It’s All Spreadsheets
- Ben Mazur
- 17 hours ago
- 8 min read
The deeply unglamorous, absurdly bureaucratic secret infrastructure behind ultramarathons
People imagine race directing as rugged wilderness leadership: radios crackling, heroic decisions, maybe a weathered clipboard flapping dramatically in the wind. In reality, organizing an ultramarathon is mostly a sprawling network of spreadsheets, checklists, logistics matrices, volunteer trackers, and color-coded operational documents held together by caffeine and conditional formatting. Behind every “simple” trail race is a hyper-organized ecosystem managing hundreds of runners, volunteers, aid stations, supplies, emergencies, cutoffs, and one guy who definitely ignored three emails about mandatory gear. This is a celebration of the hidden administrative monster behind trail running and the strange beauty of trying to engineer adventure through Google Sheets.
Race directing is an outdoor recreation activity disguised as an accounting firm.
People think race directors spend their days standing heroically on mountaintops with a radio clipped to their vest saying things like, “Runner 214 just cleared Aid Station 7. Godspeed.”
No.
We are hunched over laptops at 11:43 p.m. renaming spreadsheet tabs from “Final Volunteer Schedule” to “FINAL Volunteer Schedule V2” to “FINAL Volunteer Schedule V2 REAL” to “USE THIS ONE OR EVERYONE DIES.”
Because the biggest secret about race directing is this:
It’s all spreadsheets.
All of it.
Every ultramarathon. Every trail race. Every “grassroots community-driven authentic endurance experience” is secretly powered by Google Sheets and one emotionally exhausted person muttering, “Why did this cell formatting copy over like that?”
...the event becomes less of a race and more of a NATO supply chain exercise with electrolyte mix.
You think ultrarunning is about grit. It is not. It is about conditional formatting.
See, when you put 300 participants into the woods for 100 miles over 36 hours, plus 250 volunteers, aid station crews, medics, shuttle drivers, logistics staff, sweepers, timers, photographers, park officials, angry campground hosts, and one guy named Brent who keeps emailing “Can I switch to the supported division?” at 2:17 a.m., the event becomes less of a race and more of a NATO supply chain exercise with electrolyte mix.
The actual race directing process is mostly this:
Build extremely detailed organizational systems.
Put them into spreadsheets.
Attempt to follow the spreadsheets while the universe actively tries to destroy the spreadsheets.
That’s the job.
Sure, some spreadsheets are “back office” spreadsheets. Treasurer stuff. Quartermaster stuff. Inventory stuff. I mostly avoid those because once somebody starts saying “P&L statements” my soul leaves my body like a Victorian child seeing a ghost.
But the operational spreadsheets? Oh baby. Those are where the magic lives.
So here they are. My personal Top 10 Spreadsheet Cinematic Universe.
Participant Lists
This is where your innocent little race registration becomes government infrastructure.
You think you’re just signing up for a race. No. You are entering The System.
We now possess:
your name
your address
your emergency contact
your shirt size
your qualifying races
your dietary restrictions
your vehicle description
your bib number
and potentially enough information to launch a mid-sized municipal election campaign
And if you commit the greatest ultrarunning sin by leaving the course without telling anyone... con-fuckin'-gratulations. You have activated the Incident Escalation Workflow.
We know where you started. We know where you dropped. We know when you missed a cutoff. We know that you said you’d be “totally self-sufficient” and then packed one Honey Stinger and a banana like you’re Paddington Bear going on a day trip.
And if you commit the greatest ultrarunning sin by leaving the course without telling anyone... con-fuckin'-gratulations. You have activated the Incident Escalation Workflow.
Now we’re calling park rangers, aid stations, hotel front desks, maybe the county sheriff. Somewhere a volunteer named Linda is holding a clipboard saying, “I’m telling you, he looked like a man who would wander into the woods voluntarily.”
Whether we find your body, dead or alive, you will be banned from any of our races going forward.
Master Checklist
The master checklist is sacred.
Without a checklist, every race director would eventually forget something catastrophically important like permits, port-a-johns, or the finish line.
And look, checklists work. Surgeons use them. Pilots use them. NASA uses them.
Which means somewhere there is a profound operational overlap between launching a space shuttle and remembering to buy propane for the Disco Aid Station.
The checklist starts about 364 days before race day.
It contains thousands of tiny tasks like:
reserve pavilion
confirm insurance
order bibs
buy a case of beer for the cabin owner at mile 34
inspect chainsaws
remind volunteers not to pet bears
locate extension cords
verify "orange food" quantities
Every checkbox completed releases approximately 0.3 milligrams of serotonin directly into the race director brain.
RAM Document
Ah yes. The RAM Document.
Or as normal humans call it: “Who’s doing what?”
Officially, RAM stands for Responsibility Assignment Matrix.
Already this sounds less like trail running and more like a defense contractor trying to sell a missile guidance platform to Congress.
This spreadsheet was created by Jeff, who taught military logistics at the Army War College, which honestly explains a lot.
Because an ultramarathon is basically military logistics except instead of invading East Germany you’re trying to get pickle juice to the aid station captain dressed like Sasquatch at 3:15 in the morning.
The RAM document uses the famous RACI model:
Responsible
Accountable
Consulted
Informed
This is project management language for:
Who does the thing
Who gets blamed
Who gives opinions nobody asked for
Who receives 47 unnecessary emails
Corporate America invented this system so middle management could survive meetings. Ultrarunning adapted it because eventually somebody absolutely must answer the question: “Who was supposed to bring the generator to Aid Station 9?”
Trail Tracker
The Eastern States course has 17 aid station sections and roughly 70 management segments because apparently we chose violence as an organizational philosophy.
This spreadsheet tracks trail conditions, maintenance schedules, mowing status, cleanup verification, volunteer assignments, and enough terrain data to invade a small nation.
