Come on…you knew it was coming.
I was chatting with some of my cycling friends the other day when they came into the lab for testing, and they mentioned that I should compete in some of the Indoor Time Trial races that occur in and around Boston during the winter. Normally these things wouldn’t appeal to me – they are done on a Computrainer, they measure wattage, they involve riding a trainer…things that in the past, really were not of much interest to yours truly. But now, I have a power meter, I’ve been doing some amount of riding on the indoor trainer, and I have access to a Computrainer in the lab. I thought that perhaps I might enter one of these and use it as a goal to stay focused on training over the next 8 weeks of suck ass New England winter.
I went to the Internet and found the registration page for the Boston Triathlon Team Indoor Time Trial. I was perusing the heat lists and registration info and was considering entering when I saw the not so fine print: No refunds, not even in the case of cancellation due to inclement weather. Let me get this straight…I’m going to pay $25 plus a bikereg.com fee up front, for a race that is scheduled for the middle of February – indoors – and I don’t get a refund if they have to cancel due to inclement weather.
Umm…hello? It’s winter in New England. Cancelling things due to snow/sleet/freezing rain/the ubiquitous ‘wintry mix’ is par for the course. I have no problem pre-registering for races in, oh, say, July – races that are not likely to be canceled due to inclement weather. I do, however, have a problem paying $25+ for a race that has a 50% chance of getting canceled due to inclement weather.
So, as much as I’d like to enter said race, it hardly seems worth it. What I can’t figure out is, why keep the entry fee? What cost needs to be recouped to promote an indoor race? Are you paying for officials, police detail, town access fees, park closure fees, road use fees? No, I didn’t think so.
I found another indoor time trial on January, at the Harpoon Brewery. This one had a $35 entry fee, and the same no refund/cancellation policy. However, they did have a University Team category. I figured we could get the UNH team entered, the team could pay the entry fee, and no $$ is lost out of my pocket if the race gets canceled. It would be a great opportunity for the UNH team to kick the season off after returning to campus for the beginning of spring semester, and seeing as most of their training is done on the indoor trainers in the Whit at 9pm at night, the 9:45 start time was perfect for them. We could use the team vans to get down there – it would be great.
Then I saw the not so fine print regarding entry to the Harpoon Brewery Indoor Time Trial:
All entries must be age 21+.
And yet they have a University Team Division.
I realize that I, as a graduate student, am over the age of 21. But I would venture a guess that about 95% of the UNH cycling team is not yet age 21..because, you know, THEY’RE COLLEGE AGE PEOPLE. Last time I checked the average person graduated high school at age 18 and entered college at age 18 and was turning 21 sometime during his junior or senior year.
So yeah, that makes sense. Let’s have a race category and then exclude 75% or more of potential entrants. (Which got me wondering..what if, your racing age was 21?)
Out of sheer matters of principle, I will not be entering any indoor time trials this season.
January 2nd, 2010 | 
