Members,
The 2013 CRCA Club Race schedule is now published here. We will again be conducting 15 races in Central Park including the David Jordan Central Park Classic, Lou Maltese Memorial, Mengoni Grand Prix and the New York Masters Throwdown open races.
This year, we are experimenting with running a 5th field at our races. Our first race on March 2nd will include a Master’s 45+ (Cat 1-4) field. After this race, we will seek feedback from racers in all fields to assess whether this additional field will continue. If successful, the additional field capacity will enable us to run an additional Women’s field or Master’s field at certain races. We will not be running 5 fields during our longer races as this increases the the frequency of fields passing each other which is our primary concern with running a 5th field. We will be communicating guidelines on how racers within fields should behave when passing and being passed.
The Women’s Clinic will be held on April 20th and the Men’s Clinic on August 3rd.
In our efforts to continue to focus on safety and skills, all new racers must participate in a racing skills group coaching session offered by the club prior to being eligible to participate in any of our club races. This applies to all category 5 and category 4 women who are new to racing. Further details will be provided soon. We will be offering these sessions in the weeks prior to the first race to provide affected members an opportunity to complete this requirement before the first race.
We have increased the number of non-Cat’s Paw finishes this year which will provide greater variability in our racing.
This year, we will again be looking for sponsors to support our club and open races. Please see all of the available CRCA 2013 Sponsorship Opportunities.
As always, the dates for our races are provided by the Park’s Department based on other events also taking place in the park. We do our best to reduce conflicts with other races, but this is not possible in every case. For safety reasons, our races are required to be finished by 8am so our start times generally align with sunrise.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to your favorite board member.
Thank you,
CRCA Board
