2010 race calendar....

This time each year I start emailing the race directors who hire us to see if they plan on staging their event again in 2010. Some emailed me months ago to reserve a date. To be fair I try and pencil in all existing races we manage in my 2010 calendar. I then contact these folks and hopefully they are happy with their existing date. Before I book a new event I always have what I call "first right of refusal" for an existing race date. An example would be if an organization contacts me and wants to stage a race on lets say June 6th of 2010. I would tell them that is the annual St. Anthony's Italian Festival 5k race date and they have first right of refusal for using that date. If for some reason St. Anthony's decides not to hold their event of if they decide to move to another date then I would book this new race. When handling events on the Wilmington Riverfront I work closely with Shane Brey from the Riverfront Development Corp. He schedules not only my events but many other walks and functions on the Riverfront. When a group wants to move to an open date on my calendar I may be able to schedule them on the riverfront IF nothing else is going on that day. I have already started to plug in dates for 2010 through June. Some new events have been added and some first time events from last year may not be back. October is always the most difficult month to schedule since we do so many home coming 5k's and the Scott Mackler 5k moves dates each year due to scheduling of bar mitzvah's at the synagogue. Like a jig saw puzzle....it takes time to coordinate but it always seems to work out in the end. Hopefully 2010 will be no different.