Bish,
Thanks for the update on the event and for some of your explanations and feedback. Buffalo is our local riding spot and it’s nice to see another event done there. I hope it’s successful for you and something that we have on the schedule to look forward to each year.
As far as the $45 entry fee, I understand the need to charge what you’re charging and appreciate the reasoning behind it. I’m sure you and your cohorts have put a ton of time and energy into this event and it’s not going to be a moneymaker. However, with that said, I can’t help but feel that the high entry fee is going to discourage some riders from coming out and trying it. For example, my wife Anne and I had both planned to ride this event when we first learned about it and saw the flyers. But to be perfectly honest, we can’t afford to spend $90 in entry fees for both of us to race that day. We’ll still be there, but Anne probably will not ride. If the entry fees were more standard, say $25 or even $30, then both of us would sign up and you’d have two riders from the Brooks team instead of just one. Sixty dollars is a lot more palatable for us to spend on a day of racing than ninety…and I can’t help but think a lot of other potential racers are going to feel the same way. A person would be a lot more apt to come out and try it for $30 than $45, especially when you’re talking about C riders and women. Now in our case, Anne is three-months pregnant anyway and it’s iffy whether or not she’s physically up to riding these events at this stage. But with the higher than usual entry fee, the decision whether or not to ride is an easy one for her…she’ll be watching and filling my gas that day instead of out on the course participating herself.
I’m not trying to whine here at all. We’re very pleased that we have another local event to try and we greatly appreciate the hard work going into it and we’ll be there to support it and we hope like hell that this race is successful. My opinion is just that the entry fee is a steep for a local event and that’s it’s going to discourage many of the less-than-hardcore racers from coming out. If the entry fee were more reasonable, particularly for C riders and women, you might get 180 riders showing up instead of 60 or 70 or whatever.