12/11/2016
I am going to apologize for the long windedness of this post up front. I am going to be blunt in saying I am facing same massive head winds in getting the event off the ground in 2017. As many know our numbers were impacted last year by unintentionally landing on the same weekend of the Copperman Triathlon, so we had to move the race weekend which is difficult with scheduling limitations of not just myself, but also the other members of MAX, and the camp. I finally landed on July 22nd for the 2016 date. When I circled back around to get final commitment from the rest the team, Keith informed me that he could not commit to an event in 2017. Keith owns a small farm, and is also a care giver for his aging father so getting time away is very difficult and completely understandable. Unfortunately that left me short a race director, and I have no one to fill the very large shoes Keith left behind. Personally I can only direct one event at a time, so it would mean axing either the 4 hour race or the 12 hour to move forward.
Unfortunately with the number of teams we had this past year the race wasn’t really financially viable but I went ahead anyway because I do honestly love adventure racing knew we could put on a great event and I hoped to build on it. But losing one of the events obviously is going to have a direct impact the viability of the other as they both support the weekend’s activities.
Then a couple of weeks ago I found out that Mark’s summer race was going to be happening the following weekend. This should not have been a surprise, but I missed it when I was looking at new possible dates for the race. I know there are a handful of teams that would do both events, but by in large most teams physically and financially would have to make a choice on which event they were going to attend. My intent was always to support other events, and not get in the way of the organizations that stepped in over the past several years and put together some great events. An attempt to move the race to other weekends would cause conflicts with other events, which I would not feel good about either. In spring/early summer the rivers are too unpredictable and cold and any later than I had it and I lose my awesome staff from the camp that volunteered to make this event happen.
So in closing, I don’t know if it is going to happen in 2017. I am not closing the door just yet, but I am finding few solutions to the issues I am running into.
