Running Events Editing and Proofreading Services

Somebody enters a marathon in November for the following May. They train through the winter, arrive, and are stopped at twenty-one miles by a vehicle telling them the road is reopening. The cut-off was in the event information, expressed as an average pace per kilometre, and they had never converted it into the only number that mattered: the time they had to reach that junction.

We edit what running events and race organisers produce — course descriptions and cut-off information, entry terms and transfer policies, race information packs and pre-event briefings, aid station and support details, results and timing information, volunteer and marshal briefings, road closure and community communications, and the messages sent when a race is altered or abandoned. Our editors work on documents that runners plan a year around.

The course description and its cut-offs is what determines whether a runner has a good day or a wasted winter, and its failure is a pace requirement expressed in a form nobody runs to. Nobody runs an average pace; they arrive at places at times. We work through these so every cut-off is given as a time of day at a named point, with the distance to it, since "you must maintain 8:30 per kilometre" requires arithmetic under fatigue and "you must be at the bridge at 12:40" does not; so the consequence at each cut-off is stated — swept, diverted onto a shorter route, or allowed to continue unsupported — because these are wholly different and runners deserve to know which; so the profile is described by where the hard part is rather than by total elevation, given that a flat course with one climb at 32 km is not a flat course; so the surface changes are located, as a marathon with 4 km of trail in the middle is a different shoe decision; so the aid stations are listed by distance with what is at each, including whether cups or bottles and whether there is anything solid; so the conditions the race has actually had are described honestly — the year it was 27 degrees, the year the wind was head-on for the last 10 km; so the transfer, deferral and refund position is stated before entries open; and so the last two kilometres are described in detail, because that is where people need to know what is coming. Descriptions written this way get runners to the finish.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including event documents, entrant data and operational plans. We are editors rather than race directors, medical or safety advisers, and we offer no view on course design, cut-offs or safety. What we can do is give runners the numbers they will actually use.