Survey response about why you are unlikely to or unsure about participating in a club race: I’m slow and I don’t think that there will be anyone there. I also don’t want to hold people up.
President’s response:
I am changing it up a bit this week and responding to a different question instead of one about the value of membership. This week I’m taking a response from the questions about our club training races and why members might be unlikely to or unsure about participating in them.
First off, please do NOT ever ever ever ever say that you don’t want to hold people up or that you are too slow!! That’s not allowed in this club!
The training events and training races that we put on are for EVERYONE! No matter your speed. No matter your pace. We will be there until the last person is in cheering him/her on toward the “finish line.” We want our club members to feel welcome at all our events. This sport can be very intimidating. The Club can be intimidating as well to new people, I’ll admit that. But the Board strives to create a welcoming environment for all members as best we can and we try to make things a little less intimidating! #thereisaplaceforeveryoneinDCTRI
Participation in our training races have definitely gotten smaller over the years (we used to have 100+ at our training triathlons), but we hope to turn that around this year and drive more participation and that starts with making sure that EVERYONE knows they are welcome. We don’t judge people on their speed. We just want them to have a good time and get the support from the club members that are participating right along side them or volunteering to make sure you have make it to the end! So please don’t feel like you are too slow or that you are holding up anyone: you are your own speed and you are NOT!
We are working on transitioning the knowledge from our outgoing Race Director to our incoming Race Director and are also looking for people to help out at these events! So we are still in the process of lining up the dates and locations for these events, but they will announced as soon as we have the specifics. For the latest information, go to the Club Training Races page. We are aiming to put on our Training Race series again where you can earn points toward a championship title. You may not even have to be the fastest person to win this, if you participate in lots of the events you can beat out someone who just shows up and wins one race! The point system is designed to encourage participation over speed. We are in the process of planning:
We realize that we need to give people as much advanced notice of the dates on these events as possible and we are trying. Sometimes it comes down to how quickly we can get responses from venues. As for locations, there were some other comments about the locations being inconvenient. We realize that a lot of people in DC don’t have ready access to cars (or cars with bike racks), but the venues within DC to hold these kinds of events are severely limited. Hains Point is basically off limits because of how painful the NPS is to deal with. Trust us, we would host all of our events there if we didn’t have run-ins with the police there every time (and we can only plead innocence so many times!). And getting outside of DC frees us up for better cycling options (less traffic, fewer stop signs/lights, and safer roads) and exposes our members to great areas in the region for cycling and running that they might not have otherwise known about (I didn’t know about Prince William Forest Park until we did a duathlon there and it’s a GREAT location to bike and run).
But back on point: please don’t ever feel you are too slow or that you are holding us up. Please join us at our events and be confident in yourself and your abilities and that we want to cheer for you!
Bryan
President | DC Triathlon Club
