With a heavy heart, numb fingers, and sand filled hair (and shirt and ears and mouth and pants and boots...), I've decided to cancel the race tomorrow. I tend to wait until the last minute to do things like this (like when ice starts forming on the registration tables), but this time I felt the need to do it now.
I'd told the guys sweeping that it's hard to cancel the race when it's sunny and blue skies out. Now it's overcast, the wind has blown in, and it's really cold.
Therefore no race.
This buys everyone another week to train, or recover, or get that final piece for the bike. Or, for me, to get better.
Even with snow on tap I decided that we should have the Sweep Day. I figured that all the sand and dirt would be caked on the pavement pretty well, and even though they'll be spreading more during the storm, I felt that starting with a clean slate would make next week easier.
A bunch of guys showed up, a good core group. Everyone really put their efforts into clearing the sand, and, if "time flies when you're having fun", then we must have had a lot of fun for about four hours.
We had a total of three power brooms (two bristle ones, one paddle one). Incidentally I learned why the pros like the paddle ones - paddles don't throw sand in your face. Bristles do.
We also had two wheeled leaf blowers and three backpack blowers. And brooms and shovels and buckets. Yep, we filled 10 five gallon buckets of sand.
I'm a bit dazed now, exhausted. I wasn't very coherent at the end of the Sweep, but I think some food and drink will help.
But first an important little task - take a ride in my brother's new (he got it while I was in SoCal) Civic Si.
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3 comments:
Hey Aki,
I'm in the group that is thankful to get another week of training in. On your end, do you incur expenses even though the race is canceled? I know that you saved money on the police officer, but how about permits and such? Just curious. Of course, if you do incur expenses, I hope that the refunds reflect that.
Thanks again for your hard work.
Hi Brian,
Yes, although we can save some money by canceling the police officer in time, we still have to pay for the permit fees, the portapotties, and miscellaneous other things (numbers, copies of release forms, etc). But in general a canceled race is something that isn't unheard of in March and so we try and accommodate plans for one canceled race per series.
As far as refunds go, we do a full refund. Our job is to make sure that we do our part. The racers pay to receive appropriate services (race, officials, etc), and if the weather doesn't cooperate, that's something that falls on our side.
On the other hand, an over-sleeping racer won't receive a refund, because the racer didn't fulfill their end of the implicit agreement (i.e. they didn't come to the race on time).
So, since weather is on our side, and we (I) canceled the race, we'll issue full refunds.
Thanks for the thought though, and thanks for your support.
Aki
Well, I'm looking forward to next week. I'll be doing Plainville the day before (based on your writeup from last year). Pretty psyched about it - my last few races in the 5's.
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