Six tracks, two days, one crew list

Clubul Montan Sibiu has been organizing races in these mountains for years, and for years the crew was held together the way most clubs hold it together: a signup form that dumped into a spreadsheet, a second sheet for who was actually coming, a WhatsApp group per track, and one person’s memory as the index to all of it.

It worked, in the sense that the race always happened. But six tracks over two days means shifts that overlap, marshals who work Saturday and want Sunday off, and people whose “yes” in spring never turns into a person on the mountain. Somebody had to hold all of that in their head, and that somebody was also supposed to be running the race.

One form, six tracks

The first move was small: one application form for the whole event, with the five questions that actually decide where someone can stand — which day or days they’re free, whether they’ve worked a mountain point before, languages, whether they drive, and t-shirt size. Applications came in steadily; nobody re-typed a name.

Selection stopped being an archaeology project. Returning volunteers showed up as returning volunteers, with the point they worked last edition attached to their name — so the people who already knew a junction went back to it, and the club spent its attention on the newcomers instead.

Where the gaps were, in public

Points became columns, volunteers became cards, and both race days sat side by side. The useful part was not the dragging — it was that a thin shift could no longer hide. With six tracks overlapping, the board showed exactly which hours on Sunday were covered by two people instead of four, early enough to do something about it.

Briefings, documents and consents travelled with the allocation instead of chasing it. Each volunteer opened one page: their point, their track, their shift, who leads it, what to do when a runner arrives hurt. Nothing was printed, and nobody had to read 24 pages to find their own line.

The next edition starts half-built

Certificates and logged hours went out after the weekend, with a short feedback form attached. The answers are the brief for the next edition: which points were overstaffed, which shift starts were pointless, which junction needs two people rather than one.

That is the part Răzvan mentions first. The hundred people who worked Urme pe Play 2026 are still there, with their points and their hours next to their names — so the next edition does not begin with a blank sheet and a question mark.