Before COVID-19, social distancing, smothering face masks and every single race getting cancelled, I had never given running a virtual race a single thought. In fact, the whole idea of it seemed ridiculous to me, but after every single race got cancelled, this turned into my only option. I started researching virtual races, got excited about running a virtual race and then I fizzled out. There was no hook, motivation, accuracy or endorphin rush from the virtual races. Here are my thoughts on why I don’t think virtual races will ever replace the physical race.

Accuracy

I’m an analytics kind of guy, so it wasn’t surprising that the first thing I noticed was that almost every single virtual race requires you to manually input your finishing times. While I generally have an optimistic view of the human race, people manually entering times feels like the most inaccurate way of tracking race stats, even for the most honest out there. I build internet software for a living, and it pains me to know that there are plenty of ways to get true and accurate data out of most run tracking apps. An app like Strava has a programming interface (API) available for this very purpose. There’s a huge opportunity for virtual race organizers to update their technology.

But even if virtual race organizers do update their technology, the data will never be 100% accurate. The most frequent question that arises in group runs is “how many miles does your watch say?” There are many reasons why watches can be inaccurate. Some inaccuracies are easily fixed by increasing sample rate, but most fixes are either impossible or cost money. If a runner is running in an area with poor GPS signal, or their watch is outdated, the data could be inaccurate. Inaccurate data, leads to inaccurate times, which leads to either being over or under counted on speed. You can’t have a truly accurate race with inaccurate data.

Competition

Let’s say that technology has been implemented in a way that is 100% accurate and there’s no need for real world starting mats and RFID chips. The other big hinderance of a virtual race is whether the “playing field” is equal for all runners. It’s hard to compete, when every runner’s situation is nothing like the other. There are three variables that affect this, location, timeframe and course.

Location
Location is an interesting concept. It seems wonderful that everyone across the world, regardless of age, race, social/economic status, etc. can compete against each other. But when the pool of runners is opened to everyone the entire pool becomes much more competitive. Runners that might be the best runner in their specific area, suddenly become mediocre in the global pool. The local nature of physical races, pulling from a smaller pool of talent, makes it all the more appealing to the average runner. The chances of winning increase.

Course
Unless every runner has the ability to run the exact same course, there will never be a true race where skill alone is the determining factor. With virtual races, a runner runs wherever they are at, and if they just so happen to be equally matched with another person, but have an easier course, they will win 100% of the time. This could be locked down through Strava’s API, but they have recently started locking down segment data.

Timeframe
The day and time a race is run has as much to do with the outcome of a race as the location and course. If you read about any professional runner you’ll quickly find out that races are lost and won solely by the day of the race and having the inability to change it. Whether it’s an injury, weather or just not feeling at peak performance, what happens that day matters. With most virtual races, the runner is given a large timeframe to complete the race. With this large timeframe, there is the possibility to re-run the race and get a better time, or if a runner gets sick or injured they have a much bigger window to complete the race. There’s a reason no race has a redo.

Swag

This may be controversial, but the swag to me is a secondary perk. I would pay to race, even if I didn’t get swag. With the virtual race it feels like swag is the only way to justify an organizer asking for money. Or to put it another way, virtual races can be done free, so why am I paying $40 to race by myself? What incentive does the organizer have to entice me to do their virtual race? The swag seems to be the selling point, but I’d rather spend money somewhere else.

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I could keep going, but these are the biggest pain points for me when it comes to a virtual race. Many organizers have looked to the virtual race as a great substitute, but I just don’t think it is. It feels like all the parts that make a race a race have been removed, and I’m left with a glorified workout. While I don’t know how organizers are making out, I hope they are putting most of their energy and brain power into running a physical race in a way that both understands the limitations of the pandemic and unique power of a physical race. This to me is the only sane path forward.

As a side note, I’m running a “socially distanced” 5k race this weekend. The organizers have used small waves of people (5 waves of 25 runners, 1 wave an hour) to bring a sense of the race while keeping the participants reasonably safe. This will be a first in Albany, NY so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.