Jamil Coury & How To Direct an Ultra Race Jamil Coury & How To Direct an Ultra Race

How did you get started directing races? You were actually meant to be an accountant, right? Was that the original plan?

Well, I’d say the original plan was to own my own business, which I always dreamt of doing. But, yeah, I went to school for business; accounting and economics were my majors. And then I still didn’t know what I wanted to do or how to go about the whole business thing, so I did a year of tax accounting while I tried to figure things out, and then, fortunately, I landed an opportunity to take over a race, and the rest is history.

Cool. Are you glad you skipped becoming an accountant? There must be accountants out there who are jealous of what you’re doing. 

I actually really enjoy accounting and bookkeeping, oddly enough, but I do it for my own stuff now.

Were you super into mathematics as a kid?

Pretty strong in math, yeah.

What was your weak subject in school?

Hmmm... I don’t know...

You can’t be good at everything.

I mean, I wasn’t good at everything, but I did pretty well in school.

You ran cross-country in school, right?

Yeah, I kinda ended up there. I tried out for golf and soccer, and I didn’t make those teams, then I decided to do track freshman year of high school, and they don’t cut anyone, so I was able to participate. Then I ran cross-country and track the rest of high school.

At what point did you realize, like, okay, this is what I do forever now?

You mean with running stuff?

Yeah, when did you become addicted?

Well, it was a love-hate thing in high school, and in my first year of college, I kinda stepped away from it. I didn’t run for the college team or anything...

What happened?

I still enjoyed being active, but I was just trying out different things—mountain biking, I did a triathlon—but then I found out about the local Phoenix trail runners where I live in Arizona, and the longer distances they were doing, and I started going on some runs with them. I remember I went in this free, fat ass type of event they had; it was a 25-mile mountain marathon. That was a defining run. It was called The Tonto Fun Run. I was getting scratched up, and there was a thunderstorm... It was kinda like a really wild, raw experience, and I was pretty hooked after that.

That’s awesome. What’s a ‘fat ass’ for the people at home?

A fat ass is a race with no entry fee, no course markings, no aid stations, and they don’t promise anything. There were maybe 25 people [at The Tonto Fun Run], and you just show up; someone’s loosely organizing it. Maybe they’ll give you a time if you write down your finish time at the end; there is no cost to it, and people just bring snacks for after they finish.

Can you still do a fat ass these days? It seems like something the powers-that-be would have clamped down on.

You definitely can, just so long as you’re not charging money and the event stays small enough. I mean, this isn’t something that would typically show up on a registration platform; it’s always, like, a local club organizing it... But they’re definitely still happening. Usually, it’s less than 75 people, and you’re not charging money, so you don’t have to secure any sort of a permit or anything.

That’s cool. So, you direct legitimate races—many legitimate races. I’m wondering what is the first thing you do when piecing together a new event. What are the steps?

Well, step one is going to be the course: what is your course going to be? So, where is it going to happen? What’s the route? Maybe you’ll map that out first, perhaps you’ll run the course in pieces, or you’ll drive around to the different parts of it; and then there are other things like where are you going to stage the start and finish? Where are people gonna park? Where are the aid stations gonna be? So, initially, you come up with the outline of the race, and then from there, you’re going to have to determine who owns the land where the course takes place: is it in a park? Does the local city government own it? Is it federal land or national forest land? Then you have to source permits, etcetera. Those are the initial steps.

And how long does it typically take? I know they’re all different, but say you were putting together a 50 miler in Arizona, like, how long from ‘Okay, we’re going to do a race’ to ‘On your marks, get set, go’?

I mean, I would say, minimum... Maybe six to eight months? But probably more like a year if you want to do it right. With most events, it’s a multi-year thing to get it where you want it to be.

Wow. And Aravaipa has around 50 different races under its umbrella, right?

Yeah, at least that.

At least! God, man. What’s your day-to-day look like? How are you keeping those plates spinning? I feel like one race would be hectic enough. 

Well, at this point in time, I don’t directly direct many races, although I still do have a couple right now. We have a team of race directors, and we have a director of events, but I’m touching a lot of different parts of the business on a day-to-day basis: answering questions, assisting the team... Like today, I was conducting some interviews for Javalina, which is coming up, so I was hosting and chatting with different athletes.

Right.

And I’m involved in a lot of planning and reviewing of things. Right now, we’re developing our livestream business, so I’m doing a lot with that. I’m pretty involved in the tech side of things for that and the actual creation of it. Like, we’re not at the point yet where we have someone who is fully in charge, producing all our livestreams and handling everything. It’s very much being built up, and it’s still at a very organic stage, which is sort of how I’ve built a lot of this stuff up. Most things we do, I, at one point, did them, and it grows from there.

So, when you first got started, you took over the Javelina Jundred, but did it feel grassroots-y, or was it like, ‘Okay, this is a business. Let’s go’?

No, it was very grassroots. When I took over that event, we basically donated the proceeds more or less back to the park, which wasn’t a lot at the time, but it was a few thousand dollars that we would donate back. Compared to what it is now, it was very grassroots. But it was a pretty sizeable event. I mean, there were about 150 people who would register for it. So, back then, it wasn’t as big as Western States or Leadville, but it was a reasonably well-known and well-attended event.