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Vitality Running World Cup with Nick Beresford.
63 Plays5 years ago
On this episode I am speaking with Nick Beresford. Nick is the founder of the Vitality Running World Cup which is due to begin on March 5th 2020.
The Vitality Running world cup gives everyone aged 13 and over the opportunity to represent their country in a tournament so if you fancy competing against the likes of Usain Bolt then have a listen and enjoy our interview with Nick, where we find out all about the event.
For more information go to www.runningworldcup.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to this episode of the UK sports chat podcast. I'm Joe Williams and on this episode I am speaking with Nick Beresford. Nick is the founder of the Vitality Running World Cup which is due to begin on Thursday March the 5th. The Vitality Running World Cup gives everyone aged 13 and over the opportunity to represent their country in a tournament so if you fancy competing against the likes of Usain Bolt himself
00:00:28
Speaker
Then have a listen and enjoy our interview with Nick, where we find out all about the event. Enjoy. Welcome, Nick. Thanks for joining us. How are you today? Very good. Thank you, Joe. It's great to be here. Great. Yeah, really great to have you come on.
Global Competition Vision
00:00:46
Speaker
So tell us, I've seen it on the TV, on Adverts, on Sky, and I've picked up the Runners World email this morning. Tell us about the Vitality Running World Cup.
00:00:58
Speaker
Well, great that you've seen some of the coverage on it. Um, yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a big global competition that we're trying to give everybody the sort of opportunity to run for their country. You know, anybody, maybe like me, who sort of dreamed of competing for their country in a major sort of tournament, but it's never really had the opportunity. Well, this is what it's all about. It's, it's, it's not about, you know, how fast you are, how far you run. It's more about.
00:01:23
Speaker
and just being able to get out there and run and have that opportunity to compete for your country. Brilliant. Brilliant. So it's one huge running community tournament.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. I mean, it's it's all we're trying to sort of create the biggest mass participation sporting event ever by just encouraging people to get
Evolution of the Event
00:01:49
Speaker
out. It's free to enter. So and people can choose to pick whatever country they want and they can run wherever they want.
00:01:59
Speaker
It starts on March the 5th, so we're just trying to now encourage as many people to get out and also obviously encourage their friends because the more people that run, the more chance their country has got of winning. Before we dive into how this all works then, where did the idea come from?
00:02:20
Speaker
I think it was sort of an idea that sort of I guess it sort of dreamt up around you know yet this whole idea of you know whenever you're sort of watching the World Cup or the Olympics yeah it is it is that they are great events but you know they are you know for the few and we're just trying to come up with an idea around what you know what could be done for you know for those of us that haven't had that opportunity and
00:02:48
Speaker
to be able to compete for your country. So, yeah, this was the idea around, you know, flipping the model effectively where it becomes, you know, what happens if, you know, everybody could say, well, I'm I'm going to compete and and that that was sort of the idea was born back in 2018.
00:03:07
Speaker
Um, yeah, ran it, um, initially with Strava on the Strava sort of platform using one of their sort of challenges. And we weren't expecting that many people to sort of take it up, but we've got some over 80,000 people from 200 countries or something. Um, so yeah, with the concept seem to work. And then, yeah, since then we've sort of tried to sort of evolve it. And this is really the sort of the big launch, I guess, of, um, in his proper form.
00:03:32
Speaker
Okay, so this started in 2018 and then ran again in 2019, did it?
00:03:39
Speaker
Uh, no. So we, um, uh, when, when, uh, Vitality came up and said they wanted to, uh, sort of sponsor it and promote it. Um, um, we decided actually that, um, and then we wanted to sort of change the format as well to, um, allow to have the last tournament was just a week long. This is a month long and it's a proper sort of world cut format where you can
00:04:03
Speaker
have knockout tournaments and knockout rounds and things. So, um, we decided that actually the better time for it be, um, to run it in the March rather than in sort of later on in the year. So, cause cause it's, that's the sort of the start of the running season tends to be more people sort of getting out and run. So we decided to push it back. Um, but now each year it will be run sort of annually in, in, in the March timing. Great. Okay.
00:04:31
Speaker
So how does it work this time around then specifically?
Tournament Mechanics
00:04:35
Speaker
How does the cup work? Okay, so effectively there's a qualifying round that starts on for a week that starts on March the 5th. Everybody goes out and runs wherever they are. So you can run in your own time zone. And then every kilometer or mile that you do is then added towards your country's total.
