High Lonesome COVID19 Update #4 (Runner Email)

This email was sent to runners on May 5th, 2020

Hello runners, 

Thanks to all of you who completed the survey, we had a fantastic response rate for the runners. As promised, I've attached a basic summary of the data on this email. Runners overwhelmingly voted in favor of the October postponement, while waitlisters were more evenly split between July and October. Please feel free to review the info if you're curious. 

Now, on to the question that you're all wondering...what are we going to do? 

We are going to extend our timeline to make a final decision between July or October to May 18th. The main reason for this is giving us 3 weeks of data from social distance easing to see how things are responding. That said, it's still looking very likely that we will postpone to October. The board, our team, and the majority of you all favor that option. To keep the July dates would require a massive amount of new modeling showing that July/August are going to be amazing. Considering how the current data and modeling changes daily, I'm not optimistic. That said, we want to make sure we give July every chance we can.

When we announce the final decision, we will also provide all the necessary details for supporting that choice. Should the option be postponing to October, then we will have the logistics lined out for rollovers and refunds. 

There is one additional detail that I'd like to put out there now (due to the number of emails I've received about it). If you decide you want to run in October, and we end up having to cancel it, then we will allow you to purchase a lottery bypass for 2021. It will be the same price as this year's race, so you're not saving any money...but it does mean that you have a little insurance so you're not shafted if you choose to try for October. 

Since this essentially means we will have little to no lottery next year, we are still working on some way of not screwing over the lottery folks. Currently we're considering a couple options, but if you have any suggestions let us know. Right now the leading option is holding a "faux" lottery so they can get increased odds for the 2022 lottery. The second leading option is setting a cap on the number of lottery bypasses that could be purchased so that a certain number of spots are available to the lottery. 

Lastly, I wanted to say that Kelsey and I really appreciate the support you guys have given us. We know it's a tough time for everyone, and the uncertainty makes it even worse, but we are grateful to have such a great group of runners. This race has always been about community, so thank you for the help, feedback, ideas, support, and encouragement. We can't do this without you. 

Best, 

Caleb

PS:  For the charts titled "Ranked Score", the way that is calculated is fairly simple. For each category, I assigned a value of 3, 2, and 1 for first, second, and third choices (respectively). The higher the score the better the choice is for all respondents.