I would say anything that has a formal structure to it (ie. specific date, time, location, organizer, etc) then it should be added.<<
I agree with Dawn.
I’m guessing it won’t be that big of a number of those kind of events. Call it “formal informal”–epicman, gals weekend, palomar hill climb, etc. are pretty discrete events (and events, not training sessions).
clm
I think Cathy’s got it right. It’s got to be at least semi-formal. No virtual camps or training sessions. What would be nice is if we could have a separate section for training sessions. it could be a way to help people find training partners or invite others on a ride or open water swim, etc…
Shoot, sign us up! We’ve been putting in the Bandit series of triathlons here on Martha’s Vineyard for over 16 years now…
No fees, no support, no timing; just good racing fun. Lots of long standing rivalries and mutual support. A great blend of sprint specialists, Ironman vets and first timers; Cervelos with discs and mountain bikes with kickstands.
7am, every Sunday during the summer, at the Bend in the Road Beach, Edgartown.
I think the criteria need to be: A training event open to anyone Training camps Something with some semblance of an existing track record that has happened in the past Can be free or paid for
Where I am going with this is that our sport actually started off with this type of grassroots things.
A bunch of buddies, saying…hey, let’s get together for this ride from point A to point B, pre ship our gear to our hotel, arrive at the hotel, open the box, pull out our running shoes and do a transition run and then tomorrow we pack up the box and UPS our supplies home and ride back (I think Slowman wrote about his “credit card tours”). Then after a few years this “event” becomes a yearly thing that people hard code into their calendars and plan into their season. For this category of grassroots event, the ‘participants’ will just gather and make it happen. I know whether I show up at Epicman in Lake Placid or not on June 6th, there will be 50-100 guys show up who know the format for the day of training and will make it happen.
While this type of stuff is not a race, it is an informal albeit discrete event that people show up to participate in. No reason for not having it on an “event calendar”.
Also formal training camps put on by a variety of organizations (coaches etc) would be ideal to have on this list…triathlon is not all about racing…sometimes, organized training in itself can be even more rewarding, which is why I suggested this path.
Mark me as a ‘yes’. I see me using this 2 ways: 1 - To find some local races, though I already know most of them. 2 - To find races/events when I travel.
When I travel, I find I always have to “'scour the 'net” to find anything going on. It would be nice to have a single place to go to find any events in the area.
I think it should. I think it will be a good tool for people to know where groups are getting together to train, either via a coaching outlet putting together a camp or someone organizing a training group for some specific training. or even members could let you know of stablished training groups in their respective cities. We have a lot of people asking all the time " I am traveling to XYX, any rides/runs, etc? all the time. What is important is that when these events are input they should have full contact info so anyone interested and not clear could contact directly.
Next would be “should we put adventure races there”,
then “how about 5k’s”,
then “how about ping pong tourney”,
then “how about westminster dog competition”, etc
Maybe I’m missing something, but if it’s only races that are on the USAT calendar why not just use that and forget about the slowtwitch one?
As far as I can tell the USAT calendar only shows US races, which doesn’t help if you’re trying to find races outside of the states. I don’t think Triathlon Canada has a comprehensive national race calendar, you have to go to the provincial organizations for a list of races in that province. For BC (Western Canada) TriBC, the provincial tri organization, has a great calendar but I love the idea of having one place to go to for races in the Northwest region - some Northern Washington races could be easier to get to from Vancouver than BC ones.
And whoever mentioned linking to google maps - I love that idea! At lot of race websites seem to assume you just know where the race is (I’ve gone to links to race websites off people’s blogs and have been unable to figure out what state a race is in, much less which city. Maybe I’m just clueless?).
“whoever mentioned linking to google maps - I love that idea!”
there is a lot of functionality not yet “switched on” that this calendar will offer, and this is one of the unswitched-on functions. as jordan remarked to me yesterday, during our meeting on calendar functionality in which this topic was discussed, “there are races around washington d.c. that are a closer drive to than other races in new york.”
you should expect to see races within a chosen radius of you pinpointed on a map. the advantage to this is that it trumps any aggregation of races through an arbitrary circumscription of states and provinces that we call a region. but the google map doesn’t place races in chronological order. so both methods of searching are valid, and we intend to offer them both.
If you are going to include more than just races you need an easy way of only showing or searching races. Active.com can be a major pain when you want to find races and you get a whole bunch of non-race crap.
