The CRCA Club Series

What motivated you to take on the massive task of being the CRCA VP of Racing?

I had taken over managing KruisCX the year prior and found it incredibly rewarding to build a space for folks to learn how to race and ride bikes with their friends. Around that time, I was also thinking a lot about what the bike racing scene in New York has done for me - allowing me to make so many new friends, learn a ton about myself personally, etc.

I was actually hoping to take on the Teams Director role as that seemed manageable based on what I had seen from Lucia’s involvement in previous years, but there were two other qualified folks shooting for that position and no one volunteering for the VP of Club Racing role. I definitely got a few gentle nudges from Lucia and other folks that were involved.

Ultimately, I agreed to it because I felt that I had good partners in Lucia, Matt Vandivort, Randy Locklair, and the rest of the board as well as the support of my team to succeed. Without that knowledge, I don’t think I would have even considered it.

With the 2019 CRCA Club Series, your first as the VP of Racing now in the books, what do you think were the biggest success and the greatest challenges for the season?

The biggest success to me was that everyone involved was generally pretty happy with how things turned out after 12 races. There are so many people involved that my role is primarily just managing expectations and making sure people are happy (riders, NYC Parks, staff, results team, etc.), so to be able to roll-up to a few folks after the last race of the season and shake everyone’s hand and say “Thank you. See you next year!” without anyone particularly angry at me was awesome.

In terms of the biggest challenges, I think the toughest part is communicating how important it is for our membership base to take some things seriously (and maybe to take some things like results and stuff less seriously). I understand that it is a sacrifice to wake up early in the morning to race and that a lot of self-worth is tied up in results and upgrades. For folks that are marshaling, I’m sure they’d rather be sleeping or riding than standing on the side of the course with a whistle.

It is important to realize that all of those things exist for a reason and are often process changes that the board or someone has made in response to some feedback or need. Not following those asks doesn’t necessarily make a typical racer’s day any worse, but add up real quick for me when I’m counting on as many things to go right as possible so I can have the attention to properly deal with things that go wrong.

I don’t think I’ve gotten to the point where I feel comfortable not being at a race or not having a trusted person representing me at the race. I believe there is a lot of importance in being present and taking personal accountability for things not going according to plan. For example, personally giving extra assurance to Parks Department that I’m investigating ways around fixing marshaling deployment or making sure people don’t cross into the rec lane is far stronger than just sending an email. I think a goal for me next year would be able to comfortably run a few races of the series without any board members physically present.

Similarly while we did a good job at doing the minimum requirements for putting on 12 successful races in the park this season, I feel like there’s a ton that we can improve beyond operations and safety. I’d love to improve racer experience before and after the race and be able to tell longer term stories around rider development and the various battles and rivalries that form throughout the season.

Many of these things I’m realizing I can’t physically be there to make sure it happens smoothly, so I’m looking to lean on some volunteers to take on some extra responsibility. For example, I’d love to improve how we do podiums and highlight the riders that have been doing well throughout the season with proper ceremonies and leaders’ jersey handoffs. However, I’m often running around fighting fires immediately after race finish that I physically can’t be there to ensure that will happen.