All,

Thanks for coming out for the Race Weekend last Sunday.  I would have had this out sooner but my laptop died Sunday night (dead motherboard).

The list of contacts for the Race Committee e-mail has been updated, so everyone who attended on Sunday should be getting a copy of this.  For those who don't know, any e-mails sent to occ_race_comm@PROTECTED goes to everyone on the race committee.

Current Race Committee members:

• Todd Relyea
• Don Butler
• Helene Schmid
• Dave VanWie
• Mike Lyon
• Jeremy Clay
• Ben Rabin
• Dave Grieves
• Thomas Fucillo
• Chuck Dominick
• Colleen Farrell
• Josh Graves

If you know anyone else who would be interested in joining, let me know.

Major topics discussed during the meeting:

• Format for 2018:
• 2-day race, with events to be determined.  Different combinations of events were discussed, but likely dropping the hill climb.  Ultimately format of the race will depend on the venues we secure.
• Discussion on changing the criterium to a circuit race (more female participation),
  
• Generally agreed that if possible, the event configuration should include dinner on Saturday night,
• Discussion on a "road bike" time trial (less equipment for out of town participants to bring)
  
• Targeting the last two weekends in July; July 21st or July 28, 2018, avoiding IronMan 2018 in Lake Placid and "Hot Rod"weekend in Syracuse.
  
• Race Categories
• General agreement that we need to have far fewer categories for participants.  i.e. combine women elite with men's masters.  If registration numbers allow, those categories can be broken out to race in  their own fields.
• Venues:
• Generally we're starting with a clean slate regarding events and venues; just about anything will receive consideration,but venues need to be secured ASAP.
  
• Look in to OCC for a location for the crit/circuit race(potential availability of housing and food services),
• Investigate Marcellus for TT and/or circuit race (i.e.Pleasant Valley Rd has been re-paved)
• Other than the discussion regarding Oak Hill being easily as hard as the hill climb, we didn't discuss moving the location of the road race.  Based on racer feedback the route is generally well liked.
• Volunteers
• There was a lot of discussion regarding getting people to volunteer for the race, from OCC members (potentially receiving free memberships for the following year) and ways to get local race teams and charities that OCC donates to to provide volunteers.  (this will be an ongoing topic).  The goal is to have a full slate of volunteers at least 2-weeks before Race Weekend.
  
• Colleen volunteered to be the Volunteer Director
  
• General responsibilities/assignments: The goal is that as Race Director we off-load everything so that I'm fairly bored...at least that's the goal.  Note that any assignments below are not intended to limit the participation on anyone on the race committee to any one function...it's a huge group effort with many of us wearing multiple hats.
  
• Todd Relyea - Race Director
• Chuck Dominick - Publicity
• Josh Graves - Race Sponsors
• Colleen Farrell - Volunteer Director
• Helene Schmid - Local Team liaison
• Dave VanWie (Event Director - which event TBD)
• Two open slots for the remaining events.
  

I'm sure there were a few things I've missed, and there were also a lot of side conversations going on, so I likely didn't capture everything in the notes I was taking, so feel free to make any corrections.  We didn't discuss our next meeting, but for the moment I'd like to keep them before the monthly OCC board of directors meetings.  I'm also open to alternate nights and locations if we can find a time/place everyone is happy with.Otherwise at the moment this would make out next meeting Sunday August 6th.

Just to compare and contrast with our event, I attached a copy of the 2 Days of Buffalo omnium technical guide.  They do some interesting things such as the road bike only time trial like we discussed on Sunday.  Our latest technical guide is available here.