Nina Davies is currently running 380km across Wales in the infamous Dragon’s Back Race. Before setting off, Nina wrote this blog for us:
This summer I had the chance to combine a recce of the great Dragon’s Back Race, with a meetup with fellow Green Runner Martin and a long leg of the Running Out of Time Relay carrying the baton from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff Castle. What a combo – it doesn’t get much better than that!
30 miles of greener running and Dragon’s Back chats, a beautiful insight into Martin’s enviable bird knowledge, a proper green runner moment having to tape my broken shoes together and an obligatory coffee pit stop (First Light Coffee – another level).
We also got the chance to imagine running into Cardiff Castle at the end of six gruelling days running the length of Wales…
Dreaming of the dragon
I have hardly dared to dream about even getting to the startline of the Dragon’s Back Race, let alone to Cardiff Castle. But now it is just a few days away and is feeling very real so I wanted to share some insights from a recent conversation with Lucy at Ourea Events who put on this legendary race. Amongst many other responsibilities Lucy leads the sustainability team and we chatted about their approach, wins and challenges.
I have always admired Ourea CEO, Shane Ohly’s ethos and the well deserved reputation he, Lucy and the Ourea team have as event providers. He is a purest who believes in providing safe and responsible opportunities for people to take on challenges in some of the UK’s harshest playgrounds. Enabling us to immerse ourselves in nature and focus on simple pleasures and human camaraderie.
This is what attracted me to the Dragon’s Back. The idea of traversing a country from top to bottom, across its most remote and beautiful places, completely on foot, is such an inspiring adventure. For me the event strikes that perfect balance of providing a reassuring, quality experience without diluting the magnitude and rawness of the challenge. The fact that the menu is meat free and that individuals are not allowed their own entourage of crew are also principles that appealed to me.
A more sustainable dragon’s back
As Lucy makes clear it’s a tough gig to balance runners expectations with commercial viability and environmental considerations:
“When people get there they go wow the logistics of this event are huge and they get it but it is a hard thing for us to communicate to people when they are signing up. We are always trying to deliver a quality, premium and accessible event but that means making compromises to protect the integrity without compromising the participant experience. So it will never be a marked course even though we know this would probably attract more people. The same with hot showers, there will never be hot showers, this is just out of scope and would increase our carbon footprint and cost considerably, plus a dip in the river usually does the job – but no soap I’m afraid!”
The Dragon’s Back Race is not cheap but what does that ticket price need to include? As participants what are our expectations and what compromises are we prepared to take to help us all enjoy incredible events that are also kinder to people and planet?
Lucy shared some stories about things they are trying to do that bring to life just how tricky it can be…
How we travel
Not surprisingly, participant travel represents the largest proportion of Ourea’s Greenhouse Gas emissions (indirect Scope 3 emissions, but they take that seriously) and they have tried various initiatives to manage this.
This year they partnered with SiEntries to develop a travel offset option in the booking process. Yes there are lots of debates about offsetting (read our in depth blog on this topic here) and we know it is the last resort, but it makes people think and all the donations at the go to another sustainability partner, Equilibrium, and in future hopefully will support more local initiatives too.
27% of customers took up the opportunity to offset, a figure Lucy is pretty chuffed with for year one and hopes will grow and be rolled out by SiEntries to other events. I certainly found it a welcome surprise to come across this in the signup process and it confirmed my travel choices.
Skyline Scotland is another example. Ourea carefully planned conveniently timed shuttle buses to take people to and from the start, they sold out the seats in advance but then on the day the buses were empty as people just decided to drive. Seeing empty buses was very disappointing for Lucy not to mention the negative impact of all those cars. Similarly the transport hub at the Great Lakeland 3 Day was not taken up by participants.
“It is something we want to do but clearly we need to work on communication. We need the buy-in from participants. People still want the convenience of a car, and not having to wait”.
How we fuel
There is more positive news when it comes to catering. Their camp menus have always been vegetarian, partly because of Shane’s personal principles but it also helps the logistics of food hygiene and the environmental impact of having to keep meat products cold in a field in the middle of nowhere! The vegetarian and vegan food at Dragon’s Back get rave reviews and very little push back. It’s a fantastic showcase of how vegetarian food can be tasty and fuel 6 days of endurance running.
On reflection I think the fact that there is no choice is also key here. We have come to expect so much choice but when there isn’t any, it’s tasty and it works then we have no reason to complain, and can sometimes even enjoy it!
So reframing our expectation of choice is one thing but my overriding feeling after spending time listening to Lucy is one of the need for more collaboration to all work together on this.
Reflections on Green Races
It leaves me even more excited about our plans to extend The Green Runners offer to support races and clubs and foster the sense of one community. After all, we are all in this together. There is no place for finger pointing amongst us. The truth about a more sustainable Dragon’s Back is that it’s hard, and we need to help each other.
The best thing we can do as Green Runners is take up the greener opportunities that these events put on. Event companies are struggling and they need to see the demand for greener solutions if we want to all thrive together. If they make the effort to put on greener initiatives let’s support them, celebrate them, get involved! If they are not doing enough let’s show we want it, speak out and help each other do more.
One running community. One vision to “run without the footprint“.
Back to the pre-race nerves
So that’s my thoughts for now. I will go back to my pre-race admin and nerves management! At least I have a new respect for why the Dragon’s Back has such a detailed pack list, specifying a particular bag and weight (luckily I was able to borrow the bags from a friend who has done it before and I know Ourea encourages this).
I look forward to working with Lucy and the Ourea team going forward, and no matter how broken I am at the end of each day I promise I will put my rubbish into the right bin! A tiny thing but one that can create a huge and unpleasant headache for event organisers, and one of Lucy’s personal bugbears!
Thank you to Lucy for her time and Ourea Events for all they do. Thank you to the Running Out of Time Relay for allowing us to make our own route from Merthyr to Cardiff, and thank you Martin for the great company on the recce – a great day out!
The 2023 Ourea Events Sustainability Report will be out soon and we will link it here when available.
Nina is a co-founder of The Green Runners and Running and Mindset Coach at Perpetual Motion Coaching
