As with any change to The ENDURrun, here is some historical context.
The original purpose of our Relay competition was to introduce participants to the event, and engage those with an interest but reservations about tackling the entire 7 Stages. The hope that the exposure would ultimately translate into more Ultimate entries has proven to be fruitful as the two divisions have grown together, and we can trace much of the Ultimate growth to Relay participation.
Ultimate participants have been allowed to compete on teams since the Relay was added in 2004, simply to make more Relay teams possible, but also to allow Ultimate runners in on the extra competition. The rule has worked very well over recent years, but it has never specified the number of Ultimate participants that could join any single Relay team.
Most past Relay teams have included 0 or 1 Ultimate participants, but we did see 2 as recently as 2018. In July 2018, we announced that we would start enforcing a maximum of 1 in 2019; however, we will be revising that in our final 2019 rules. We want to take this opportunity to formally allow and cap the maximum at 2:
In 2019, each Relay team will have the option to include at most two Ultimate runners, for a maximum of one Stage each.
We are expecting this to encourage more potential Relay teams, and thereby continue to expose more runners and potential Ultimate entrants to the community. Each team is still allowed one free entry for one Ultimate team member, so if a team has two Ultimates, one will have to pay (or both pay half price).
Quick reference of Relay eligibility rules:
Check the official rules (2018 PDF) for substitution criteria.
Stay tuned for the 2019 rules to be released in July, 2019.