Our booth this past weekend at the Shamrock Marathon Expo was very
interesting; I think we did a good job of spreading the word about
Virginia Beach Adventure Fest as well as catching up with friends and making some new ones. We'll be wiser when we set up our next booth!
A few of my observations, in no particular order:
- I have a knack for spotting ultra runners; some things you can just sense and this is something I had a perfect record on this weekend. I got turned on to a Virginia-centric ultra site that I'll be sure to stay tuned to.
- Concrete floors stink to stand on for any length of time. We should have brought some yoga mats or something to put down to give our legs a break.
- Pam and Mike, my teammates with Team HRAdventure, are much better salesmen than I am. Maybe I don't drink enough coffee, but those two are very very
eager to bring people into the booth and give them a good talking
to. Mike kind of gets this crazed look in his eyes! My
style was much more laid back, letting interested people approach us
instead of corralling every marathoner into an AR intro. That
being said, I think Pam and Mike were very effective and I wish I could
sustain that level of extroversion -- as it is, I'm very much an
introvert (might surprise some of you) and I can turn on the
extroversion when I need to, but my extroversion energy runs thin after
a little while.
- The orienteering challenge that we ran from the booth was fun,
but not as many people did it as we would've liked. I think it
was a lot to expect from people picking up marathon race packets
etc. I'm glad we did it and I would do it again, but we'll know
next time not to print so many coloured maps! Congrats to those
who did complete the challenge and we've already notified the raffle
winners.
- We should've ran video of past races (there is a video from the
first TASC out there!) or Eco-Challenge or PrimalQuest . . . it might
have drawn more interest in our booth area and I know it would've kept
those of us at the booth entertained during the slow periods.
- People who do our races are generally nice people. There were some who had raced an HRAdventure event and stopped
by just to say hello. That was really cool. It's tough at
our events to have much of a conversation with people because of the
volume of teams and the schedule; it was nice to catch up with some
friends and hear some positive feedback for the 2005 TT etc. It's also nice to take a break from explaining what "Trekking" means
-- it's a foreign concept to most marathoners. We've considered
organizing an HRAdventure party with participants and sponsors, but we
haven't found the time to organize one more event on top of a
full race schedule; such a party would be a good way to catch up with
the people we spend hours and hours racing around.
Finally, I think I can say unequivocally, a sunny day spent in a giant concrete auditorium is
a sure fire way NOT to train for adventure racing.
Yes, we did some good public outreach for the sport, for
VBAdventureFest, for HRAdventure, and for Encompass, but I'd take a
clear day on the trails and/or water over another convention booth any
time!