@CharlieF - @adamengst and I attended a PGXC all-teams annual meeting. The proposal from the meeting is to have our home meet for 2023 on October 22 at TC3 using the same 6K course as last year. How does that date work for you? What do you think about asking TC3 if they could put us on their calendar?
(The TC3 course got a shout out for being well-marked and mapped!)
I was hoping to attend the meeting as well but Christine and I are in KY visiting family and unfortunately the timing wasn’t good. I’ll get in touch with TC3 and get back to you.
Other topics from the meeting included:
Overall schedule—the current draft that Mike’s investigating would actually be great for not conflicting with the Ithaca 5&10 or Danby Down & Dirty.
Requests that clubs get their courses done sooner and map and mark them to the level set by Charlie for the TC3 course. I asked that we have more portapotties too so hopefully that will happen.
Discussion of changing up the venue order a bit. Syracuse wanted a longer distance later in the season, and we’re tentatively on for the third race instead of the fourth.
Discussion of race distances, with a desire for races to trend longer, so the proposal was 5K, 6K, 6K, 10K, 8K (the 10K is to match with the USATF nationals distances). This will be somewhat dependent on the venues and courses, so don’t assume it’s set in stone.
Discussion of driving distances. The basic upshot here is that the Buffalo clubs get the short end of the stick nearly all the time, but Mike and Colleen are very aware of the issue and try to make it as reasonable as possible.
Discussion of where to have the championship race. There was some talk of it being the club that won the championship, but that points to Checkers, and if the championship race was in Buffalo, it would hurt attendance overall. We agitated for a central location like it has been. The other issue is finding an indoor venue for 200 for the award ceremony and banquet, and the effort for GVH on schlepping all the awards. I suspect we’ll end up with Rochester-area courses because of the logistics aspect.
Discussion of whether ties should be broken by the 5th runner (current approach which maps to USATF rules) or the 6th runner (NCAA/high school rules). It’s not clear that this makes much difference, really, and the 6th runner approach might hurt smaller clubs. I doubt this will change.
Deeper team scoring for the club cup, with 6,4,3,2,1 points for 1st through 5th place (instead of just 3,2,1). This would help us because we’re often in the lower half of the team competitions so we’d pick up some points instead of none. This was universally popular and I strongly believe it will happen.
Discussion of whether B teams should count for club cup points. Again, it’s not clear if this would make a difference or not at the top, and it’s not really an issue for the smaller teams. I don’t think we’ll see a change here.