00:04:59
Speaker
and then at the end of the week we will see a sort of a leaderboard of the top countries and this will be worked out by the most number of miles divided by the population effectively of the country and that's in order to keep it even or fair for small countries to compete with big and so forth. And then the top 16 countries will then be through to the knockout rounds so then you'll have a round of 16 and quarter finals, semi-finals all the way through to the to the final which is on the
00:05:29
Speaker
5th of April so the finals will affect the knockout rounds all the scores will be reset and so each weekend basically in March the knockout rounds will occur and and it'll be over a weekend so it'll be those countries that have got out over the weekend to do as much as they can to to get through to the next round
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So, do you know how many different countries are signed up at the moment? We've got over 200 countries signed up and over 250,000 runners. I think it's about 265,000 actually this morning. It seems to be getting about 15, 20,000 people joining each day at the moment. That's amazing. Okay.
00:06:18
Speaker
So I'm interested, what do I do on March the 5th? How do I get involved and who gets involved? Who can take part? Yeah, so it's open to everybody 13 years and above. All you need is some form of tracking device, a smartphone, Garmin, Fitbit.
00:06:41
Speaker
Strava whatever sort of running device it's used and effectively you go to the runningworldcup.com click on sign up takes about a minute or two to sign up it's just as it says it's free to enter you just pick put your name in pick the country you want to run for and then effectively then connect whichever tracking device
00:07:09
Speaker
And it should automatically just log you in. And then you're set up to go. And so then on March the 5th, if you go out and do a run, as long as you're tracking it on your normal tracking device, the system will automatically pick up that run and add it to the country score. And then you will then be able to see on your device the country leaderboard and those kind of things. So hopefully it's super simple for people.
00:07:37
Speaker
because we're using existing tracking devices that people are familiar with and already use, then we're not saying you have to use a specific one, then hopefully everybody can take part. Yeah, okay. Why is it over 13 years of age? We wanted it to be sort of open to as many people as possible. I think when we looked at the, there are some
00:08:04
Speaker
issues around uh people even younger than that owning phones and those kind of things so we have like the gps and trucking and yeah and that kind of stuff yeah so um so effectively we do have a um schools program a number of schools have come to us i think
00:08:22
Speaker
have asked us if they could take part because they like the idea and actually it's quite a nice way of getting kids out out and about and so we have got a method where as long as it's a form as long as it's signed off by a head teacher effectively then their school can compete so if they said look you know we had
00:08:42
Speaker
100 kids. And they all did that because you have to run a minimum of three kilometers as well. So that's an important point because it's okay, we wanted everything to be a sort of an actual run rather than just and as long as they do that, and their teacher signs it off, then we will add those scores in. Okay, so it is possible, but it's just for people tracking their own stuff, so 13 or above.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. So I go to the website, I sign up, and I have to run 3k. Do I have to do that in a certain time? Yes, you have to run 3k within 30 minutes, which is literally just above
00:09:27
Speaker
kind of walking pace again the design of it we wanted it to be a proper run so it's not a walk it's obviously not a cycle it's not whatever else it is it is the running world cup so that that is part of the criteria but it is it is designed in a way that hopefully you know anyone could do it almost yeah sounds like it's very accessible for yeah for lots of people then yeah great exactly okay so um
00:09:56
Speaker
Who is taking part? I've seen some of the team captains on the website.
Prominent Figures and Participation Scale
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, we've got some great captains that have come in to support it and things. Usain Bolt is going to be captaining Jamaica. We've got Dame Jess Ennis Hill, who's agreed to be the team captain for the UK. It's Wade Van Niekerk, who is the current 400
00:10:26
Speaker
for South Africa and then we've got probably 25 to 30 other big sort of named country captains across the world that some have been announced and some are still to be announced. We've got some quite nice ones hopefully coming up in the next week or so which we're excited about.
00:10:48
Speaker
Tell us more about the specifics of the tournament then. The Football World Cup, even a league, you've got four in a league and the top two go through. What are the specifics of the actual tournament? How will those 200 plus countries be whittled down to 16 for the knockout part of the tournament?
00:11:09
Speaker
OK, so yeah, so starting on from the 5th of March for a week will be the qualifying period. All of the countries, wherever they are, whoever runs for them based on which countries they've signed up for.
