Why no weekend races?
04-14-17, 09:00 AM
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Why no weekend races?
Why aren't there more weekend races on the tracks?
My nearest track is 3 hours away. It has races on Wednesday and Friday nights. To make those races, I have to take a half day, and then drive back very late that night or find a place to stay/book a hotel. It doesn't make it convenient for me to race there.
And I'm not really interested in driving 7 hours up to T-Town for Masters and Rookies racing, though I guess I could do it.
My nearest track is 3 hours away. It has races on Wednesday and Friday nights. To make those races, I have to take a half day, and then drive back very late that night or find a place to stay/book a hotel. It doesn't make it convenient for me to race there.
And I'm not really interested in driving 7 hours up to T-Town for Masters and Rookies racing, though I guess I could do it.
04-14-17, 07:02 PM
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At Carson, we always had Friday Night Racing. This year, we finally made the move to Saturday Main Event for omniums. Being southern California, there are crits and road races and mtb races every single weekend. It's a nightmare trying to find the right weekends (that also jive with the velodrome's calendar, like various national teams training).
We thought it was worth trying Saturdays, though, particularly for the reason you mention: it is far more likely to be conducive for not only out of towners (friends from San Diego Velodrome and Hellyer Velodrome), but even for locals -- Friday night traffic in Los Angeles was a major barrier. Also, most of the crits are on Sundays.
It has been successful so far, but we still lose people every time to other events. You'll never have a perfect schedule, you just have to put your stake in the ground and hope they come. It is UTTERLY mind boggling to me that anyone would chose to pedal tempo around an industrial park for 45 minutes followed by one sprint rather than race an omnium in the only indoor velodrome in the country. (Never mind that there are only 8 per year of the latter, and about 700 of the former.) But I guess I'm biased.
We thought it was worth trying Saturdays, though, particularly for the reason you mention: it is far more likely to be conducive for not only out of towners (friends from San Diego Velodrome and Hellyer Velodrome), but even for locals -- Friday night traffic in Los Angeles was a major barrier. Also, most of the crits are on Sundays.
It has been successful so far, but we still lose people every time to other events. You'll never have a perfect schedule, you just have to put your stake in the ground and hope they come. It is UTTERLY mind boggling to me that anyone would chose to pedal tempo around an industrial park for 45 minutes followed by one sprint rather than race an omnium in the only indoor velodrome in the country. (Never mind that there are only 8 per year of the latter, and about 700 of the former.) But I guess I'm biased.
