Dear runners, team, volunteers, locals ... Thank you for an unforgettable 10 years!
Author: Jana Apih
How’s that saying going? Running is half our health? Or is it, laughter is half our health? 2,000 runners of this year’s Soča Outdoor Festival would probably find it difficult to decide. This is why every year they apply to one of the most beautiful trail runs far and wide.
Running through the beautiful Soča Valley always attracts a smile on their face and encourages all the muscles to drive their feet even more enthusiastically along the trails along the crystal river. The peak or the reward for all efforts is ultimately paid by the river. Cold, low, and high, always crystal clear and inviting, cools off runners just in front of the finish line. When the hot bodies, tired muscles, and the impressions of a tired head dive into the Tolminka, smiles do not run out for days. If you ever need a real energy boost and by chance you are not a runner, sit at the confluence of the Tolminka and Soča rivers on the first Saturday in July and you will definitely experience it yourself. It’s hard to find so many smiling people at one place. And that was our motive from day one.
Jan is from the Soča Valley, from Tolmin and always proudly emphasizes this. Above Bovec, he created his own little paradise and when he needs peace and distancing in the garden in Ravni Laz, he chucks firewood or bites his knees on the surrounding hills. And yet he made his life in Ljubljana, and ten years ago we sat together in an empty office dreaming GoodPlace dreams. Many of them and all the other goodplacers have come true. But his heart will always drag him into the valley of the Soča River. The Soča Outdoor Festival has grown out of this desire and from another dream, Peter’s. The friendship they forged dates back to school and youth hoodlums. It brought them together forever. When they rode together on their bicycles, admired their hometown again and again, and agitated over the tourists they transported on the river in the summer, they also thought about a common business opportunity. And the first Soča Outdoor Festival was born. It is true that Jan and I worked in the convention agency before and that we were not strangers to organizing events, but the first performance was a shock for everyone. There weren’t enough participants to cover the costs, the sponsors have promised to cooperate in the second year if the first one doesn’t bury us, and the cost were increasing every day. The first night of the first festival will go into the canals. We did everything, from the bar to the cash register and the first night, we finished one hour before the first starts of runs, sweeping cigarettes and scraping the chewing gum from the asphalt.
"Never again!" repeated Jan year after year, when at the end of the festival we had to clean up the scene and pick up garbage, carry benches and tear down what we had been putting together two days earlier with the same effort, with the help of our friends and family. And then came the reactions, the photos that have brought us back to life again and again
So many happy people in one pile. It took us five years to get on the green branch and the festival started to cover its costs. We insisted because we had community support and love for this beautiful nature, which we wanted to share in a responsible way with those who value it the most. Runners and riders. And we convinced them.
Jan didn’t say “Never again!” this year, and his face was calmer this year. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve tried more. We successfully combined the philosophy of GoodPlace and sustainable tourism and used the festival also as a testing ground for what this event can do to be more sustainable, more environmentally and socially friendly and we can proudly announce a lot of them.
Soča Outdoor Festival is an event with the highest local support, which is confirmed by a really enviable group of local volunteers who annually encourages and directs our runners and greets them at well-stocked refreshment stations, pours a glass of water, offers a banana and a word of encouragement. They are the heart of the festival and we will never be able to be grateful enough for everything. At the festival, when it was strengthened with the first regular employment, we acquired a systematic approach with our super Sara and as the first event in Slovenia we fulfilled the Guidelines for Sustainable Events prepared by the Slovenian Tourist Board. Every year, we search for and introduce new sustainable practices. As the first festival, we withdrew disposable cups at refreshment stations and provided silicone cups to all runners. This year, we finally pushed out all promotional flyers from promotional bags and created a virtual gift bag. This year alone, we have reduced the use of paper by a minimum of 6,000 flyers. We open the festival space to local providers and initiatives. For two years, the festival has held the Parafestival. We encourage runners in different ways to optimize their arrival. Last year we organized bus transports from different locations. But since it turned out that the runners preferred the comfort of their own cars, this year we were looking for other solutions. We calculated the CO2 footprint we create and tried to reach the sources of it. We increased vegetarian meals by more than 30%, established a low-carbon camp for participants, optimized work, … And this year, we will also fully compensate for the CO2 footprint created by the festival by reforesting last year’s burned Karst. As many as 25% of our runners themselves canceled their footprint with the entry fee. We will pay for the rest of the competitors. We have collected donations from runners for the Mountain Rescue Service, which stands by our side every year. It’s still a long way to go, but we’ve shown it’s possible. We also understand the festival as an opportunity and a classroom. We always offer the stage to those Outdoor Freaks who have created a positive imprint in the Outdoor community, young and promising musicians get the opportunity to perform, we are looking for ways to offer Slovenian startup manufacturers of sports solutions the opportunity to present and sell.
And the Soča Outdoor Festival is also our classroom. I can safely say that we have created an organizational team of which the word that we are proud is too modest. Even when we broke our teeth in the first year with the hard walnut of the organization, our family members, as well as their and our friends and acquaintances, did this with us. It seemed like everyone who loved us, was there. It is therefore necessary to insist. When you see how many people believe in you, you just don’t throw a gun in the corn. For me, one of the most beautiful experiences of the festival is our children. My Filip and his friends first came to the rescue when they were 15 years old, and over the years this group became like the elaborate motorcycle of the festival, which made sure that an opaque series of gift bags was prepared, that registration at the friendly smiles of girls behind the counter ran smoothly and easily, that the venue was set up and tidy, lunches were served, sponsors were satisfied, that the start-ups were running and that the runners were illuminated with medals around their necks and more. Their cooperation brought them together, they built a positive attitude to work, they learned to take responsibility and, if you ask them today, they consider the festival as their own too. After ten years, they flew out of the nest and took their experience with them, around the world, to their first jobs. And this year, a new generation of our children entered their shoes, my Pia and her friends, cousins, and Tina’s young Egon, next in line are already Jan’s girls, and the story is repeated. At the end, when the exhausted carried the last benches to the mound, they were proud of their work and no one can take their allegiance anymore. It’s infinitely nice to us parents that something we believe in is passed on and grows on.
And so, we turned the first 10 years. Unforgettable and unrepeatable. Let’s move on to new victories on the road. With a team like this, a local community and, above all, you runners, I know there will be many more.
