The South Riding Running Club is a Northern Virginia community of runners and walkers of all levels and ability. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate regardless of age, gender, athletic inclination, and goals.
Questions? Comments?
Contact us:
srrunner@srrunners.org
You can't hit a home run unless you step up to the plate. You can't catch a fish unless you put your line in the water. You can't reach your goals if you don't try. -- Kathy Seligman
Race Report Guidelines
Race Reports are Valuable
One of the most important benefits of joining a running club is sharing your experience of the sport with like-minded people and promoting it in the community. We learn a lot from each other, and the SRRC web site is a good place to record and publish experiences. Believe it or not, our site gets as many as 20,000 hits a month. We must be providing some kind of value. The key to our on-line success is our content. That's what brings people from all over to visit us. If you click to our library of reports, you can see that they make pretty good reading, and every one includes helpful insight.
Share Your Experience
Do you have a race experience you'd like to share? Don't be shy about getting a report together for other club members to read. You don't have to worry about all kinds of formatting or special requirements. You can submit the text in almost any soft-copy format. Your text will be prepared and posted in the web site format. You should be comfortable seeing your work edited (for mechanics, spelling, and grammar). If you're under 18, please have your parents' permission. You can confirm that by having mom or dad submit the report on your behalf.
What to Include in Your Report
Tell the story of your race experience any way you want. Some people are scientific, providing specific data about what they ate and drank and how their splits looked. Others include liberal appreciation for how their family participated in or supported the effort. Others find the humor. However you decide to write about your race, here are some ideas for useful details:
- Include some description of the event, where it was held, how big it is, etc.
- What were the conditions like? I.e., hot, cold, rainy, snowy, muddy, dry, etc.
- What was the terrain like? I.e., flat, hilly, road, trail, rugged, smooth, etc.
- What was race support like? I.e., plenty of well-staffed aid stations, self-serve aid, etc.
- Did you have a goal for the race? Did you meet your goal?
- Did you do anything special to prepare to meet that goal?
- Was anything about your preparation especially helpful?
- Was anything about the race especially challenging?
- Was anything on race day especially helpful or notable?
- Please include pictures if you have them.
Submission Guidelines
Here are some general submission guidelines to help you decide when your report is ready:
- Please don't send a first draft and please spell check your work.
- It shouldn't be too long. For example, 5,000 words is probably a little long.
- It shouldn't be a tale of misery--not helpful--but it should represent a meaningful picture of the experience including what you did right.
- Watch out for vague enthusiasm; i.e., "The weather was amazing and crowd support was spectacular and I felt awesome!" A little more detail will make your report more amazing, spectacular, and awesome.
- It should be in reasonably standard English that a typical reader would be able to comprehend.
If you would like to submit a race report to be posted on the SRRC website please email srrunner@srrunners.org. Are you registered for a race this year? If you are, send the info to srrunner@srrunners.org, and we'll get the race posted. Running is a social sport, and you can tell from our calendar that we support each other.
Run and write about it. You never know who you'll inspire!