mass participation events

Kelliemeredith15 Feb, 2026Business

Early rest zones looked like chaos: wobbling trestle tables, sloshing cups, and volunteers shouting half‑heard directions. The job focused on fuelling, not thinking. And it worked, until fields swelled into true mass participation festivals and the cracks showed. Crashes at crowded tables, dehydration just past them, and runners collapsing metres away exposed the limits of improvisation. Organisers began treating each stop as a controlled micro‑environment. Clean entry, clear exit, medical eyes on the middle. The stop ceased to be a kindness and became part of the design of the race itself, deliberately engineered.