Crewing 101

So should a runner provide medication and emergency contact information to their crew?

Yeah, so I think this is a great question and my wholehearted answer is yes, if that is something that you feel comfortable with disclosing to your crew.

You know, when we're out there, whether it's local or not local, anything can happen.

And so I would say you don't have to have everything, you know, out in the open and if you don't want it to be, but having an envelope at least with current disease processes that you might have going on, current medications, past history of anything pertinent, and then emergency contacts, you can put that in a manila folder or you know, in a little envelope to give to your crew to have on hand just in case anything were to happen.

I think that is super important.

You know, we always want to be prepared as best we can.

And I'm by day, I'm an emergency veterinarian.

um and so i'm always in like the prepared mindset of let's be safe than sorry um and if you don't want to share that information openly i think having it in a closed envelope to use as needed or if needed is is super reasonable and i think important i think if you are working closely with a crew in definitely a multi-day type scenario and so if you're doing like 100 or 36 hour i think whatever you're comfortable with, having a conversation with your crew or who's going to be helping you and talking through some of those things of, you know, can we make a contingency plan if this happens than that? And then just giving that crew person, you know, an emergency contact that they can have and put in their phone for ease of access, not only for emergency personnel.

And then if you're taking a regular medication, you know, once a day or twice a day and you're in going over 24 hours, if you start in the morning, if you take your medication in the morning and 24 hours comes, your crew person might be able to remind you to be like, hey, let's take that, you know, it's 8 a.m. because you might not be in the right place.

frame of mind so i 100 think sharing this information in whatever way you feel most comfortable whether it's private and concealed versus being open and having that vulnerable conversation is is important and good

Yep.

I don't really have much to add other than luckily wild goose is one where you're not sort of out in the wilderness too long where you're so far away from like a base that you won't be coming back through because of the loops.

But yeah, you know, it's still if you were to even apply that in a point to point race or if you're thinking about doing a point to point race, it doesn't really matter either way.

Like I think having crew, if you have crew, they should kind of know.

And this also speaks to like knowing kind of what's on your and i'll just like since we you know we talked about what questions we'd answer ahead of time this might just piggyback in a really good way that if you're um if you're carrying anything on your person while you're out on the trail making sure that your crew knows what is on your person That also helps in an emergency situation.

So we can if we know that you left and you had so many calories on your person, we can kind of get a plan going for if we have to send somebody out there to get you off the trail at some point for any like if for heaven forbid, if you have an emergency and we have to come get you off the trail, we know kind of what you have on your person and how how how quickly or how much of an emergency it is.

I don't know the right way to frame that.

How serious of an emergency it might be.

So yes, definitely let your crew know what you need medically, especially if it impacts your event.

And then also make sure your crew knows what you're taking and carrying out with you.

Awesome.

Yeah, basically no surprises, right? We don't want surprises with medical stuff.

Um, definitely myself as a race director, don't like, uh, surprises in that department.

Um, okay.

The next question is a bit open ended.