Focus

Day 1 of the 2010 ECCC Road Season is in the bag, Day 2 to follow shortly.

I will say that steering the conference over the winter is extremely difficult. It's an awful lot of email, a lot of problems more or less out of your control, a lot of realizing things would be so much better if you just made time to take care of one left-behind task or another. There's no immediate pay off behind all that, and it's difficult to stay focused for months on all the many issues and tasks that need to be addressed without actually seeing what you're working toward.

But, of course, anybody who's ever really thought about training and what it means already knows that. Guiding the conference, promoting a race, training for the season, the most difficult challenge is focus---maintaining discipline and progress even in the face of... Nothing. No reward, no pay back, no return on that investment for extended periods of time. The challenge in training is not spending a few mind numbing hours on the trainer or slogging home in the freezing rain. The challenge is going out and doing it again, and again, and repeating until the season finally hits, and only then possibly being rewarded. The triumph is going out and doing it again.


Jeffrey Hansen asked me a while ago why I think the ECCC comes up with so many initiatives and ideas that generally then spread out nationally. What makes us so successful at continually moving forward?

There are a lot of reasons for that. We have a good base of riders and teams; we have many excellent volunteers, promoters, and team captains; we stress inclusion and improvement above all else; we've built a culture of analysis and innovation; we hold firmly to sheer tenacious perseverence and zealous belief in our own true path. But, I think the main reason we keep moving forward is focus.

We could do more. I could put more time into the conference than I do. We could have more people staffing any number of roles. But we do all right. Most importantly, we never shut down. From season to off season, throughout the year, across the years, all of our volunteers and leaders continually work away at building, developing, improving the conference. Similarly, none of us ever takes our eyes off the trail ahead. No one good event or excellent season ever slows us down for long, that focus immediately bringing us back to what could still be better, what remains to be done.

Like any good racer with a crystal clear vision of their goals and a plan on how to get there, our focus, our drive, is what makes it happen.

Like any good breakaway, there isn't much choice but for the others to follow.



As for the rewards... For those and what they might be, you only had to watch the ECCC's awesome women for a little bit today and see how much happier almost all of them seemed to be. Sometimes you have a good race. Sometimes a lot of people have a good race.

Late January Updates

Quick updates on things in progress:

• At least one flyer is almost ready to go up shortly.
• Arthur has started collecting host housing information from promoters, so we hope to start taking applicants in the next couple weeks. Spaces will be given out first come, first served.
• John Frey and I ordered this year's number last week; they should be at his house shortly. For the record, this year we ordered some 1100 sets, complementing the one or two hundred or so left over from last year.

Also, the ECCC Winter Planning Meeting is set for February 20th @ Yale in Connecticut! Details to come, but we'll be checking in on road promoters, and having some serious discussions about MTB and CX. Be there!

Projects, Early 2009/12

When we introduced the ECCC Blogosphere, many prescient commentators (e.g., Ninja Don from Rutgers) obviously but no less astutely noted that a whole lot of blogs would be started up, then quickly fizzle out. That's been true, but I think it also spawned a good number of blogs with real longevity and activity. Mine is not one of them.

However, I've recently decided to put more effort into putting my blog to good use. With the increasing number of people contributing to running the ECCC, we need to do more to direct, organize, and keep track of those contributions. On many levels it would be good to have all that out there where other people can follow along, so I'm going to combine the two and post more up here about what's happening "behind the scenes" in the ECCC.


Recent Projects

Early September to mid November is pretty brutal in the ECCC. Between MTB season, the Local Association/Conference Director/Board of Trustees meeting at USAC, and the ECCC November meeting, it's a long drag. I personally have responded to this by not doing much cycling related in the past few weeks since the fall meeting except crashing my MTB into logs...

That said, things have been happening. Most notably, we had great response to the call for a host housing director. A surprising number of people expressed interest in renewing that important role in the ECCC. For 2010, Arthur Wicks from U Delaware will be stepping up to take charge of that project. Beyond immediately jumping on the call, Arthur had already developed several important thoughts and ideas on that effort. I'm very excited about having him in charge of the ECCC's host housing project this coming season. I think this is a long neglected effort that is going to rebound very quickly, with great impact this spring.


Current Projects

So, this is the current to-do list for the near future:

Arthur

• Develop & writeup host housing procedures, forms, timelines

Caitlin

• Road flyer requirements
• 2010 budget
• Women's cycling plans

Jake/Bill

• CX final scoring

Joe

• Road flyer requirements
• ECCC state incorporation paperwork
• Road permitting notes
• ECCC website
• ECCC rulebook
• Officiating & LA notifications

Maggie

• Women's cycling plans
• Women's cycling: Website section outline

Steve/Kyle

• ECCC news blog/main site integration

Sully

• Road flyer requirements
• Road Intro curriculum
• Team recruitment plans

Finish Line Safety

Alright people, another discussion topic: Taking your hands off the bars in sprints. Not acceptable. For example, this is what you should not do:

(photo by ?)

Even if you don't care about those around you, I do not need to receive multiple emails every Monday from Mark Abramson, trying to regulate ECCC finish line safety from the West Coast via finish line photos. I get enough conference email. Chebot, Gurcsik, Whiteman, you're all on notice...

The Quiet Before the Storm

Most of you are already on the road and/or getting ready to get up ridiculously early and hit the road for the season opener at Rutgers. I can tell this even without previous experience because my steady stream of incoming cycling email has tapered off. The quiet before the storm.

It's taken a lot to get to this point. For those that are interested, here are the routine conference topics we spend time on day in/day out:

- Race permitting
- Race schedule revisions
- Race course revisions
- Officiating assignments, season ref selection
- Rider upgrades
- Rules and general questions
- Conference meeting plans, coordinating (thx Yale, Bard!)
- Conference & USAC documentation, website updates
- Assisting other conferences as possible

These are all of the non-routine issues we've spent significant time on lately:

- CD oversight of permitting/flyer release process
- CD/LA summit inefficiencies, nationals presence and meetings/workshops
- Race promoter deposits w/ conferences, required USAC infrastructure
- Field limits and collegiate relationship
- Licensing of riders from foreign universities
- Upgrade mileage requirements for Women's B and Men's D racers
- Waivers/liability for Intro coaches
- Categorization verification, student status checking
- Tightening of prime rules for collegiate crits
- CD oversight of season scoring
- CX Nationals category/experience requirements
- Officiating improvement programs
- Waivers, season numbers
- Nationals date selection
- Nationals quality oversight
- MTB team relay format (e.g., new ECCC format)
- MTB Intro clinics (e.g., new ECCC format)
- Points allocation and division policies for triple-split fields
- Pre-registration policies, esp. for large teams
- Pre-season women's racing clinics
- Aero equipment, esp. nats policy (e.g., draconian new ECCC policies)
- DH timing
- Road Intro curriculum, structure, scheduling
- CX season structure
- CX categorization equivalencies
- Track season structure

Clearly not all critical for tomorrow, but MTB season planning basically started three weeks ago. Track and CX better get moving soon as well to keep those seasons on the up-and-up.

So, that's about were we are. Twelve hours to go before we hit the road, about ten hours of work left to do before we go, and a generator to pick up and PA equipment to drop off on the other side of town. Fortunately the weather forecast is magnificent---when push comes to shove it's standing in the sun with the breeze in your hair, collegiate racing all around, that covers all the other times.