Malak Series Relay Pass

Welcome to the Malak Series Blog. This will be the first of many posts. Our first topic we want to cover is the introduction of the Malak Series Relay Pass. We have all of the details for the pass on the Malak Series Relay Pass Page of the website, but we want to highlight some things about it.

We have been having more and more runners participate in multiple Malak Series relays over the past few years. We are very excited about this and hope to see the growth continue. In order to help with this and to make it easier for runners to commit to multiple relays in a year, we came up with the Malak Series Relay Pass. For 2020, this is only available to be used for the Fall races (Colonial and Tuna Relays) because we did not come up with the idea in time to have it available for the Palmetto Relay. In 2021 and beyond, the pass will be for the whole year and be available for use to run all of our races.

The main benefit of the pass is a lower registration cost per race for an individual runner. At $179 for the 2020 pass, if a runner were to run both the Colonial and Tuna Relay /200s the minimum savings is almost 15% when signing up at the early bird discount rates. However, for teams that don’t normally take advantage of this discount, savings can be upwards of 50% or more.

We have another benefit for this first year which is 10% off online purchases on merchandise from our Malak Series Shop. We plan to add more benefits in years to come as we figure out different ways to add more value to the Malak Series overall and, specifically, to the Malak Series Relay Pass. If you have any have thoughts on benefits to add to the pass, we would love to hear them (e-mail us at relaypass@malakseries.com).

The Malak Series Relay Pass is an individual purchase and benefits a single runner. Only runners who have the pass can take advantage of the benefits. This presented a challenge to us on how to implement these savings during the registration process. More on this below.

We also introduced the Individual Payment for the Fall Races. You can read more about that on our Malak Series Relay Payment Options Page. We get this request a few times a year and it will allow teams to register without having the full team payment up front.

Since the Malak Series Relay Pass is essentially prepaying of the registration fees for the races, we need to allow the individual to see this benefit during the registration process. For the Individual Payment method mentioned above, this is easy. We will give Malak Series Relay Pass holders a coupon code to use at registration to register at no charge.

For the Team Payment method this is a bit more challenging. In this payment method, the team captain registers the team and pays the full team registration fee up front. Since the individual payment for a team with a set price is dependent on the number of people on the team, we are unable to determine up front what this amount is. Sometimes full teams plan to run with 9 and end up with 10, 11, or 12. And, sometimes teams plan for 12, but only end up running with 9. Since the reason for the Malak Series Relay Pass is so that an individual who has it does not have to pay anything for the registration, the amount discounted off the full price will vary.

The process we have decided upon for the first year is a two step refund process. The team captain will be required to pay full price up front even if they are fairly certain they will have a number of Malak Series Relay Pass holders on their team (and, even if they have a Relay Pass). In order for team captains to be “paid”, at least mostly, by these runners in a timely manner, approximately one month before the race we will refund team captains for the number of Relay Pass holders on their team. To determine the amount per pass holder to refund, we will use the maximum number of team members for their team type (Full, Ultra) to determine the amount refunded for each member. For a Full /200 team which has a maximum of 12 runners we will refund to the team captain 1/12 of the registration fee for each Relay Pass holder on the team.

Then, shortly after the race we will refund any extra money to team captains based on the actual number of runners for a team. If a Full /200 team ends up running with 9 runners, we should have refunded 1/9 of the registration fee for each Relay Pass holder which is more money than the 1/12 of the fee we already refunded. We will refund this difference to the team captain to complete the process. At this point, we will also refund for any Relay Pass holders who registered within one month of the race.

We have this information and a number of examples for the Team Payment option refunds on our Malak Series Relay Pass Page.

The goal for the Malak Series Relay Pass holder is that they don’t need to put out any money from their pocket (even for a short period) for the individual race fees. We try to accomplish this by refunding the money a month prior to the race so the team captain can get “paid” for the pass holder’s registration well before the event.

We will use this process this year, and then tweak it for next year after we go through it and hear feedback from teams who took part.

Due to the delayed nature and complexity of the Team Payment method with the Malak Series Relay Pass, if all of your team will have the Relay Pass, then we recommend you register using the Individual Payment method. Then, everyone on your team will register and join your team at no charge and no refunds will be needed.

If you have any questions about the Malak Series Relay Pass, or suggestions let us know at relaypass@malakseries.com.