I’m hoping to host a convention in NY (Brooklyn, Queens, or Long Island?) in the near future. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about how to make the experience even more fun, and one idea I realized is that the more races we can run, the more fun everyone will have.
Track racing always needs a little tweaking in general. We need to have less time between heats, for one thing, and to have less time between different races. Here are some ideas.
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COMBINE SOME HEATS. Let’s avoid running heats with unused lanes when possible. Most people don’t mind mixing up ages and sexes a little, and by doing so, we can eliminate a few heats without depriving anyone of a race*.
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SHORT RACES FIRST. I also had the idea that we might try to have the quicker points races on the first day, leaving the mile race for day 2. That way, people who have to leave a day early can still get in a lot of races. My schedule for racing would be to have the 400, 100, one foot, and wheel walk on the first day and to have the 1500 (and 800) along with the fun races on day two.
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FAST RACES FIRST? I would also consider starting each race with the expert heats. Why save your most exciting race for last?
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COMMUNICATION among officiants. It might be a good idea to think about which people need walkie-talkies so that we can get enough ahead of time. We might also benefit by having the registration table closer to the start of most of the races so that we can more easily make last minute changes that allow for combining heats.
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SCHEDULE. This is about communication between officiants and racers. Having a list of when each race is likely to run would be a big help, even if that list is updated once an hour; it would help prepare participants and would allow people to plan around their races.
- We don’t need to be too extreme about it, we just need to cut out unnecessary time. The main idea should be to avoid those heats where there are only 4 people on the track, especially for long races like the 400, 800, and 1500. Eliminating just three heats of the 1500 would save around 30 minutes, enough time to run every heat of a non-points race like juggling. The more racing we all have, the more fun we all have.
David Stone
