere along the way, became Awesomesauce. And when we put on our first race outside of the area, I knew we had to be called something other than Run Chattanooga.
The very first race we announced, we were met with excitement by the running community around the country, but locally, well, we’ll be nice and refer to it as criticism. In the immortal words of Elle Woods, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy.” Not sure why people felt the need to be so mean when the running endorphins make you happy, but when you threaten the status quo, you’re going to get pushback. Someone in a position of power in a local running organization actually had the audacity to post online – we have a screenshot of it to this day – that we were going to fail so badly that we would “ruin running in Chattanooga” and nobody would want to run ANY races in Chattanooga ever again. A group called the unFoundation believed in us, and gave us a grant to put on a free half marathon in the lead up to our first “real” race. That money, and one corporate sponsorship later that year, are the only non-runner money we’ve ever been given. Fun fact: sponsors finance most races a whole lot more than runner money does. But nobody wants to sponsor a couple hundred people running under a weird themed race in a park, including the local companies that benefit from runners as customers. Trust us, we tried.
Long story short, a few short years later, our races were bringing more runners from out of town, cumulatively, than anyone else. I guess that’s what “ruining running” looks like? But we were never worried about numbers – our race concept actually doesn’t work as well when the races are big. We stayed laser focused on what we did best and what was most important to us – a supportive atmosphere for the fastest runners and the slowest walkers, aid stations that were stocked with anything a person could need or want to accomplish their goals, “positive peer pressure” – a phrase we coined somewhere along the way that means we’ll talk you into going further than you planned to, because we know that sometimes you need to hear from other people that you CAN do this, fun themes, and not taking ourselves too seriously. That method actually landed us on a top 20 half marathons in the country list, multiple times.
There are fantastic triumphs and some really low points over the past 10 years. I directed a race less than a week after an emergency c-section that resulted in a deceased baby, and most people at that race had no idea. We’ve done races in snow, in rain, in wind, in heat. We’ve helped runners through hypothermia, hyperthermia, we’ve had difficult discussions about how maybe this isn’t the day they are going to conquer the distance they signed up for, and we’ve egged people on to covering twice – or more – the distance they signed up for, even when they didn’t think they could do it. Races that had way too many people, races that didn’t have nearly enough people, there were two where we found out less than a week prior to the race that we didn’t have the permits we thought we did, and one of those required a location change ACROSS STATE LINES. I lost count after we were part of making over 1,000 people first-time half marathoners. I have no idea how many ultramarathoners we’ve “made.” I keep saying I’m going to write a book one day, with all of the stories in it, because there are just so many. Instead I tell the stories in my sleep-deprived state at our hundred milers in the middle of the night.
I’m the only person who has been at every single one of them, even though I’ve had some stressful dreams that I’ve shown up hours late and the race is happening without me! Volunteers and runners have the option to not show up because the weather doesn’t work for them, or they don’t feel good. I don’t have that option. If I’m not telling everyone what to do, or standing on a cooler or a picnic table telling everyone to high five each other and cracking jokes that only half the people there will laugh at and giving confusing-sounding instructions, who will? (I’ve asked other people to do it; they won’t.) I know all of the courses like the back of my hand, and I am the one who marks all of them, sometimes with help, usually by myself. At the ultras, I used to stay awake for 40+ hours, until the last hundred miler finishes, which resulted in me falling asleep taking course markings down in the woods more than once. These days, I HAVE TO nap at least once, because I’m getting too old not to! I’m the one who scouts the courses long before we apply for a permit, I pack the vehicles, I assign the duties, I mark the course, I am the one who demands that bananas and watermelons be cut a certain way, I’m usually the first one to arrive on race day and the last to leave, unloading and reloading and setting up and checking people in and taping up boo boos and all the things. I’ve had some GREAT crew along the way to help make it happen, and I’ve said from day one it *could not* happen without them, some of them are my family that were volun-TOLD to be part of this, some of them have become family along the way and I cannot imagine my life without them now, and some of them don’t speak to me anymore. But I’d also like to do some life with many of them, without it only involving needing them to be able to pull off these races. The reality is, it begins and ends with me, and it’s been both a joy and, if I’m being brutally honest, sometimes it’s somewhat of a burden. A labor of love is still labor!
