This is an interesting thread and my first time posting here so I apologize in advance if my posts come out in an awkward fashion.
We do need more RD's and it's a tough, thankless job that does not make much money. I hope everyone realizes this and appreciates what RD's do so we all can go out and push ourselves for 45:00-14:00. It's a physically and mentally draining job that has long hours and for the most part you end up hearing all the negative things about the race and not the postive ones. USAT has been great in implemeting a program to help out first time RD's. We should be thankful for this.
I know where OCTriGeek is coming from and I'm not getting down on him about the coaching aspect. I'm a coach so I take this to heart. We are entrepreneurs, definitely. But we have chosen to coach becasue that's what we like or love to do and want to make our living at it. There are many entrepreneurs in our sport, too many to count. We should consider all of these people as candidates to be RD's. Coaching is also becoming a tough and competitive business that requires specific skills and organization. IMO, if a coach has anywhere over 6 athletes then they would be very challenged to put on a race well. As in our training, there is an amount of specificity to our profession and trying to develop a race would most likely yield negative results on either side. Many coaches do
serve the community by volunteering and doing clinics and camps for
FREE and some coaches even
serve the community by coaching for free. other coaches
serve the community by contributing free articles on training and racing to magazines and websites. Do you know how many hours of work it take to develop a clinic or write an artice?
So yes, to some, coaches might seem like a logical choice, but there are many different people within our sport who also are logical choices.
Lee Zohlman, Lead Coach/President
BodyZen Multi Sport Coaching
http://www.bodyzen.com