The History of RACEDAYRUSH.com

By Shane Brown

 

Over the past 5 years or so, I’ve really noticed the uptake in endurance sports.  Looking at the GOT calendar, the number of events has dramatically increased in recent years.  At first, I questioned why this was happening.  At first, I concluded that it was my ‘vintage.’  My kids are out of diapers and my wife and I have a good home-life routine that has allowed us to resume our pre-baby active lifestyle.   For a lot of people I’ve met at various races; having some time back in their life where they aren’t wiping noses or changing diapers has given them the opportunity to try something new like a 5k or a triathlon.  This was certainly an encouraging factor for me.

Then I looked at the concerns over the sedimentary lifestyles we are reading about in the news.  Graphic movies showing what eating fast food can do to your body within 30 days.  Childhood obesity and some alarming statistics out of the United States have encouraged us to get off the couch and “GET OUT THERE.”  That definitely helped. 

For me, completing my first half marathon was to win a bet.  Yup.  Boys will be boys.  A little trash talking and the priceless wager of ridicule was enough inspiration for me to jump on a plane with my brother-in- law, my wife and her friend, and run down the Las Vegas strip with 10,000 other people for 13 miles.  Scared straight?  Absolutely.

What a great experience.  In the final 2 miles of the course; the half marathon course and full marathon course merged together.  Suddenly we found ourselves on camera and in the live video feeds with the race leading Kenyans who were completing the full marathon.  I looked over at my brother-in-law and remarked “Hey Mike, only 6 weeks of training and we are already half as good as the Kenyans !!”   Yes, I was clueless.  I quickly learned that improving even a few minutes took a tremendous amount of dedication and training.

In the last couple of years, I’ve moved to adventure racing.  For me, the concept of team sports has never left my blood.  I’ve played team sports my whole life and love the aspect of teamwork.  I also love multisport formats.  Mixing it up.  Completing several tasks.  Working together.

After my first adventure race, I was hooked.  Regardless of poor navigation and being lost for a couple of hours, I came across that finish line with an uncontrollable grin.  It’s all I talked about.  When people would ask how my race partner Jeff and I trained for it; we didn’t have a good answer.  We merely stated that on our long Sunday’s, we would do ‘what ever’ to serve cardio time and get our legs used to running off the bike or vice versa.

Out for a walk with my wife a week later, it suddenly occurred to me.  Why not film a race so that others could see what it’s all about and train better knowing what they could expect.  I reached out to Sean Roper of Storm Events and Mark and Heather Arnold of Hark Events to let them know my idea.  They were very accommodating with the concept and helped me shoot a couple of their events that I participated in.

Mark Arnold then suggested I should meet Neil Ireland.  Neil is a mountain biking fanatic.  He’d been carrying a larger digital video camera on his head and filming commemorative DVD’s primarily at Adam Ruppel’s Chico Racing Series. 

Neil and I got together over pints.  Several actually.  Each.  We traded stories of our conceptual ideas and quickly decided that working together and bringing the concept alive was the right thing to do.  Neil had some interesting plans of the potential usage of video.

Within a month; www.RACEDAYRUSH.com was born.

www.RACEDAYRUSH.com is now a large collection of running, cycling, mountain bike racing and adventure racing footage from many cool events featured in Get Out There Magazine.  It’s single purpose is to give endurance athletes some alternative eye candy to television re-runs when serving time on the treadmill or bike trainer.

In our STUDIO Series ™, we have taken it one step further.  We combine real elevation profiles and segment them in to intervals to allow you to really simulate being on that race course.  We are now introducing the cycling STUDIO Series ™ with a collection of events designed to make you work harder and achieve better fitness results.