In a pre-Covid universe, we expanded to races in eight states across the Southeast, with plans to add two more states to that list in 2020 and beyond. The list of race concepts and logos ready to go is LONG. When you’re passionate about what you are doing, it’s hard to turn that part of your brain off. Run Raccoon Mountain in 2020 was one of the very last in person races for AWHILE, anywhere. Most races canceled, we bought hand sanitizer, changed our signature high five to an elbow bump, and told people not to breathe in each other’s faces up on that mountain, not that we really ever breathe in each other’s faces on a regular day. Someone said at packet pickup that year, better soak this all in, it’s probably going to be the last one for a long time. I got some nasty emails that weekend and for a solid year afterward, about how I’m a terrible person, and I got some nasty emails when I canceled races (because I had no choice! Can’t do an event without a permit!) about how I’m a terrible person.
Not only did the nuts and bolts of navigating a pandemic on a very basic level (Can we hold races safely? Can we hold races at all? Why will one park okay something and another one won’t?) really throw me for a loop, but so did navigating all the stuff around it – supply chain disruptions, people who were mad that we were holding races at all, people who were mad that we weren’t holding races, parks implementing rules that really didn’t make a whole lot of sense, people who wanted virtual races, people who were mad at virtual options, the OVERWHELMING mountain of emails that I receive to this day on a daily basis about whether this race or that race will be coming back.
I had thousands of dollars of swag and race bibs and medals and STUFF for these races ready to go, and I lost a LOT of money that year. What most people don’t realize is that we’ve long described Awesomesauce as “a girl and her garage”, and when you boil it all the way down, that’s really the foundation of it. Every permit check is signed by me, the credit card and bank account has my name on it. There’s no faceless business that takes the brunt of it; I have to decide, when taking the risk to launch a race, if it will at least break even so there will be enough money to put food on the table for my three kids. We’ve only had to cancel a handful of races due to lack of participation, but there were races that had too many people signed up for me to cancel them, but still not enough money to break even, and I ultimately PAID OUT to exhaust myself putting them on. I have a detached garage FULL of shirts and medals that didn’t sell, races that didn’t happen, races that didn’t come back from Covid and never will, that I’ve spent my money on. Not sponsor money. Stuff that takes up MY garage and takes over my vehicle and my house too. People think it’s as simple as renting a park pavilion, but it’s paying out for insurance, port-o-potties, food and drinks, travel – gas, vehicles, trailers, hotels, equipment, merch, swag, credit card fees, and a time commitment that most people aren’t willing to do. Owning any business is risky. Now with inflation going on, I have no choice but to raise prices for races, and I know that is part of the reason race participation is down. I’ve long offered race credit for volunteering – win win for everyone – but volunteer numbers are way down anyway.
But the part we don’t talk about publicly is the really mean people who get upset at success and make efforts to tear other people down. Yes, I’m an imperfect human, there’s no instruction manual for this sort of thing, and there are some things I’d do differently if I could do them over again. I had a couple of virtual assistants trying to pull off handling emails and someone trying to get a handle on merch, and it has been a complete nightmare. The loudest and crankiest people also expect personalized responses to their incessant emails about things that I simply do not have time to worry about, or don’t have the answer to, or are already answered in the race emails or on the website or the sign up page. Recruiting volunteers has always been a nightmare. And even when we can get them, sometimes, volunteers don’t show up, or they don’t go to the right place, or they don’t do the simple thing they are asked to do. Sometimes there are genuine human mistakes (made by myself, made by volunteers) and apparently some people have never made a mistake in their life and feel the need to ridicule anyone who does. But the names I’ve been called, the hatred that has been directed at me as a person, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get to me sometimes. I’ve also had people take advantage of me more than once. The good news is, the happy humans are the ones I’ve always done this for, and they have been very good at drowning out the yucky stuff. But when I’m the one pulled in 400 directions, picked on for not taking the financial and time risk to bring another race back, picked on for something going wrong at a race that was completely out of my control, called every possible name, there were a few months that I had to decide if I was willing to take the risk of putting on races when I was threatened with personal physical danger from a crazy person, yeah, it will eventually get to even the strongest of people. I don’t talk about those things publicly, but there’s a LOT more to this than just showing up at a park and saying ready, set, go.
Several race companies have shut down since 2020, beloved perennial races that have been canceled forever, big corporate races, but a lot of smaller grassroots-y ones too. I’ve personally talked to two people who have similar type companies that have made the difficult decision to shut down entirely. Even our medal company closed their doors. I’m not the only one going through this. That’s both comforting and kind of sad, but it is what it is.
