February 2025 President’s Letter

February 9, 2025 February 24, 2025

Dear Members and GRRC Followers:

So, my February started out ahead and ended up behind, as the dates show. This letter recaps February club activity, highlights upcoming GRRC-related races, events, and volunteer opportunities, and provides new information. It also has a link for a member interest survey!

February Club Recap

The board held its annual officer elections, re-elected all officers for another year. Your Executive Committee remains the same: President, Vickey Beaver; Vice President, Martha Doody; Treasurer: Marilee Pryor; Secretary: Jennifer Gaudino.
The board discussed the possibility of raising clinic pricing for a second year and concluded it would be of minimum benefit and possibly deter people from signing up.
As a benefit to sponsoring RIT’s Try-a-Tri for a second year, we again had a table where we were able to show off aspects of the club. We highlighted the RROY Series and used one-page sheets to outline membership benefits.
The RROY Series participants have been finalized by RROY Chair Jennifer Gaudino. There are a couple of races where the final details are being sorted out by their respective directors. Our traditional kickoff race, Runnin’ of the Green, has confirmed its continued placement in RROY and GRRC members get a discount: https://runsignup.com/Race/NY/Rochester/RunninoftheGreenpresentedbytheYMCA.
Freezeroo concluded just Saturday. Thanks to Immediate Past President Doug Jones for chairing the series and to all the individual race directors and their volunteer crews! With the exception of the New Year’s race, participation was about the same as last year. For whatever reason, folks picked our usually most populated race to play hooky. Jennifer Gaudino with have the remaining uncollected prizes at the banquet.

Coming Events

February
2/24-3/10 – Interest Survey: Details below

March
3/1 – GRRC Annual Awards Banquet; Registration has been extended to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, February 25, 2025 (https://runsignup.com/Race/NY/Scottsville/GRTCAnnualAwardsBanquet)

3/15 – Runnin’ of the Green, the kickoff Rochester Runner of the Year race! Lots of green in the form of attire, drinks, and food. Hang out for the post-race party and stay even later for the parade. A bunch of information is presented at https://www.runninofthegreen.com/.

Interest Survey

It’s hard to know what folks would like without asking them. This is me asking you! Please go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z2YDNWB to fill out the 7-question survey by March 10^th. It only takes about three minutes and would help us know what you’d like out of the club. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer us essay fields, so the few text boxes are meant for short answers. One winner per twenty-five completed surveys will be selected for either a three-month membership extension or a three-month trial membership (not available for purchase).

Banquet

The annual GRRC banquet is set for Saturday, March 1^st, 5:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. The banquet is open to members and non-members, but all must register in advance via RunSignup https://runsignup.com/Race/NY/Scottsville/GRTCAnnualAwardsBanquet. Our first donors are InMotion Physical Therapy, which has donated a free evaluation, and Obatron Productions, which has donated a free entry into each of its four west side races.

The banquet is a great time to enjoy socializing in a non-competitive, non-training environment as well as collect your MILEStone patch, hear any news, meet the board, and honor those getting awards for the MILEStone Challenge, Rochester Runner of the Year Series, and being inducted into the GRRC Hall of Fame.

Hall of Fame

Past President Wilt Alston and well-known chiropractor Mike Reinhardt are being inducted at this year’s banquet. Congratulations to them both!

MILEStone Patch Challenge Open

This 2024 pilot program went very well. We learned some things and were delighted the vast majority of people who wanted a patch signed up and input their data throughout the year. It made the challenge more interactive than it’s ever been since we could see how it was going over time and everyone could enter their own mileage goal to track progress as they raced.

One thing we learned is it’s super easy for participants to load data from a spreadsheet if they don’t want to use the manual entry system as they go. We put one together that is pre-formatted for uploading to the challenge page. It’s on our website at https://grtconline.org/spreadsheet-file-info-for-2024-milestone-patch-results/ (or in the Files section of our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/greaterrochesterrunningclub/files/files). Please use that sheet if you’re not logging directly into RunSignup. Other formats are cumbersome and if you end up asking us to do it for you, may not be in a shape volunteers would want to have to redo.

2025 Rochester Runner of the Year Series

Runnin’ of the Green 5-mile, Saturday, 3/15
Wild Water Derby 5K, Saturday, 4/26 (New Race!)
Lilac 10K, Sunday, 5/18
Sunset House 5K, Saturday, 5/24
Charlie McMullen 1-mile, Friday, 6/5
June Jaunt 5K, Father’s Day Sunday, 6/15
Jungle Jog 5K, Sunday, 7/20
Karknocker 5K, Friday, 7/25 (New Race!)
Black Diamond Half, Sunday, 8/24
Oak Tree 5K, Sunday, 8/31
Heritage Hero (tentatively the 10K), Saturday, 9/27
Grocery Run 10K, Saturday, 11/8 (tentative new date)
Race with Grace 10K,Thanksgiving Thursday, 11/27

Discounts

See member discounts at https://runsignup.com/Club/NY/Rochester/GreaterRochesterTrackClub. There are some new ones there! RROY races will show discounts at they open.

Volunteerism

GRRC – Want to help and don’t know how? Contact me at president@grtconline.org and let’s talk!

Thank you for being a member or being interested enough to follow us in email and social media. Members can renew before their membership lapses and followers can become members by registering at https://runsignup.com/Club/NY/Rochester/GreaterRochesterTrackClub.

See you out there!

Vickey Beaver

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