Registration for 2024 Bend Beer Chase & Cascade Lakes Relays is open!

FAQ– Beer Chase 2020

Frequently Asked Questions

Beer Chase 2020

In addition to providing your team a Virtual Beer Chase experience this fall at no additional cost or financial impact on the race credit/deferral amount for 2020, Cascade Relays will provide a credit/deferral of two-thirds (67%) of your 2020 registration fee.  All 2020 Bend Beer Chase and Boulder Beer Chase teams will receive Guaranteed Entry to Bend Beer Chase or Boulder Beer Chase throughout the period of time your credit/deferral timeline is implemented by your team captain.

Early

Registration

Regular

Registration

Late

Registration

Registration Fee Paid $600 $675 $750
Credit $180 $200 $220
1st Deferral $110 $125 $140
2nd Deferral $110 $125 $140
TOTAL CREDIT/DEFERRAL $400 $450 $500
% OF REG FEE 67% 67% 67%

 

Your credit and future deferrals may be applied towards a future registration fee for any Cascade Relays event to include Cascade Lakes Relay, Bend Beer Chase, and Boulder Beer Chase. Credit/Deferral Guidelines:  

  1. Your credit will not expire and can be used for any Cascade Relays event in 2021, 2022, or beyond at your team’s discretion.
  2. Your 1st deferral and credit cannot be combined with a registration for the same event in the same year.
  3. You may use your credit and 1st deferral in the same year, but they must be used for different events. Example: your team may use your credit to register for Bend Beer Chase 2021 and your 1st deferral for Cascade Lakes Relay in 2021.

For every year you apply your credit or deferrals, your team will receive guaranteed entry to Bend or Boulder Beer Chase.

We calculated all operational savings and refunds we are able to obtain from our vendors/partners/permitting agencies and we are providing these savings back to your team as a credit to a future registration to any Cascade Relays event.  We have spent several weeks working with our partners/vendors/permitting agencies to determine those operational savings from not producing a physical event in 2020.

The list of savings was reviewed by the Participant Advisory Council and the credit amount was determined based on the percentage of your registration fee that we are able to save by not producing the event in 2020.

The three deferral amounts recognize there is a shared interest and burden placed on our team captains for registering and leading their teams.  With a high percentage of team captains that register a team each year, we are sharing this burden by incurring a future loss in revenue in order to provide our team captains with deferrals (discounts) for future registrations.  Each team captain has the flexibility to determine how to apply these future deferrals.

We are deferring a portion of your registration to 2021 in the form of a credit and providing your team with future deferrals to provide your team with a 67% credit/deferral of your 2020 registration fee.   

We have already incurred significant operational costs for this year’s event and a full deferral of your registration fee would cripple Cascade Relays financially.  We have calculated all savings and we are providing these savings back to your team as a credit to a future registration to any Cascade Relays event.  We have spent many weeks working with our partners/vendors/permitting agencies to determine those operational savings.

Our goal is to create the same community connection and family vibe of Beer Chase, but through a safe, socially distanced, event to be experienced with your own team.

Our mission for a virtual event is important to understand. Each year we engrave an extra medal for at least one team to honor a friend or family member no longer with us, because they died from suicide.  For these teams, we witness the pain and hurt.  We all need to stay connected and the mental health of our friends and family is crucial, now more than ever.

Instead of just cancelling altogether this year and joining the long list of cancelled events you can’t enjoy, your team can participate in a safe and socially distanced virtual run together this fall, while still receiving race shirts and swag. Our goal is to make the best of a terrible situation we are all experiencing together and support our fellow teammates who need to emotionally connect, and have something to look forward to while maintaining our family connection.

We understand that a virtual relay is not the event you paid for and the unique event experience of running in Bend or Boulder, but it’s the best we can provide while adhering to CDC recommendations and government restrictions to large gatherings during a global pandemic, which we fully support in order to keep you and our local community safe.

At first glance, organizing a virtual relay can feel daunting – we hear you.  A virtual relay is certainly more complex than a virtual individual race, like a 10k or half-marathon.  However; we believe it has the potential to be way more enjoyable.