So over the past year, I’ve really been thinking about what my life looks like now vs. when Awesomesauce began, and how I can keep fitting Awesomesauce into my world. We have moved, there are family changes and one kid in college and job changes, and that’s just in my family, not including all the other people who have made Awesomesauce function over the years. I have a health condition now that hinders my ability to physically pull off the things I used to be able to. Our amazing medal company shut down last year, which we discovered when we went to put in our order for Burn Your Half Off medals, and we can’t find ANYONE who does the medals they do, at the prices they did them, in the timeframe they worked in. (They, too, are a Covid casualty of business just not returning in a sustainable way for it to make sense for them to continue.) It continues to be a bumpy ride with permits and shirts and swag and I never know if anything is actually going to happen. And in my “regular job” of maintaining and managing our vacation rentals in the Smokies, and assisting out of town vacation rental owners in maintaining and managing theirs, I’m pulled away for these races when I’m really needed somewhere else. It’s also been increasingly more difficult to get crew and volunteers to make these races happen on race day, and that has been the tipping point for me.
In the past couple of years, without Amy and Mark and Karen in particular, I PROMISE you, the races you’ve been running would not have been able to happen. They stepped up in huge ways to keep things going, they gave up their time and money and energy to keep things going, and they did not have to. I don’t know if I would have, if I were them, if I’m being honest. It’s one thing to make something like Burn Your Half Off happen with a skeleton crew, it’s quite another to pull off the larger races. When we eke-d out Mo’ Bell – a multi day, 100 mile race – with only six people running the show in 2023, and Raccoon Mountain is struggle year after year to get enough volunteers to sign up and show up to make it all happen, I stopped hemming and hawing and made a decision. (I actually started writing this in a note on my phone in the middle of the night DURING that Mo’ Bell.) It is ROUGH when only a handful of people show up to help, and it is VERY hard on those people.
In the past two years, while I have been being a little bit more vocal about making the decision to bring things to somewhat of a close, we’ve had a handful of people express interest in purchasing Awesomesauce to keep it going…right up until they see how much work it is, or how much it would cost. (Sorry, not sorry, the brand is valuable, and the mountain of equipment and supplies are valuable too. But if you’re seriously interested, and you can write checks that will clear a bank, send an email to awesomesauceisforsale@gmail.com)
For the smaller footprint races like the stuff that happens at the Riverpark in Chattanooga, Burn in Florida, Trash Panda, we’ll keep those going for at least another year. I’d love to do a few of the Grab Bag kind of races like what we have planned for the first time this May, where we bring out all of the shirts and medals from “dead” races and you can have a chance to snag a Go Bananas medal to go with an Awesome Possum shirt, things like that. I loved all of these races, and it stinks that some of them just can’t come back at all, whether due to permitting issues with parks or lack of participation or lack of crew to pull them off. I also have a ton of medals and shirts I’d love to get out of my garage! I’ve long said I want to be able to do smaller events and hiking retreats in the Smokies and craft weekends out there and invitation-only stuff and just FUN stuff that doesn’t involve a hundred people, but I need to free up the time and space in my life to do those things. (YES, those of you who have heard about my “let’s hike Mount LeConte in a smaller group” dreams, I AM GONNA MAKE IT HAPPEN THIS YEAR come hell or high water. If you want to be included on the invitation-only stuff like that, shoot an email with your first and last name and email address to awesomebyinvitation@gmail.com with the subject ADD ME TO THE LIST.)
This is my little sidenote to encourage anyone who has a “crazy” idea…go do the thing. Try it. Figure out what works, pivot if it doesn’t. If the status quo doesn’t excite you, take the leap and create something different. Know that along the way, you’ll have critics and you’ll hopefully have supporters. Listen to yourself and listen to the people who GET what you’re trying to do. If I had listened to the critics in the beginning – and there were a LOT of very loud and very mean critics in the beginning – then I never would have gotten out of the starting gate. Some of those critics, I have already been told, are gloating that I’m working toward shutting things down. I’m not entirely sure why they expend so much energy feeling like they are better than some girl in her garage, but how they choose to live their lives is on them. There’s room for lots of different people, different races, different things. As the old saying goes, you can be the juiciest peach on the tree, but there’s always going to be someone who hates peaches. So serve YOUR people with your idea, and focus your energy on that. Being pro-YOU doesn’t make you anti-THEM. Create the community YOU want to be part of, and if your product works for them, it’ll be successful. And remember YOU get to decide what success looks like. You don’t have to be the biggest or the most profitable. I am walking away from this with amazing experiences, a full heart, and some of the best human beings on the planet. Focusing on making the races as big as possible, focusing on making my bank account as big as possible, would have prevented all of those things.
