I wouldn’t do the race. Even the smallest local races I’ve done have always offered race day pickup for a fee at the very least.
EDIT 11/3/23: Since I’m the 2nd post on this thread I’m throwing in this edit to be fair to the race organizer who has taken the time to provide a reasonable and level headed explanation of why things are the way they are at his races. Much respect to JMosey for coming in here and keeping his cool after a bunch of us, myself included, said some unreasonable things. If I lived anywhere near his races I’d be very interested in doing them.
My grandfather always said that I should never send an angry letter so I’ve sat on this for a day. I’ve been advised not to respond as there’s little to be gained with online arguments, but I wanted to at least chime in if only for those people who come across this thread in the future and see that negative things are being said about our company.
First, to address your concern about same day packet pickup. You had commented on our FB page the day before creating this post and I did let you know that we make exceptions. My email address and phone number are readily available to athletes, and I talk to them every day, it’s the best part of the job. If you had reached out to me, I would have been able to tell you that it is something we are working on, but it’s not something we are going to announce until we are 100% sure we can deliver the customer service our athletes have come to expect from us.
Volunteers are growing increasingly difficult to find in this post Covid world, but we still manage to find 300-400 people who take the time out of their day to make sure our athletes have the best experience possible (this is more than most athletes at our other local triathlons. I don’t say it to brag, but to show the scope of what we are doing). Let’s say we can get 10 of those people to show up at 4 or 4:30 in the morning to receive training on how to check-in athletes so that we can open at 5am when athletes start arriving (this is more people than we have at our afternoon check-ins BTW). Dynamic bib generation is an amazing tool, but something that can be easily messed up if the person doesn’t fully understand what they are doing. Let’s say it takes 1 minute to get each person through the registration check-in process, that’s 750 minutes last year, or 75 minutes per volunteer, assuming nothing goes wrong (and something always goes wrong, that’s just life). The last people through now have 15 minutes to check-in their bikes, get warmed up, and make their way to the swim start for morning announcements. This is cutting it too close for our comfort. As I mentioned earlier, we are exploring ways to make this possible for those willing to pay for the service, but it’s not something we are ready to roll out at this time. If you had reached out to me, I would have been happy to explain this.
Another thing to consider is the stakeholders of the event. It’s not just athletes and race directors. We’ve made a very pointed effort to work with the communities we race in, with Ada being perhaps the best example. The town and local businesses are kind enough to allow us to close down roads and essentially take over the town for the weekend. My partner serves on the business association board and organizes the local Christmas celebration that brings thousands of people to Ada. We have had businesses tell us that their best day ever in terms of revenue was Grand Rapids Tri weekend, only for it to be broken at GR Tri the following year. For those who haven’t been there, we host packet pickup in the town itself to highlight the local businesses and just what a great area it is. If we allow half of our athletes to show up, race, and leave the town is losing some of the economic benefits of having the race and might not look so kindly on next year’s application.
This thread has bothered me, especially posts like this. We go to great lengths (rightfully so) to make sure that alleged cheats and dopers are given a fair shake on this forum so I’m disappointed to see a comment like this is allowed to stand. I’d like to know if this person has done any of our events.
Don’t support that race. They don’t give a crap about athletes. They have take it or leave it attitude. Shitty race directors do that crap. They can’t be considerate.
I’ve already written more than I planned but will close with this. I am available to our athletes at anytime. My name is in my username on ST and my phone number and email address are readily available on our websites. If you have a question or concern, please reach out to me and we will do our best to get it taken care of. I don’t know why the original poster felt the need to publicly name us on this thread like he has other times (I believe it was in regard to pricing, which is an entirely different conversation) but this all could have been handled with a simple email or phone call. I’m sorry you no longer want to do our events, but we will survive. Every one of our events was up last year and GR Tri (25%) and Michigan Titanium (100%) are already up substantially year to date. I’d like to think we are doing something right given our customer satisfaction rates (96-99% depending on the race) and the number of people doing 3,5, or even 7 events with us every year. I know we will never be able to make everyone happy, but it won’t stop us from trying. Also, thank you to the athletes who spoke up for us in this thread and/or reached out to me personally to make sure I was aware of it.
