The USATF Road Race Series - Part III

On Saturday I wrote about USATF needing to hire three new staff members to run the USATF Road Race Series, so let me explain why three individuals should be hired and what types of work they would be doing. But first, I want to say that this series is for the betterment of the sport, not just the professional end. These events would have a professional runner portion to them, but these races are intended to cater to the recreational runners, teaching them about the sport and letting them experience something truly phenomenal.

Now, back to the new hires, the three individuals that USATF hires would have to 1) be extremely passionate about the sport of road racing 2) be extremely knowledgeable on how to put on top tier events 3) have sound understanding of how to market events 4) be creative, thinking outside of the box and willing to take road races where they've never been before, across a variety of platforms.

With that said, USATF should hire younger talent. Too often they've hired 40+ year old adults to fill key roles. Bringing in young, energetic talent to really build up this new wing of USATF would be telling.

For their roles, these three would be in charge of EVERYTHING. They would deal with the cities where they'd start the new races, they would be in charge of marketing events, getting volunteers together, attracting sponsors. The trio would recruit professional athletes to run in the races, manage their budget, hire specific race workers, build and maintain a strong series web presence and anything else you could think of.

This sounds like a lot, and it would be an incredible work load for a first year series, but once the series started turning a profit (which would hopefully be after the first year), they could hire on more staffers. Growth in number of races and participants could create a strong small branch of USATF. Again, more coming in the next few days.