I will miss the people who only come to the particular races that are ending in 2024, because it’s ‘their distance’ or it’s what is closest to their home or always works with their schedule. I will not miss the constant struggle for volunteers, the endless paperwork, the thousands and thousands of emails, the people who expect races with heart to have a person behind them with an impenetrably thick skin for criticism and cruelty, the people who take advantage, the entitlement from some. There’s a dark side that most race directors don’t talk about, except amongst ourselves. And there’s a dark side to some race directors, too. It’s a weird world.
We’ve got runners that come with spouses that have all become family for a variety of reasons – and I’d write out names and reasons but I’d upset someone for leaving them out and I don’t want to do that, so I’m saving all of y’all for the book. We have so many funny stories of adventures with Fireball, dirty underwear, the famous/infamous nipple mayo in the first aid kit, my hilariously inappropriate port-o-potty company idea. (If you see me on Shark Tank one day, just know that it originated on a drive to a Chinese buffet after a Florida Burn Your Half Off, and has been discussed at many a 100-mile ultramarathon fire pit situation in the years since.)
We’ve had an indirect hand in the formation of running clubs like the Scal-a-wags and the creation of races or elements of races in other places. I regularly hear “Guess who I saw at XYZ race” or “I saw a Sloth Society shirt at a race and I knew I’d have someone friendly to talk to” or stories of seeing race shirts on people at the grocery store and striking up conversions. I found a Raccoon Mountain glass in a thrift store once, and that’s the only “in the wild” spotting I’ve ever had, unless you count the fact that the people I hang out with a lot basically have a wardrobe of Awesomesauce shirts and gear; then I see things a lot. (The Raccoon Mountain duffel bag situation at travel-related events is hilarious when a bunch of us get together!) NOTHING makes me happier than these things. We specifically set out to create the kind of community we wished existed, and that is exactly what we did, and I am so so proud to be part of it. The farewell tour is about a few of these races having their last hurrah, it’s about things shifting, but the community extends so much more than I ever could have dreamed, and in that way, Awesomesauce really won’t ever go away.
Y’all, I cannot even begin to express what an honor and a privilege it has been to be the reason why so many people have accomplished so many things that they didn’t think they could do. There are some days that I say, “It’s not that serious. It’s JUST RUNNING.” But the reality is, when it comes to setting a PR goal or a time goal, and it comes down to the REALLY doing it, I have been so beyond lucky to get a front row seat to watching people achieve things that they weren’t completely sure they could do. We just set the stage, we take off the pressure and shmear on the support, and just give people room to be great. I lost count along the way, but I do know that more than 1,000 people have completed their first half marathon at one of our events. The majority of our 50 milers, 100Kers, and 100 milers have been first timers. That’s gratifying, but so is walking into the freezer at Mo’ Bell and seeing conversations happening over popsicles (yes, you read that right, if you know you know), or people hanging out at a picnic table after a race. People who were strangers at the beginning of a race who get invested in each other and wait to see each other finish and become great friends. It’s overwhelming to think about and it’s the definition of heart warming, and I might have shed a tear or two just now writing that, thinking about it.
We have always said that we are different things to different people. For me, and so many others, there are some friendships that have formed that we know will last a lifetime, and that is all I ever could have wanted. I’d just really like to be able to enjoy time with them without expecting them to cut up fruit or drive for hours to load boxes in and out of vehicles at stupid-o-clock in the morning or in crazy weather.
We did what we set out to do – to give people the opportunity to run for fun, for camaraderie, for community, to accomplish big goals in a supportive environment, and to champion the race swag that isn’t an ill-fitting, ugly shirt with a collection of random logos on the back. It became all of that and so so so much more. It far surpassed even what we could envision from the start and we know that the spirit of it will continue. It’s so much bigger than a race production company, so much bigger than a girl in her garage, and yet the beauty of it is that it’s just races, just a girl with a garage full of stuff. And I’d prefer to bring some things to an end in a Seinfeld-type fashion, not in a sad and drawn out “is-it-dead-yet” kind of way. We have seen so many inspiring people not only dig deep to accomplish things they may never have thought possible, but also we’ve seen when those people come to the realization – just like we’re doing right now – when it’s time to say, I’ve done a lot, I’ve accomplished a lot, I’ve done enough.
I am so looking forward to seeing many of you this year, and I know I’ll be seeing many of you for a lifetime.
Love you, mean it!
Courtney