00:11:26
Speaker
will be the scores will be included each day we'll update the leaderboard so people will be able to see you know where their country is and you know who's kind of currently in the sort of the top 16 as in above the cut if you like and probably the ones yeah might be further down that's you know got a good chance if they you know if they keep running or get get their friends out there and things
00:11:47
Speaker
It's calculated as I said around total number of kilometres over population and it's also the population is actually smartphone population in the country so that's again we decided to do that to make sure it's fair for some countries that may have very low or lower penetration of smartphones where
00:12:11
Speaker
It's not really fair if they don't, there's no physical way that they can actually track a run. Yes. Whereas some that have slightly more advanced ones. So again, we're trying to make it a sort of level playing field for everybody as possible. Can you choose the country that you represent? Sorry to interrupt you. Yes, you can. Can you choose? Yeah.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, so you can, you know, you could be living in New York, and you could choose to run for Japan, or, I mean, we've got, you know, people who are running for Vatican City, and they've ordered their tea, you know, Vatican City, you know, so can literally run for, for, for whichever, ever country you want. And it's designed in a way so you can also run in your own time zone. So if, for instance, you
00:12:53
Speaker
or you are you know one of these international folks that sort of live say yeah say for somebody who wants to run for Japan but it's based in San Francisco then they will run on San Francisco kind of time but their school would obviously count to the Japanese total and that's that's a choice but once you've chosen your country and you've made your run a bit like I guess once you've started playing for
00:13:17
Speaker
country or England or something, it's very difficult to change. You can't then change it. So once it's set, it's set as it were. So we'll need to make sure they choose the right one. Yeah. Yeah. So I could see, you know, there might be some big Usain Bolt fans out there who fancy being on his team. Exactly. Who aren't necessarily from Jamaica. So yeah, that's great. So how many people are signed up? Did you say you mentioned that? Over 260,000 so far.
00:13:46
Speaker
wow that's got to be some kind of I mean I don't know the stats but in terms of you know mass participation race that's got to be up there with have they been any bigger or I mean the world record is technically 110 000 for the marathon in Manila about five years ago that's the official one I mean there have been others that have got sort of mass groups out which hasn't been officially recorded so yeah we're keen to sort of keep keep going and
00:14:15
Speaker
just try and encourage the world to run, basically. Yeah, brilliant. So going back to the tournament then, so the 200 teams that take part, they're predominantly divided by the number of smartphones. Yeah, the population of the country who've got smartphones, basically.
00:14:35
Speaker
So you, you, the top 16 then go through to a knockout and how is that working? Is it first against 16? How are they divided up then? Yeah. So then the, um, uh, 16 will go through to a knockout round. Um, and, uh, yes, it will be kind of seeded. Um, so that's his last kind of thing. Um, and, um, the, um,
00:15:02
Speaker
then they will then for the next weekend they will then all the scores will be reset so from sort of effectively that next weekend will be the round of 16 so you might have say England versus France and then everybody needs to sort of go out and hopefully do another round or
00:15:21
Speaker
people out running over that weekend. And then the total scores at the end of this midnight on Sunday will then be determined who then goes through. It'll be calculated in the same way. So it's divided by smart, smart phone population effectively. So it's fair.
Knockout Rounds Structure
00:15:36
Speaker
And then they will then go through to the quarter finals, which will then be run on the following weekend. Okay. Semifinals on the weekend after that.
00:15:45
Speaker
So there's some specific dates then. So, so I'm looking, I've got my 2020 year planner in front of me. So we've got March the 5th to the seven days, you say, for that initial period. Yeah. So that takes you to the 12th. So then the weekend of the 14th and 15th, is that the last 16? So the last 16, yes, it's run over that weekend. 14th and the 15th. Yeah. I see. And then the quarter finals are 21st, 22nd. That's correct.
00:16:13
Speaker
And then the final is the final weekend or one day it is yeah, so it's the same as in 4th and 5th of April, so it finishes on Sunday, April 5th at midnight effectively. We haven't a third and fourth place playoff. There is there is even a first fourth place playoff, which is also on that same weekend. Great OK.
00:16:44
Speaker
I've noticed, I've seen online, that there's a goodie bag. Yes.
00:16:50
Speaker
Tell us about that. What is the goodie bag? So for anybody that completes a sort of a qualifying run, so that's your 3K within 30 minutes in one of the sort of the tournament periods, if you like, they will get a sort of a digital goodie bag, which is worth $100 worth of sort of discounts and vouchers. Wow. Yeah, so we've got some
00:17:17
Speaker
there is sort of partners across the world effectively to donate or offer sort of discount codes or gift cards.
Participant Incentives
00:17:25
Speaker
Can we say who they are? Have you got any? We haven't got the sort of the final list yet. There's going to be some great discounts. I think we've got about 10 to 15 brands. We just confirmed
00:17:41
Speaker
final list and we also try, there's a few that are kind of trying to compete to get in there and actually it's quite useful. We can get some more decent ones in. So that's why we're not quite announcing it yet. But watch the space because there should be some good ones coming.
00:18:00
Speaker
Brilliant. Great. Okay. So if I, how do everyone follow along with this and come much the fifth? Well, where can we see updates? So, I mean, if you're taking part, then you'll be able to see it within your sort of app or on your profile on the website.
