Who I met on my trip to Cincinnati!

The weekend in Cincinnati for the Flying Pig and the RRCA Convention was a lot of fun. We had a good crew of people travel over from Springfield. Congrats to everyone who made it through the various distances...especially Becky Baum (5k) and Pam Stevens (half marathon) who were age group winners! I ran the 10k and finished 4th in the Clydesdales (always out of the awards!!!).

The RRCA Annual Banquet was a great event, and I was able to meet some wonderful people. Becky and Alan Avery actually had a booth at the convention for Alan's Elf Score race scoring software. That's pretty cool, huh?

Thanks so much to Wendy (love ya!), President Barb, Anne Armitage, and Karen Valenti for being my support crew at the dinner! You gals--coyotes--really made the evening a special experience.

And a big thank you goes to Barb for hosting a little cocktail party in her room before the banquet. That was very nice!

At the dinner we sat with a couple women including Nancy Hobbs, who is the Executive Director of the American Trail Running Association (ATRA) and is the Manager of Teva US Mountain Running Team. She is a real ball of energy. Nancy has her own blog and will be posting something about the RRCA Awards Banquet and on volunteers in general. You can visit Nancy's Blog at http://teva.typepad.com/nancy/ and you can visit her website at http://www.trailrunner.com/ Nancy's mountain runners have been featured in both Runner's World and Running Times!

Dick Beardsley was the keynote speaker for the dinner. He has such an incredibly inspirational story and he is a very humble guy. We were able to meet him after the dinner...and I think Karen has a picture of her and him on her iphone...if she knows how to access the photos!

I spoke at length with Phil Stewart, the Race Director of the Credit Union Cherry Blossom Festival 10 miler in Washington, D.C. He is a neat guy, he knows my boss, and it was very cool to have some time to talk with a diretor of such a large and nationally-known race.

Brent Ayer is the new President of the RRCA. Like me, he works for a Member of Congress (actually several right now). He introduced himself after the dinner and we had a very good conversation. He takes over for Bee McLeod who has been very involved with the national running scene for a long time! After meeting Brent, I am confident our national club is in good hands!

Jeff Darman is the Executive Director for the ACLI Capital Challenge 3 miler in Washington, D.C. Jeff has been a long-time driving force behind the RRCA, and was one of the main proponents behind establishing the AARC a few years ago when many believed the RRCA had lost it's way. Jeff also told me that he was a close personal friend of Rod Steele, for whom the award I received is named. That was very cool.

The President of the Las Vegas Track Club, Steve Thornock, introduced himself after the awards banquet. He told me that he was so inspired by the speeches of the award winners that he was going back to Sin City and follow through on starting up the kids running club that his club has discussed for a long time. He said he was just so impressed to hear all the good things about clubs and volunteers from around the country.

At a presentation about tag & chip timing, we were able to talk with Don Lindley of the Fort Wayne Track Club. It is always great to be able to talk to folks from other clubs about what they are doing. The FWTC purchased a chip timing system in 2004 to score their local/club races, but just recently they replaced their chip system with the IPICO Sports timing system. His comments were very insightful.

Jean Knaack is the Executive Director of the RRCA. I had corresponded with her several times via e-mail, but had never had the opportunity to meet her in person. She has done a great job since coming on as ED of the RRCA and she did a wonderful job overseeing much about the banquet and convention.

All-in-all it was a very good weekend in Cincy and I thought the SRRC was represented very well. We have a great club and it really shows at meetings like this!