Checkpoints Race - anyone up for making ateam of 5

Have you heard about the Checkpoints Race?  It's a brand new social running challenge that will run this summer with the Top 50 teams qualifying for an all expense paid trip to the French Alps for a 24 hour team relay race.  Here's a bit more about it:

https://runningdanw.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/a-truly-unique-social-running-challenge-checkpoints-race/

I'm looking for 4 people to join me to form a team of 5 to enter this awesome challenge.  Who's up for it?

Comments

  • it seems very complicated........

    and it reads that not only do you run but you need to get lots of media supporters on there to get points. so the running is not important...its just a way to get more people onto the site...

    as there is no way to confirm the running..... anyone in the family could run with the phone or go ona  bike and say it was me..

     so I think the running really is really a back seat in all this

  • Thanks for replying.  It's interesting to hear other people's views.

    After doing some more digging - it seems to be the opposite. I thought the supporters would be all about tweeting, liking etc but in fact it appears that the supporters run for the team too - they run and score points for you while you run and score points.

  • Ian MIan M ✭✭✭

    Maybe I'm just grumpy, or missing something, but it looks like a bucket of bollocks dreamt up by someone who wished they'd invented Strava.

  • GeeeMGeeeM ✭✭✭

    I can see how this would work as a fun, motivational tool for people and teams but we already have platforms for that - Strava, Nike+ and I think Garmin do it too now!

    Throw competition into it and it's wide open to cheating - an all-expense paid trip to the Alps for a team from the other side of the world - Australia / South America is going to cost a lot more than a team from the UK or Europe image

    It looks like it's a US venture judging by the pricing, ($30 individual, $125 team of 5) and "all expenses paid" for the top 50  teams! So that could be 250 people, all-expense to Europe - say conservatively, that's £1,500 each for a total of £375,000

    How are they going to make all that money? You'd need over 15,000 people competing just to cover the finale. There has to be more to it - micropurchases, advertising and hooking into your social media etc...

    Maybe I'm also grumpy and cynical, but I think this may be something that will sink without a trace leaving people out of pocket.

  • If you check the indigogo campaign (which is why it's priced in USD) it's a bunch of French organisers- hence the final being in Alp D'Huez as they have local buy-in (and support presumably).

    Their base case is for 10,000 teams (globally).

    I'm similarly not fantastically enthused by the social media aspect, it smacks of being one step removed from 'sponsor me please', but the website is a little light on detail.

    I'd also imagine if you managed to persuade some professionally sponsored ultra runners to join a team (anyone got Killian Jornet's email?) they'd be shoo-ins.   

     

  • GeeeMGeeeM ✭✭✭

    Fair enough, I didn't dig that deep to be honest and have never heard of Indigogo which appears to be a crowd-funding website like kickstarter.

    https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/checkpoints-race-the-social-running-league

    A bit more info on here, some really big ambitions by the organisers. $2,430 of $400,000 raised so far - granted it only started a couple of days ago and runs until March 30th.

    I still think there's some massive gaps in the concept and can't see how it would be a financially viable venture, (13% of the income is assigned to the all-expenses paid runners - all 250 of them from all over the world)

    But - for $25 maybe it's worth a punt of you've got a bit of spare cash. If you go onto the Indigogo site you can get a super early solo pass for $15 at the moment.

  • Removing duplicate post

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