Bethel Spring Series - Site is Up!

We got the letter of permission from the town, we filed permits and stuff, and now the site is up. Yippee!

www.carpediemracing.org

Okay, the pics are not up, and I have the same page for the blank results pages, but I think other than that pretty much everything is there.

Although training is hard, it's a self benefiting thing so it's easy to motivate. Promoting races is more like an obligation, a responsibility. It's a little harder to motivate for it, but the consequence of failure is much greater. It's more of a conditioned response that leans to the negative side.

After pouring so much sweat equity into the Series, I feel like I have to continue promoting it. I fought off some (perceived) financial leeches when the Series started to pick up steam, and now I feel obligated to hold the hard fought ground. My position comes from the fact that the Series does not make myself or the co-promoter any money. It started as a series "held by racers for racers" and I've tried to keep true to that mission.

Earlier I'd posted that the Bethel Spring Series will finally be run for profit in 2008, i.e. to profit me. This will not be true.

After thinking about it a bit, I've decided not to run the Series "for profit".

So, once again, the Bethel Spring Series will not benefit the promoters in any financial way. Yeah, I get free entry, but so does everyone else who helps out, either by sweeping or marshaling. You can too if you like - Sweep Day is March 1, 2008 at 10:00 AM, and if you work at least two hours, you get to race a free race a week. If you marshal (not during your race of course, and we give you a break so you can warm up and cool down) you race a free race too.

In fact the only way I can make money is to place in races or win primes. I prefer not to fight for primes (for some reason I feel like they're there for the paying racers to win). So for me it comes down to placing.

I hope that this year I can place :)

For 2008 Verge Sports has returned to the fold. Verge and the Bethel Spring Series go back a long way, I think till the B.V. (Before Verge) days. One of the guys working for Verge used to race and win the 1-2-3 race (no pros back then). He and a teammate would show up early, give us a hand, and then nap until they had to get ready to race (five hours or so). Then they'd proceed to kick butt and take names. One of the guys showed up one year racing for Verge, wearing the "Verge Test Pilot" kit that many of us know.

In the past couple years he and his Verge crew showed up to help sweep even though they couldn't race due to scheduling conflicts. So although they helped, they couldn't benefit.

How unselfish is that?

So I decided that we should be awarding Verge Bethel Spring Series Leader's jerseys. And we will.

This year a new building has popped up at the start/finish line. This may pose some logistical challenges but we hope that we can work them all out.

In addition, with the record snowfall, I expect there to be a lot of sand on the course. And with our normal dump spot now built up, we don't have a convenient place to dump the 2000 or so pounds of sand we sweep and pick up each year. So I have to work on that.

We've stayed with 3 portapotties (somehow I thought we had two last year - maybe that's what it seemed like). I think people are nice enough to let racers about to race cut the line a bit so I won't be labeling one "Super Express Lane: 3 items or less".

I'll be ordering trophies for the overall. For the Cat 5s I'm in a quandry. I know that winning something is really fun, but to hand out dozens and dozens of medals doesn't seem very "unique". I don't know. Maybe a Cat 5 or two can pipe up. I guess I'll order the medals earlier since I wait to order the trophies.

I'm always a bit torn about the overall prize presentation on the last day. Last year was a washout, literally. Worst rainstorm in 75 years, water in my basement when I got home, and all sorts of unusual things like I95 closed due to flooding. So no prize ceremony.

That last day, should we do them between races? So after the 5s finish, we award the 5s? Problem is races get delayed. But maybe that's better for the earlier racers than waiting for 5 or 6 hours for the presentation.

In the past we had a raffle prize, i.e. a really nice thing that anyone could win. We'd draw lots at the end of the last day and whoever won it won it. It was nice, I think one year a Cat 4 won it, another year the overall Junior winner won the raffle. It's typically something that was initially donated but the last five or ten prizes we bought. At wholesale, I guess, but we bought them. Wheels mainly, but one year we went on an electronic gadget kick and gave away an XBOX or something. Nothing yet this year, we'll see if we have left over money. But if that happens, then the prizes have to wait till the end of the day.

So anyway, the site it up. It sort of makes the races for real. It's the first public step, the first step we take that a lot of people see.

Here's to a good 2008.