Hello, I’m Francis,

As a runner, I naturally thought I was having barely any impact on the planet.

Then I read that us racers have carbon footprints 40% larger than non-runners.

How can I be worse than someone driving everywhere?
That just doesn’t make sense.

So much of the narrative is:

“Say no to free t-shirts!”
”Bring your own water!”
”Stop accepting medals!”

While positive steps, all these barely move the dial.

97%*

Up to

of an event’s carbon footprint is our travel to get there

*it depends on the event. There isn’t good data, but most reports have it in the 95%-97% range.

So… I’m currently training for my fifth marathon… 3,275 miles away in Boston.
Yep, I finally qualified!

Bucket list races are worth it; we only live once. And I want to race somewhere brilliant next time too. But does it need to be that far? There is a world of unique, untapped races for us to enjoy. Some may be where I am already travelling for work or holidays. Plenty will be much closer to home.

A return flight might have the same impact as buying 400 pairs of running shoes *

*an Economy London to Boston flight is way over this… PER PASSENGER

Making an informed decision on where to race is not possible.

  • There are more events in the world than any directory will show you. 200,000 races around the world every year. How many does your favourite directory have? A few hundred, maybe a thousand?

  • Some directories have ok data for a particular distancem in a particular region, but comprehensively comparing around the world is not possible on a single site as it stands.

So, I thought I could do something to help….

But just building the world’s most comprehensive directory is not enough

Just making a bigger list would not help convince me to swap some of my long-haul races for closer ones. We need to go much, much deeper.

It starts with the course. I’m done with trying to decipher screenshots of Google Maps with random lines scrawled on top, trying to calculate how many loops for the distance I care about. So we are hand-illustrating every course . This means a glance will tell you what kind of challenge it is. And you might think AI would be perfect for this, but alas, no. You need a designer’s eye to get this right.

I’m also tired of “hilly” or “flat” course descriptions. What I want to see is how close a potential swappable event will compare to another event. So, we are plotting elevations on a standard scale so you can quickly determine which race is best for you.

And then there’s the “fast“ description. Well how fast? We have created a unique number to compare the relative competitiveness or toughness. We have calculated them for all marathons worldwide and will be updating again each year, and adding other distances too.

And, vitally important, we include the start times so you can quickly see whether you can arrive by train and avoid a hotel. That kind of practical information will save you time, save you money and help the planet.

We are making this service free to access and free for events to feature, so any event can be on here.

Races may be forced to limit international competitors in future, so getting into any big event could be a lottery like London, Tokyo or NYC.

I want to continue racing around the world as much as the next person. So I started Course Is Clear with a mission to maximise racing while minimising its impact.

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