Staying Informed
00:18:21
Speaker
And we'll also be publishing it on runningworldcup.com. So you'll see the leaderboard there.
00:18:29
Speaker
Is there an app, Nick? There is an app, yeah. So you don't need to have the app. But if you want to download the app on either Android or Apple, then just type running World Cup and it will come up. So you can see it on there as well.
00:18:48
Speaker
Great. Okay. So before we wrap it up, just remind us, where do people go to sign up and give all the social channels a plug and that kind of thing so that we all know where we're looking and where we're signing up.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah, great. So it's running World Cup.com. And then you just click sign up and you'll have it there. That's the easiest place to go. Yeah, you can follow us at running World Cup on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
00:19:19
Speaker
We'll also be updating news and those kind of things. Obviously, if people do sign up, they'll also get the sort of emails just telling them how things are going, if their country's sort of qualified, how they get their goodie bag, all those kind of just tournament sort of details, if you like. But there's a kind of FAQs as well, obviously, on the website. There's kind of got more detailed questions and there's also like a chat facility there so they can message people and try and find out
00:19:49
Speaker
if they've got any other questions.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, I've just jumped on that as we're chatting, actually. So it's a comprehensive FAQ, isn't it? There's a section here, so if there's an issue with your run tracking, they're telling you how to sort that. There's a bit about the goodie bag, general information. So yeah, there's lots on the runningworldcup.com site. Definitely. And I'm assuming that you're going to want people posting their runs on social and tagging your accounts in and representing their country.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah, that would obviously be great, because obviously it's all about getting people out there. We've got people up to the, I think our oldest sign up so far is over 90 years old, which is quite exciting. And right down to the young instant, we're hearing stories that people have never run before. And actually, we're selling sort of t shirts. And I was sort of saying at the beginning, I just don't need to do like, you know,
00:20:45
Speaker
too many ranges of sizes because they'll never get bought but actually some of the really really large sizes have really been very popular actually sold out of those who are having to sort of order more which actually for me is a great sign because it means that you know that everybody is that people are getting into the spirit of it which isn't really as I say about ability or distance it's about just getting out there the bar is quite low but you know you can do as much as you want if you're a really serious runner you can you know you can really put some good miles in and really help your country but
00:21:13
Speaker
Again, it's just about trying to encourage as many people to get out there, have a bit of fun, and help their country win. Yeah, how important was that when you come up with the idea? Because you look at running in general as you have your couch to 5k, which is the standard way, isn't it, to get into running, that the more routes that there are for people to get involved. I mean, this one's, you know, you're very much
00:21:40
Speaker
You with your mates you with your friends you're representing your country if you've got some Motivation to go along with it. Was that a big part of of building this
Environmental and Community Focus
00:21:49
Speaker
for you? Yeah. Yeah, it was and it's I mean, I'm a park runner myself. I love that whole sort of idea and For me that's the sort of you know, the great the nice thing about running it really isn't a you don't need any really equipment you
00:22:05
Speaker
walk out your door you don't need a stadium you can just go and and from this point of view this tournament feels like a nice one it's also very sort of environmentally friendly and those kind of things because it's you know there's no travel involved to the events or anything like that it's literally you can just do it wherever you are on or you know on a part of your normal
00:22:25
Speaker
your normal run running journey or you know even if you are in another event great you know or a park run then just make sure you track your runs because it will all help towards you. Yeah I imagine a lot of people would be would be taking part at the weekend doing their park run.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. The other thing I should mention is you can also if you want to create your own mini teams to see how your, your friends and family are doing you can do that as well so as a sort of you go into the sort of the app you'll see a thing called teams and you can invite your friends and do it via Facebook WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.
00:23:01
Speaker
Twitter just shares it out and then people then click and they come into your team bit like sort of fancy football if you like. That's great so you can you can invite your mates but you can give it your own team and use it as a team within your within your country's teams.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, within your country. In fact, I mean, the team's feature actually, you could still be in a team and some people would be running for a different country. That doesn't necessarily matter. I mean, you can choose to say, no, I want my team to all be from a certain country. That's fine too. But if people want a multinational country, but they just want to see how they're all doing with each other and have a bit of competition within themselves, then great. That's what that feature's there for.
00:23:44
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds great and it's been really good to have you come on and speak to us because UK Run Chat and what this tournament is are really aligned all about making it accessible for everyone and supporting everyone who wants to get into running and likewise if there's people out there who really want to push themselves and go and do big miles then I suppose that's up to them as well as part of this, isn't it?
00:24:10
Speaker
Exactly, yeah great. Well thank you Joe, we really appreciate the time and for having us on.