A Race Director’s Mild Case of Spieltrieb

I can't understand why The Dirty Kiln race staff groans when I have a brilliant idea? 🤷

I’m never quite sure if I’m trying to keep these races fresh and quirky—or if I just have some deep, unexplainable urge to entertain myself. Maybe it’s a touch of benign chaos engineering. Or, if we want to get a little poetic about it, the Germans might call it “Spieltrieb”—the instinctive drive to play. Whatever it is, I’ve learned to lean into it.

Every year, I try to throw in one or two curveballs just to keep things interesting—for the runners, the volunteers, and, let’s be honest, for me. Over time, that’s led to some memorable (and occasionally questionable) antics:

• Lining everyone up at the start… then announcing we’re running the course in reverse

• Placing a plastic alligator in the stream at a creek crossing

• Kicking things off with a full-on Hokey Pokey

• Sending an ambulance out to “retrieve” DNF runners

• Placing coffins along the course for a little extra ambiance

• Showing up in costume—a sea captain, a UFO abductee, a slab of bacon, local yokel—or just wearing a painfully loud Hawaiian shirt

• Casually taking a nap at the start line

• Painting inflatable crabs into disturbingly realistic giant ticks

And that’s just scratching the surface.

So the real question isn’t if something strange will happen this year… it’s what.