rAINSHADOW RACE RULES
We want all of our runners to have the best time, but we also need to lay out some ground rules to ensure everyone's safety and well being!
1. Be nice. Especially to our volunteers, park staff, and to other trail users. If you meet other hikers on the trail, please do your best to yield or announce that you're passing. Volunteers are out there for you, so please treat them kindly! If you have any issues, please find a race staff and we will do our best to assist you with your problem.
2. Check-in with aid stations. Volunteers are tracking your bib number when you come into each aid station. It helps them greatly if your number is visible on the front of your body and even better if you shout it out for them!
3. No pacers. We don't allow pacers, even for the Orcas 100. However if you have a medical condition that might impair your safety on race day (seizures, heart conditions, etc), please send us an email and we will discuss your options.
4. Be on time. We send our sweepers out shortly after the race starts and they start pulling flagging right away. If you are running late and our sweepers have already gone out, we cannot allow you to start the race with a bib. This is for your safety.
5. Headphones in one ear only. We discourage headphones, but if you wear them, you may only have them in one ear. This if for your safety and the safety of those around you!
6. No alcohol, marijuana, or other WADA prohibited substances. Please wait until your race is over (or volunteer shift is done) and then you are welcome to come party at the finish line where we will have plenty of local beer!
7. If you are unable to finish the race you must notify a race official! (This means an aid station captain, or someone at the Finish/Timing table at the finish-line.) For safety and permit concerns, runners unable to finish the course for whatever reason may only drop at an aid station location, and/or if you can safely walk yourself back to the finish-line if you are uninjured/near it.
8. Dogs. Well behaved, leashed dogs are welcome to run on any of our race courses where permits allow. This includes Deception Pass, Orcas Island, Yakima Skyline, Beacon Rock, and Oregon Coast. Dogs are not allowed in the main building at Camp Moran and Deception Pass and they are prohibited from the bunkhouses. No dogs allowed on the Sun Mountain course or at the start/finish area, this is to stay in compliance with our permits.
9. No runner who has been issued a temporary or lifetime ban from the WADA will be allowed to run. While we personally believe in forgiveness in general, and realize long trail runs can be therapeutic, and that welcoming everyone, despite their past mistakes and flaws, to the trail running community could be beneficial to them, we can’t seem to find a way to balance that with the need to ensure fair competition at our races. We openly encourage those athletes with a history of cheating to find what they are looking for in non-competitive runs and volunteering instead, but races are a privilege, and for those athletes caught cheating, we believe that privilege should be revoked.
10. Crews/Aid Station Supplies. Runners may only receive aid, including that from crews, at designated aid stations. Runners can not stash aid along the course.
11. No cutting switchbacks or taking other kinds of short cuts. If you accidentally find yourself off-course, you need to get back on course exactly where you got off and continue the race from there. If you don’t run every single step of the race course you will be disqualified, even if you ran the correct distance or more than the correct distance; you have to run the entire route be a race finisher.
12. No doing anything that might be deemed unsportsmanlike, mean, or unfair.
13. Bib transfers must be completed at least 7 days prior to race day by BOTH PARTIES on UltraSignup. No day of transfers or registration.
14. Abide the cut-offs. Race cut-offs exist for lots of reasons: For your safety, to keep the race on schedule, and so our volunteers can go home at reasonable time. Please take the high road and accept your fate with grace when faced with not making a cut-off time. Please don't try to convince our volunteers into letting you continue on the course; that's really not fair to them and ultimately it’s not their decision. Once the sweeps leave each aid station, they are pulling the course markings and the route will no longer be marked. If we have runners continue on behind the sweeps, it puts their safety in jeopardy and we risk losing approval from our permitting agencies to put these races on. Not following this rule will result in a 2 year ban. We want everyone to have good time, but when you signed up for this race, you agreed to follow the race rules. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding in this matter.
A reminder: The cut-off time is the time by which you must be leaving the aid station, not the time you should be arriving.
15. All of our races have their own unique rules and policies, and runners must know and follow those rules, too. See the specific race web-page, the pre-race email(s), the UltraSignup registration page(s), and the pre-race runner briefing for those rules.
16. No littering. This is not a road race and there is no one out there to pick up garbage, so please throw any trash away at the aid stations or carry it with you. Pack it in, pack it out.