The great thing about a virtual event is that there is no one size fits all approach. Teams make their own rules and set their own course, start and finish. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It doesn’t need to be competitive (but it can be!).  You can run 1 leg or all ~50 miles.  You can sample beer along the way or save up for a thirst quenching beer at the finish line. You can run solo. You can run together (socially distanced).  The options are endless! Our advice?  Make it fun and find a way to connect safely and comfortably with your teammates.

There are a number of ways your team can participate in Virtual Beer Chase and below are just a few ideas.

1. Run/Walk Equivalent to the Beer Chase Course – Complete All or Some Legs Solo

Your team collectively runs a total of ~50 miles, equivalent to the full Bend Beer Chase or Boulder Beer Chase course.  Legs are completed as solo runs at your convenience.  This option may be ideal for those teammates that don’t live in the same city/state or uncomfortable with an in-person gathering.

  • Team Captains assign individual legs to teammates
  • Teammates complete their legs over the course of Beer Chase week
  • Team Captains submit their total team time for the distance for inclusion in official results and awards.
  • Option: Have each teammate complete their first leg during the week and  then on Saturday gather at a central location to run the last legs together – i.e one runner goes out to run their assigned leg before coming back to hand-off to the next person.  Post run, celebrate (socially distanced) with your own beer garden!

2. Run/Walk Equivalent to the Beer Chase Course – Complete All Legs from a Central Location

Your team collectively runs a total of ~50 miles, equivalent to the full Bend Beer Chase or Boulder Beer Chase course.  Gather in someones backyard or other central location (socially distanced) with a sampling of beer and snacks, one runner goes out to run their assigned leg before coming back to hand-off to the next person.

  • Team Captains assign individual legs to teammates
  • Teammates complete their legs over the course of the day
  • Team Captains submit their total team time for the total distance  for inclusion in official results and awards.

3. Quickest Route to the Beer Garden

Not interested in completing all the miles?  Keep it simple and focused on fun.  On any given day during Beer Chase week run the final leg together with your teammates and celebrate with a BBQ together (socially distanced of course) with family, significant others, etc. Have your own finish line party! 

4. All About the Costumes 

Does your team live for the contests and costumes?  Who cares whether you run one mile or one hundred miles as long as you're having fun!  Show your spirit by preparing for and flaunting your team’s creativity and enthusiasm through our social media contests.

5. Make it Your Own

Get creative and come up with your own way to run and connect together.  We can’t wait to hear what your team has planned and seeing you in action during Virtual Beer Chase week — don’t forget to use #BBC2020 and tag us @cascaderelays and @beer_chase

Need some inspiration? View this fun video made by a Team Captain, Chris Harmon, who hosted a virtual Bend Beer Chase in June.

For those teams participating in Virtual Beer Chase, Cascade Relays will provide:

  • Packet Pick-Up in Bend and Portland.  Packet Delivery to Eugene and Salem.  Packet Shipment to Colorado/out of state teams.
    • Portland: Wednesday, September 16th from 4 - 7 pm
    • Bend: Thursday, September 17th from 4 - 7 pm
    • Salem/Eugene: Delivered the week of September 14th
    • Out of State: Shipped and delivered by September 23rd
  • A “mystery” variety pack of past event t-shirts for every runner/walker participating in the virtual relay.
  • Team Captain Hat – a thanks for all your hard work
  • Private Label "Beer Chase" beer by 10 Barrel for every participant
  • Swag from our Beer Chase partners
  • Printable Bib

Please complete the following items so our team can properly prepare to support your team during Virtual Beer Chase week.

  1. Complete this FORM to let us know that your team will be participating in Virtual Beer Chase.
  2. Complete your team roster by September 11th so we can prepare your team’s packet and “mystery” t-shirt bag.
  3. Every runner/walker participating in Virtual Beer Chase must sign the e-waiver available here.

Based on  feedback from our team captains, ~75% of respondents requested we save the 2020 event shirts for BBC 2021 and provide a larger credit to all teams.

We invest in high quality shirts that our participants rate as the best in the running industry.  In order to provide every participant with a shirt size that fits them perfectly, we order hundreds of additional shirts than we need every year.  Therefore, based on the survey the PAC has advised us to save the 2020 BBC shirts for next year and provide a “mystery bag” of past event shirts to teams that decide to participate in the Virtual Beer Chase this fall.

