Building A Competitive Team

This will be the fourth year for the ETG, and I wanted to share some thoughts on our team and the process of bringing competitive runners together. The first post I ever put on this site high-lighted how we were formed, and many other posts describe our process of making the team; but today's post will describe the ups and downs of Fort Wayne distance running. We've had some good years and we've had some bad years.

Some of our runners got hurt, some lost motivation, and others switched to other venues, but through it all the core guys have kept on trucking. We are all starting to find our little running niches, as far as training approaches and racing styles. This is helping keep us healthier and happier, and times are slowly but surely dropping. Up and down we know each others strengths and weaknesses. As a team we capitalize on this when we travel to races together to optimize our maximum potential. When I look back, we only attend one big event per season as the ETG. This year, our goal is to expand our reach to other events. We are going to plan better for a series of races instead of the classic "ROP" event. This fall, the stronger runners will focus on cross, and our faster runner will rabbit to help the stronger runners to excel. Track events will consist of more events with a push to the USATF club championships. By maximizing our exposure, we are hoping to draw more competitive attention to our local elites, and thus draw better runners to the area for training purposes. We've had our fun and developed in the last four years, and now we are going to take steps to becoming a legitimate team.