Friday, January 29, 2010

Tri Expo San Diego

Today I attended the first ever Triathlon Expo. To tell you the truth I was a little underwhelmed. San Diego is the birth place of Triathlon and when it was announced that the first ever Tri Expo was going to be held here in San Diego and put on by the Competitor Group (the same people that bring you the Rock n' Roll Marathon Series, Inside Triathlon Magazine and many other publications) I thought, 'Man this thing is going to be good!' But as I said, I was a bit let down.

It is being held at the Hilton Hotel at Mission Bay Park, no one can question what a great venue they choose beyond that though... The entire expo is held in one medium sized tent. With maybe a total of two or three dozen vendors, bike shops, and races present represent this great sport. Let me say right now, thank you for coming out, I am truly grateful. To competitor I say how could we have made this really special? I have gone to MANY marathon expos’ that were much larger, better advertised and really put out there to the endurance sport population. While the expo itself was a little bit of a let down the guest speakers were A-ok Chris Carmichael, Dean Karnazes, Jessi Stensland, and Matt Fitzgerald just to name a few, all brought a wealth of knowledge to the table making learning more about performance and the history of this sport enjoyable.

I guess what I am saying is if we really want our sport to grow don't we need to do more to put it out there? I heard nothing on the local news, I saw 6 billboards for a local gun show that is almost a month away but nothing for the triathlon expo and I saw no advertisement in anything other than competitor group magazines. Don’t you think that if we plan on attracting new athletes, of all ages and abilities that we should go looking for them and not make them guess where we are?

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