Additional information on our registration process for 2021 Cascade Relays events will be released in September.

Yes, if you opted to request nonprofit volunteers, 100% of your Hire-A-Volunteer (HAV) payment will be transferred to your future event registration. As you all know, the Cascade Relays Foundation supports local community organizations and nonprofits, many of whom are on the front-lines during this pandemic serving our community.  These organizations rely on our fundraising efforts to keep operating and we will continue to help them financially as best we can, with your support as well.

Teams may request their Hire a Volunteer donation to the Cascade Relays Foundation be refunded in full.  Please fill out this form to request a refund of your donation, providing your team name and mailing address, and we will process your refund immediately.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide refunds as this is simply not financially possible.  By early March when COVID restrictions were announced, 61% of our annual budget had already been spent, months prior to our summer events.  Our staff works all year to prepare for our events and we make advance payments on goods and services to our vendors/partners that are non-refundable.

Registration fees pay for much more than just the operational expenses to produce an event, which include expenses such as portable toilets, tables/tents/chairs, traffic control, medical services, and event staffing.  Event award expenses such as T-shirts, medals, team captain gifts, and swag have already been sourced and paid for as we order six months in advance to ensure these items arrive months before the event.   Overhead and administrative expenses such as staffing costs for four employees, warehousing/office lease, insurance, marketing, website, registration database, taxes, and professional fees such as accounting, are a large percentage of our annual budget in order to produce high quality large scale events for you and your team to enjoy.

Cascade Relays is a small business that operates year round and costs are incurred even before any teams start registering in the fall for next summer.  These administrative, labor, and operational costs continue throughout the year and the majority of our budget is expended several months before our first summer event.  As you can see from the graph depicting our cumulative percentage of annual revenue expended by month, 61% of our annual budget had already been expended by March when the COVID shutdown and shelter in place was still several weeks from being announced.  We provide this information and transparency so you can better understand how this is financially impacting Cascade Relays.

Although we both produce overnight relays in Oregon, the comparison of Hood to Coast or Ragnar is not a fair comparison and has never been a fair comparison, as we produce very different events and have vastly different business models.  We all strive to produce exceptional events, but the financial dynamics are not even comparable.

Cascade Relays employs four full time employees and our events are not even 1/10th of the size of Hood to Coast or Ragnar, which means our percentage of labor cost to revenue is exponentially higher. Our labor costs and administrative/overhead is 51% of our annual budget, while our actual expense to produce the event and those expenses we are able to recoup and provide back to you as a credit/deferral for not producing the event this summer, is significantly less than Hood to Coast.  All employees of Cascade Relays are paid a reasonable living hourly wage or salary for Central Oregon. Cascade Relays is a small family-run organization with the support of community partners – we don’t have large corporate sponsors, we don’t accept thousands of teams, and we are not venture capital backed or private equity owned.  We all strive to produce exceptional and safe events, but our events are not the same in the experience and the revenue vs costs to produce the event are not comparable.

Upon registering, every Team Captain acknowledges and confirms registration terms and conditions, which among other things state:

  1. I understand that once registration is paid for and accepted via the lottery, the registration fee is non-refundable and non-transferable.

2. In consideration of this, Cascade Lakes Race Group, LLC will do everything in its power to hold the relay as advertised, but due to the nature of the event, extenuating circumstances not under the control of the event organizers, may necessitate course changes or cancellation for the safety of the participants. These circumstances include, but are not limited to: weather and other forces of nature, last minute road closures and construction, or forest fires in the vicinity of the course.

A pandemic is a “force of nature” that was not predicted or planned for by anyone. Our cancellation policy and refund policy are clearly stated and was acknowledged by all team captains as they registered and paid the registration fee for their teams.

Scott Douglass, Co-Founder & CEO of Cascade Relays, is committed to speaking with any individual that has further questions or concerns regarding our deferral/credit policy.  Please complete this form to request a call from Scott.  We appreciate your patience as Scott works through the list, ensuring to call everyone that has submitted a request.

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