Great work, everyone involved at Soma and Tinfoilman (both racing and volunteering). Congratulations to everyone who raced well. Volunteers earned about $300 at each event for Tricats.
Tricat of the Week is Chris Green.
Ted from Athlete In You spoke to the club about his vision and goals for his site. One thing he wants Tricats to help with is to use the site, test it and find out what could be improved; give feedback. Use the site to blog your training, or whatever. Tricats are automatically premium members of the site, and get discounts at various stores (around the country).
Spring race schedule:
- 24 Feb. Desert Classic Duathlon
- 15 Mar. (tentative) Tucson Triathlon
- 22 Mar. Lake Havasu Triathlon, the Mountain Collegiate Triathlon championship
- 30 Mar. Bartlett Lake Triathlon
Collegiate Nationals:
Who should go? What qualities should be displayed in those Tricats who go to nationals? As a group we came up with the following list: speed, seniority in the club, participation, heart/attitude, fundraising activity, whether you were a Tricat last year but could not go. This is a good list but it is essentially impossible to choose now who is most worthy in the club.
Last year many of the spots for Nationals were taken up by a few schools that sent 60-70 people. To avoid that, USAT is limiting registration initially to just 20 people from each school. Signup for the initial 20 slots begins on 8 November. Then on 1 February, schools can sign up for about 30 more places. The total race size has not yet been fixed. Makko spoke with the race director personally, who strongly emphasized that it should be no problem at all for us to get up to 30 more slots. The officers, after meeting and discussing options for several hours, would like to follow this plan: we will sign up for 20 spots without attaching names to them. We will do this to avoid the heartache of picking some and excluding others, and demoralizing anyone. Then on 1 Feb. we will all together sign up with real names for Nationals for (we hope) everyone who wants to attend. If we really are forced to choose people, and exclude some Tricats who want to go, then we will use the above list of attributes. When we sign up, we have to do a name-change on the original twenty anonymous slots. The name change costs $10 per entry, for a total of $200. The officers propose divding up that expense among everyone who goes (anticipated about 40 people). Thus it only increases the per-athlete cost about $5-$7.
There was much discussion over this plan, generally on two aspects. First, the relatively complicated situation needed explaining, clarification, etc. Second, about the fact that this approach costs $200 more than a "select twenty now" approach. Some were much troubled by this use of club funds. Sarah Mooney explained it as a decision between the cost of the name changes vs. the cost to our morale to exclude people. Another helpful point is the 2007 cost was about $760 per athlete (should be similar for 2008), of which $5 is less than 1%. After chewing this over, a majority (but not everyone) thought it was best to go with the plan as presented. This was a pretty stressful meeting, at least for some.
