San Antonio Road Runners Prickly Pear 50K/15K/5K

Customer Snapshot

• Number of Years for the San Antonio RoadRunners: 52
• Percent of Repeat Participants: 42%
• Percent of Registrations from Email: 18%

The Prickly Pear 50K/15K/5K, the oldest trail race in Bear County at 23 years, is one of two trail races organized by the San Antonio Road Runners (SARR). While most of the club activities are centered around road racing, Prickly Pear Race Director and Trail Activities Officer Kimberly Aubuchon is dedicated to creating an inspiring trail run for for the community. In 2025, for the second straight year, the course was the RRCA 50K National Championship.

SARR and the Prickly Pear have been using RunSignup for around eight years. The main draw? How easy it is to manage everything from a single platform. From membership signup to training programs to volunteer registration and race registration, everything can be managed on RunSignup.

Making Prickly Pear Accessible

Trail runs can seem intimidating to many road runners. The Prickly Pear is the perfect introduction to trail running and ultras. The course is relatively flat and looped, the finish line is fun, and there’s a distance for everyone. To make the race even more approachable, SARR also offers a Training Program in the leadup to the race. Using RunSignup for registrations, the Training Program offers training teams for each distance. Each training group has with weekly runs, coaches emails, and team support.

Registration for the training program is limited to SARR members. But that doesn’t mean it’s restrictive: non-members signing up for the training program are simply prompted to join the club during the training program registration. This is both a benefit for existing club members and a motivating factor to bring more runners into the club community. In 2025, 21% of the training program participants joined the club when signing up for the training program.

In addition to offering different distances, Prickly Pear makes signing up for a long distance run less intimidating by offering free event transfers. This enable runners to sign up for the distance they aspire to, without risking a total loss if training falters. And, with virtual options for each distance, it means runners who end up with race day conflicts can still run the race (virtually) instead of missing out altogether.

In 2025, 39 runners chose to transfer events, a mix of people dropping to shorter distances and those opting to switch to virtual. With easy admin options to transfer a participant and self-serve transfers enabled, that’s 39 happy participants with minimal time from the race team.

A Race Day That Brings People Back

The Prickly Pear prides itself on being fun and community driven. It’s the first 50K for many runners and it’s clear that runners feel a sense of loyalty to the event. In 2025, 38% of participants had run the race in 2024, and a whopping 42% had run the event in some previous year. That’s more than double the national average for repeat participation (17%).

To achieve such a high return rate, Prickly Pear focuses on making the race experience one to remember. With the help of volunteers (registered via RunSignup), they offer three lively aid stations and course marshals. The race requires a large volunteer group, and the division of tasks on RunSignup helps organize the needs for potential volunteers to sign up. And on race day, the RaceDay CheckIn App is used to check-in volunteers. This makes it easy for the club to track volunteer participation throughout the year –the club uses a points system to encourage and reward volunteers.

Volunteer Registrations

Fun with themed aid stations and costumed course marshals!

The finish line itself is also rocking, with 10 tents lining the final quarter mile. And the runners and race directors both understand the importance of that atmosphere – the finish line experience is just as congratulatory for the last runner as it is for the first runner. This finish area also provides a way for sponsors to interact with participants in a mutually beneficial way by providing products and services runners want. The post-race party includes a cold plunge, a massage station, beer and food, and more.

Email Marketing: A Multi-Use Tool

For Prickly Pear, RunSignup’s integrated email is a multi-functional tool. They use email to promote the race, communicate with participants and volunteers, and support their sponsors. Key buckets for email include:

• Marketing emails: Emails, like the Cyber Monday Sale below, motivate action from previous runners. And it works: 18% of all registrations came directly from a RunSignup email, including 39 registrations from the Cyber Monday sale.
• Sponsor emails: A dedicated email to runners is one of the perks Prickly Pear can offer to sponsors. And it’s mutually beneficial to runners! They are able to learn about the products they’ll encounter on-course (like Gatorade) and get a discount on products they may want (like Hydropak).
• Volunteer emails: Volunteers are the backbone of the race, but they are only as useful as they are prepared. Prickly Pear uses the integrated volunteer email to remind volunteers of their race day responsibilities.
• Race day reminder emails: Ultra and trail races need strong runner communication to ensure runners are prepared and can compete safely. For Prickly Pear, this includes reminders that a light source is required for 50K runners beginning in the dark, and that the race is cupless (runners must carry a hydration device.
• Post-race follow-ups: Post-race, the race sends emails to both runners and volunteers. This allows a key opportunity for a “thank you!” while getting runners their results and photos.

Promotional Email

Sponsor Email

Volunteer Email

Post-Race Follow-Up Email

Extending Race Day

Prickly Pear takes advantage of integrated RunSignup race day tools to streamline the closeout process of the day. Searchable results display right after the race and are easily findable from the race website. For the race director, though, it’s RaceDay photos that makes the biggest difference. Rather than the race director having to upload photos, they can give the photographer direct access to upload. Photos appear earlier, tagging is automatic, time is saved, and participants are happier.

Giving Back

Prickly Pear and SARR take their role in the community seriously. In particular, they support McAllister, Park, the city park that hosts the race. They use the integrated donations to collect donations for the Friends of McAllister Park (FOMP). With donation collection both during and outside of the registration path, they are able to donate around $1,000 each year.

Additionally, they host multiple park clean-ups in the leadup to the race. A busy park with a ton of recreational opportunities, the park needs regular maintenance – the clean-up crew once found an abandoned refrigerator. Next year, they expect to use RunSignup for volunteer registrations for park clean-ups, as well.

Looking Ahead

While race day 2025 was just last month, the race team is already looking ahead to 2026. They expect to open registration in May, and are thinking about how to make this year even better!

Create your race to get started with RunSignup today, or learn more about the tools to improve your ultra or trail race.