B_Doughtie wrote:
If your suggesting like $5-$8 for a 1 day license to do a $50 pool sprint, ok cool. But I also think you would have to acknowledge you likely lose that person to doing annual fee if "cost" is really this big of a deal. Because $8 for beginners would likely view it as "wow so I can do 6 races before I need to be a member financially".
to me, it's not the money. it truly is "the thought that counts." we have migrated from a sport that used to welcome beginners and first timers toward competitive bike racing:
- we read 1st person accounts of how a black person does a triathlon and feels isolated and borderline unwelcome. what that black person doesn't know is that almost everybody feels that way now in his or her first race unless brought by friends. too many of us hang out with our clubs under our custom printed pop up tents. very few of us walk up to people who look like they might be first timers or, at least, at the race alone, with an outstretched hand: "hi, my name is dan. how was your race today?"
- we do a poor job of explaining the simplest of the rules so, predictably, we have a lot of people who pass on the right, ride on the left, don't understand the draft zone and so forth. so we yell at them, of course, for what they did, rather than educate them on what we take for granted but they don't know.
- likewise doping. waaaay too many people still think if a doctor prescribes it it's legal for competition, because USAT completely washes its hands of anti-doping education and newcomers don't even know what USADA is.
in short, we are no longer a welcoming sport. if we explained that we have a newcomers program that includes discounts, and information, and community building, and instruction, and
smiles, and answers, that would solve it. we explain that for your first race you get *this* and this includes a discount on your one-day fee. i don't care if the discount is $5. it at least is a recognition that the costs add up and we're cognizant of that.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman