Hi team!
With our May track meet canceled and the diminishing odds of major fall races happening, the team has organized a fun series of virtual races.
We had several goals in formulating the design of the series:
- The series should be fun and inclusive, yet still competitive.
- The series should be accessible to members and non-members.
- We want to utilize social media to encourage people to interact with each other (since we can’t do that in person!).
- We want to encourage donations to and engagement with relevant organizations.
Using these goals as our guide, we’ve created our own Tour de Summer! The key points:
- The series is FREE.
- We have awards and races for quicker runners AND where being fast isn’t the most important attribute.
- Even though it’s a series, it’s not a big commitment! You can do any of the five races individually and still win awards or you can do all five. To win the series, you only need to do four of the five races, since we will drop your lowest score. If you do the four races with the lowest mileage requirement, it only requires that you “race” between 8 and 10 miles over four races.
- Only two of the five races are based on pure speed (5k and 1 mile race). The other three can be won with strategy: “get as much elevation as possible in 25 minutes”; “run two miles with the largest gap between your first and second mile winning”; “run as steady (consistent) a pace as possible for 13.1 miles”.
- We have special awards for: “running in the least 4% shoes possible”; “collecting the most trash in conjunction with your race”; etc.
- There are tons of cool awards to win, including socks that will replicate the jerseys of the Tour de France.
We are donating up to $1,000 to two great organizations and encourage participants to donate as well! The organizations:
All you have to do is register (registration page coming in the next few days), run the races, and upload your time! The first race is on July 4th (the 5k) and subsequent races occur every two weeks.
Check out the link below for additional information (FAQs / Registration / Awards / Results / Partners):
https://www.dashingwhippets.
You can also RSVP for the first leg of the series here: https://www.meetup.com/
Please let us know if you have any questions by emailing ! Also, please forward to your friends anywhere in the world!
Thanks to the group of Jeremy Arthur, Terry McGovern, Garrett Burger, Michael Alcamo, David Lopes (from our Boston chapter), and Rich Moy for organizing this.
Also, thanks to Brooklyn Running Company, Volvo, Finish Line PT, and Running Warehouse, for partnering with us!
Matt
