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Reply to "Course name"

There are many interesting thoughts, comments, and suggestions posted here.

Like Neal, for years I have recommended to any race wanting to use an existing certified course to seek permission from the race that had the course originally certified.  With permission, we can then issue a certificate and map with the second race’s name.  Simple enough when people are cooperating.

Many races are promoting and raising funds for their charitable causes.  These races are generally operating as non-for-profits.  For them, affordable course certification must be justified within a race budget with limited funding.  Using an already certified course is an easy decision to make. The expense of hiring a measurer to measure, mark, and have certified a new course is avoided.

We cannot discuss these issues without noting USATF is also a non-for-profit organization, which RRTC is a very small part of.  Like charitable races, USATF squeezes and justifies budget dollars.  Charitable races and USATF both rely on a volunteer workforce.  USATF has not really changed that much since the overshadowing days of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU).   The word “amateur” looms large, reminding us of their mandate. Charitable races and USATF must maintain a volunteer culture to exist.

Of course, policing property ownership rights with certified courses and getting paid commensurate with the technical skills and safety risks are against the tenets of volunteer culture.  We are fighting an uphill battle to get paid for these professional services rendered.

The volunteer philosophy is also strongly built into our course certification program, which allows anyone to measure a course for certification.  Those of us who have been State Certifiers, reviewing certification applications and course maps, can speak to the learning curve of newbies.   The cost to have a course certification application reviewed has not changed in 40 years.  The necessary programing cost to maintain the new online course certification system should clearly be a practical reason to increase the course certification fee.  

Maybe with World Athletics’ influence, the RRTC can start to move away from the volunteer model.  Training and ranking measurers is essential for World Athletics and could easily be adopted by RRTC.  With more properly trained measurers, our culture could finally change.   

 

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