Tuesday, April 30, 2013

CRC April Letter from your President


                    
On Monday, April 15th, I opened up a browser on my computer to watch the splits of our CRC members running the Boston Marathon. For the next several hours, I watched as they made their way from Hopkinton to downtown Boston. Then, two bombs exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line. My thoughts immediately shifted from being jealous of my friends for running Boston to concern for their welfare. I sent “txt” messages and left voice mails with those that I knew were in Boston. I watched the CNN coverage of the events as they replayed the explosion over and over, and I silently hoped that everyone was okay.

Sadly, those two explosions changed the lives of so many people. This fact was brought home when Charlotte’s own running community learned that it was directly impacted. Several members of the Gross family were standing near one of the explosions and were sent to the hospital with injuries. Here’s hoping they make a speedy recovery and are back running with us soon.    

To help the Gross family as they continue their road to recovery, an online donation web site has been setup at Be Strong Stay Strong. The out pouring of support from our Charlotte Athletic community has been tremendous. Let’s keep up this effort and show the Gross family that we are here for them.

To help with this effort, the Charlotte Running Club, Davidson Timing, Vac & Dash, and Charlotte Runners (SLRC) combined their skills and put on the Run Your Heart for Boston 2.62 hour run on April 28th, 2013. This event was able to raise over $17,000 dollars, which will be given to the “Be Strong Stay Strong” Fund for the Gross family. Most impressive to me was how quickly this event was organized and how many people turned out for it. There were 400+ runners filling the narrow paths of McMullen on Sunday morning. Charlotte’s Running Community has a huge heart. This point was made apparent to me as I looked back at the starting line to see all of the brave faces not letting a little rain keep them way. 

This event couldn’t have happened without the tireless efforts from the following individuals: Rob Ducsay, Stephanie York, Wen Norvel, Johanna Curry Remes, Matt Bush, David Munger, Chad Randolph, and Phyllis Neiah

In a little over a week, their organizational skills created this event. Please join me in saying “Thank You” to them for stepping forward to share their time and energy, as well as giving the rest of us a way to show our support to the Gross family.

CRC Board Changes:

Our board continues to evolve. In the middle of April, Jaime McDonald sent me a very nice email explaining that her current work load was expanding and this wasn’t going to leave her with the kind of time that she felt should be given to our CRC Board. Therefore, she felt that it was best for her to resign. This is the kind of action that we all have to respect. We all have limits and knowing those limits is very important. Jaime plans to continue in our club and help out wherever possible. Jaime was only on the board for a few months but her impact was being felt and will now be missed.

Following the club’s bylaws, I nominated and the board approved Katie Howard to our open board position. Katie’s approval was the second item of business during our club’s monthly standing meeting. Please join me in welcoming Katie to the CRC Board. I am sure that she will bring her own thoughts and experiences to our club which will make it even better.

Also during our April monthly meeting, we nominated a new club Vice President. Please join me in congratulating Stephanie York for accepting her new role on the CRC board. Stephanie may be the youngest board member, but she brings a perspective to the board that is much needed. I am excited to see how she tackles her new responsibilities.

Membership Cards and Magnets:

The effort on the membership cards and magnets continues to move forward, and our board continues to target a June rollout to all of our members.

Membership Term Changes:

In the past our club has been using a rolling membership expiration date. For example, if I joined in June of ’12, my membership would expire in May ’13. Our board has decided to shift to a yearly expiration that ends on Dec. 31 of each year. The goal behind this change is to give gear to members when they renew. Starting with the ’14 renewal, members will be asked to supply their t-Shirt size. We will gather those sizes at the end of Jan ’14 and place a shirt order. Each renewed member will then receive a Charlotte Running Club t-shirt.

Club Gear:

The board has been exploring different ways of getting more club gear options that members really want. After looking at various options, we selected the option of using an online store that is only open for about 3 weeks at a time. After 3 weeks, the store closes and those orders are filled and shipped directly to our members. The results from our first online store were pretty much in line with our expectations. The club plans another store opening in either July or August, and it will contain gear for fall and winter. We will publish the store opening dates in our upcoming club newsletter and on our FaceBook and Twitter accounts.

CRC Monthly Board Meeting:

I wanted to remind everyone that our CRC board meets once a month at the Dowd Y at 7PM in the common area. Every CRC member is welcome to attend these meetings. The meetings occur on the last Thursday of every month.  

Board Meeting Minutes:

During each board meeting Jon captures our conversations, To-Dos, and notes. This information is then posted to our club’s gdocs site. This information is available to every club member to review. I have attached a link to the notes from the April meeting. Click here. In each future “Letter from the President” I will include a link to the minutes from the previous month’s meeting.

CPR Training:

Katie asked me if our club held any CPR training. To my knowledge, we have not. However, as I sat there reading her email, I thought about what a great idea she had. Running pushes our hearts to the max. We never know when a heart attack might occur. Knowing that the people around me have CPR training provides me with a little more comfort.

I am looking into training cost and potentially setting up a training date for members of our club. In my May Presidential Letter, I hope to be able to share more details about it.   

Running Buddies:

Earlier this month, I received an email asking about running buddies. There is a local support group that works with Alzheimer’s patients. A few of their patients are runners but they are no longer able to run either solo or in large groups. They would really like to have some running buddies from our club. Here’s the contact info for potential running buddies who are interested – sdunning@alz.org or 704.532.7390.

Volunteering:

Please remember to email run.charlotte@gmail.com for volunteering efforts. We have a community service page on our club’s website where we are listing our member volunteer efforts.

 This covers it for April. I hope that my efforts are meeting with everyone's approval. Remember, my door is always open. For concerns, questions, or comments email run.charlotte@gmail.com and it will get forwarded to me.

Let's run together sometime,

Bill

Charlotte Running Club President

 

 

 

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