I’m standing alone screaming at strangers when someone walks up to me, takes a selfie, and walks away.
I wasn’t supposed to be standing by myself.
It was my first time organizing the Lisbon Running Community cheer zone for the October Half and nobody else showed up. So I stood by myself on the side of the road and learned something that many races still struggle with.
You can’t force a cheer zone.
And yet, a cheer zone, and the amount of people cheering on a race in total can tell you so much about a race and the community it exists in.
There are two big things I learn from races with lots of cheer zones:
The race has true community support.
When I saw that the Brussels Marathon was cancelled, I wasn’t shocked. I remembered running the race in 2023 and noticing just how few people cheering there were compared to the many locals just trying to cross the course for their Sunday errands. It was clear to me that this race was lacking buy-in from the community. It wasn’t a celebration of community, but a hindrance for the local people.
On the other hand, I look to races I’ve done that have full community support for the entire 26.2. Races like Marathon du Medoc, where families treat the day like a parade of costumes. And CPC Den Haag where the entire city came out to cheer. Races where it’s clear that the community doesn’t just know the race is happening, but actually plans around it.
The running scene is thriving.
The other thing that I learn from races with big cheer zones is that the run club scene is thriving. Lots of run clubs mean more runners racing and more runners heading out to hype up their friends.
It also tells me that the race has a strong local pipeline of runners to lean into. The peer pressure runners big to run clubs to convince people to do a race with them? It’s strong. And a city that has enough run clubs to create numerous cheer zones is also a city that has enough runners to keep growing their race.
But I also recognize that supporters are some of the hardest things to predict and control for a race. You can’t buy a cheer zone (unless you want to fly me out for race day, runners did love my solo cheer zone that year), it has to happen organically.
However, there are a few things that I’ve seen races doing to help foster community support, or compensate for courses without a lot of cheering.
I remember running the Padova Marathon in 2024 and chatting with race organizers about their cheer zones. They recognized that they didn’t have as much local support as they wanted yet, and so they sent posters to homes and villages along the course to spread awareness and encourage families to make a day of cheering for runners.
And having run the race, I can confirm that their plan was working. I saw quite a few of their pre-made signs being waved along the course, by families and individuals who might not have known about the race or that they should go cheer for it.
You can also take the path of the Dubrovnik Half Marathon. A gorgeous course, with a few cheer groups scattered throughout, but they faced a nature made challenge. They had a long out and back stretch where runners were on a road with no shoulder between the water and a cliff. There was simply no room for anyone to cheer in this section.
So the Dubrovnik Half instead added fun and supportive signs to the back of the distance markers. It wasn’t quite a cheer zone, but it was a very nice touch for a section of course that logistically couldn’t support any cheer zones. And it didn’t require any additional materials beyond the posters, since the distance markers were already being used.
I’ve also seen the official partners of different races step up to help create cheer zones. Captain Kombucha and Lisbon Running Community have partnered together to bring music for the runners and to create an incentive for people to join the cheer zone with free drinks and snacks.
All of this to say: you can’t force a cheer zone, but you can take steps to grow and foster the cheer zones that already exist.
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