My favorite worksheet is simply titled: “Whack/Mow.”
Which sounds less like trail maintenance and more like a rejected CBS police procedural.
“Tuesday nights this fall: Trail Tracker: WHACK/MOW. He trims grass. He breaks rules.”
Trail work spreadsheets are fascinating because they reveal the hidden reality of trail races: every beautiful wilderness experience is held together by volunteers carrying loppers and unresolved lower back pain.
Volunteer Tracker
Over 250 volunteers support Eastern States.
Volunteers are the backbone of trail running. My undying appreciation and gratitude goes out to all of them. They are compassionate, dedicated, hardworking people who willingly spend 19 consecutive hours in the rain handing quesadillas to strangers having existential crises.
Which means they are either saints or deeply suspicious individuals. Possibly both.
Volunteer coordination is managed by Janice, our Volunteer Czar, because every successful event eventually evolves into a semi-functioning shadow government.
Janice manages assignments, contact info, shirts, schedules, requests, dietary restrictions, and messages like: “Can my emotional support ferret volunteer at Aid Station 6?”
No one works harder before the race than the volunteer coordinator. Except maybe the person trying to alphabetize 300 drop bags while runners scream “IT’S THE BLUE ONE.”
Aid Station and Sync Master
This spreadsheet is the Rosetta Stone of runner anxiety.
Participants stare at it for weeks before race day studying cutoff times like medieval scholars interpreting prophecy scrolls.
This document contains:
aid stations
mileage
crew access
drop bag locations
toilets
support availability
cutoffs
distances between aid stations
and occasionally the exact moment your confidence evaporates entirely
You can literally watch runners bargaining with themselves while reading it.
“Okay, if I average 14-minute miles for the first 50, survive hypothermia, transcend human limitation, and become pure energy, I can probably make the cutoff.”
Logistics Tracker and Logistics Schedule
This spreadsheet tracks all the stuff aid stations need.
Tables. Chairs. Canopies. Water containers. Ice. Stoves. Fuel. Food. Coolers. Generators. Lighting. Medical supplies. Hydration mix. Trash bags.
An aid station is essentially a tiny temporary civilization assembled in the woods by people whose primary qualification is “owns a pickup truck.”
And no matter how detailed the spreadsheet becomes, race week always produces emergency requests like:
“We need more caffeinated Tailwind.” “We need more propane.” “We need another table.” “We just decided to commit to 'full on pirate theme'.” “The Christmas in August tree has caused a small brush fire.”
Aid station volunteers operate with the energy of community theater technicians during a weather emergency.
Runner Data
After the race, the spreadsheets evolve into Data Science.
Now we analyze arrival patterns, split times, cutoff compression, average pacing, attrition curves, station throughput, and runner flow trends.
Which sounds impressive until you realize the core purpose is usually answering questions like:
“How many grilled cheese sandwiches do exhausted people consume between 2 and 4 a.m.?”
This data matters though.
It determines staffing. Supplies. Timing windows. Cutoffs. Resupply schedules. Medical readiness.
It’s the reason experienced race directors can casually say terrifyingly accurate things like:
“The mid-pack surge should hit Aid 5 around 11:40 p.m. and everyone will absolutely ask for pierogies.”
Ops Situation Board
People imagine race directing involves some underground command bunker with giant maps and tactical markers moving across the course.
And honestly? We wish.
In reality it’s a spreadsheet. A beautiful spreadsheet. A spreadsheet so powerful it becomes sentient around mile 80.
This board tracks:
aid station status
deliveries
volunteers
sweepers
proofers
shuttle pickups
runner locations
critical issues
closures
weather impacts
emergencies
Everything is color-coded with dropdown toggles like:
Pending
In Progress
Delivered
Critical Issue
Awaiting Pickup
At some point during race weekend, somebody always says something like:
“We need to optimize communications synergy between mobile logistics assets.”
And what they actually mean is:
“Dave forgot the ice again.”
The Greatest Spreadsheet Ever Made
My favorite race spreadsheet of all time came from the early Dirty Kiln Trail Races.
My co-race director created a full course map… in Excel.
Not using mapping software. Not GIS. Not Photoshop.
Excel.
The hills were green cells. Roads were gray. Water was blue. The course was red.
It looked like a 8-bit Nintendo game designed by a regional planning commission.
A cartographic fever dream.
And it was magnificent.
Because that’s race directing in its purest form: taking absurd amounts of effort and applying it to something gloriously unnecessary because you care deeply about the experience.
That’s the secret underneath all the spreadsheets.
The spreadsheets are not the point.
They are the scaffolding.
The whole purpose of all this bureaucracy, all this planning, all this project management jargon, all these logistics systems and synchronized documents and dropdown menus and conditional formatting rules is to create an environment where runners can forget every bit of it exists.
The whole purpose of all this bureaucracy, all this planning, all this project management jargon, all these logistics systems and synchronized documents and dropdown menus and conditional formatting rules is to create an environment where runners can forget every bit of it exists.
If we do our jobs right, participants experience freedom. Adventure. Discovery. Community.
Meanwhile behind the scenes, people are desperately updating a Google Sheet because somebody’s generator is running exclusively on vibes.
That’s the art of race directing.
Kaizen. Continuous improvement. Tiny refinements stacking over time. Everyone contributing. Everyone solving problems. Everyone making the event just a little bit better than the year before.
And honestly? It works.
Every year the systems improve. Every year the races improve. Every year the spreadsheets become more horrifyingly advanced.
Which brings me to the most dangerous moment of my race directing career.
My co-race director, Patrick, for the Ironstone 100K, an educator by profession, recently introduced me to something called:
Google Documents… linked… to other Google Documents.
Reader, I saw the face of God.
