Run hard, give hard.
Every certified volunteer gig accrues points — five hours of certified service earns one point. Cross a threshold, earn a shirt. The same parkrun-coded ladder runners already know, built for the people behind every finisher.
Plain shirt, daylight-mountain logo on the chest, big number on the back, "BIELD" wordmark above, tagline below. A clear lower-back zone for a sponsor logo where we've matched one. That's it.
Mockups, not photos. Final fabric, fit and finish to be confirmed with whichever print supplier or sponsor partner ships your milestone.
We're going to be straight about this, because it's the kind of thing a marketplace usually fudges and we don't want to.
The shirt is a thank-you, not a product. There is no margin built into it for Bield. Every penny that leaves your wallet goes to the people who print, pack and ship the thing — or, where we've matched a partner, nothing leaves your wallet at all. Two paths, one principle: Bield does not profit from the shirts.
When we close a partnership with a race-day kit brand — Inov-8, Salomon, OMM, Harriers, the kit-makers who already sell to ultra-runners — for a particular milestone tier, the partner subsidises the shirt.
You earn the milestone, we send you a free shirt with the partner's logo on the back. They get a walking billboard at every race you marshal at. You get a free shirt that says "Bield 100" on it. Nobody pays Bield.
If we haven't matched a sponsor to your tier within 14 days of you reaching it, we send you a print-on-demand link (Teemill or Printful) — you order the shirt at wholesale + shipping, around £12.
Bield neither subsidises nor takes a margin. The link goes straight to the print supplier. We do this so the milestone shirt is always available — not held hostage to whether we closed a deal that quarter.
The digital badge is always free. Profile rosette, leaderboard rosette, and a share card you can drop into Strava or Instagram the minute you cross the line.
Decline the physical shirt — zero impact on your status, your milestone, or any future milestone. Your hours stand. The badge stays.
In v1, the shirt is fulfilled to the volunteer who earned it — we want the right person wearing it. We're planning a "gift-to-friend" option in v2, so a parent who hit Bield 200 could send the shirt to their kid, or a club captain could forward to a member.
The print-on-demand fallback (Path 2) lets you order from the same supplier with just the Bield wordmark and your number — no sponsor logo, no co-brand. The supplier offers organic cotton and vegan-certified inks; you pick the SKU.
The minute the gig is certified. Most marshall shifts are certified by the race organiser within 24 hours of race-day close; pacing gigs within a week, once Strava overlap is confirmed.
A gig is certified when (a) the race organiser or the runner you paced/crewed signs off, and (b) Bield's verification rules pass for the role (Strava overlap for pacers; check-in timestamps for marshalls; receipt acknowledgement for crewers).
Unverified hours don't count toward points. Sorry — it has to be honest both ways.
No. Points and milestones are permanent. Earn Bield 100 in 2026, take three years off, your Bield 100 badge is still there. You start the next tier from where you left off, not from zero.
They're the majors. 100 = Century, 200 = Major, 500 = Legend, 1000 = Lifetime. These are the ones you'll see on a leaderboard and the ones we'd put a sponsor logo on first — because those are the people every race already knows the name of.
You can always opt for Path 2 (print-on-demand, no sponsor) even when a sponsor is matched. We won't push the co-brand on anyone. Default is sponsor-matched-free, opt-out is print-at-cost.
The top contributor by points in each country, in each calendar year, gets five years of Premium, free. A real cap — we're taking five years' worth of revenue off the table to recognise the person who put more in than anyone else.
Awarded January 2 each year. A gold rosette goes on your profile and stays there for the duration. We email you, the runners you paced, and the race organisers who ran the events you marshalled.
If you make kit for the people who run, pace, crew and marshal these events — your logo could be on a Bield 100, Bield 200, or Bield 500 shirt. These shirts get worn at the events you already want to be seen at, by the people who already buy your stuff, because they earned them — not because we paid an influencer.
We're matching one partner per milestone tier. Talk to us early if you want first refusal on a tier for the 2026/2027 season.
partners@bield.run →