Information gathering

Over the next couple of weeks/months I am going to try and gather as much information about what the majority of people want out of a race series. I will be posting poll questions in the side bar. The more people I have answering these questions the more information I will have to put together a race series for next year. The first question concerns categories. I think race promoters feel the need to have as many categories as possible. Like I found during the VBW Smackdown there were a lot of people who raced the master's races. But the lowest turn out was the Pro,1,2,3 race. Would those masters have raced the Pro,1,2,3 race if there had not been a master category. I could have taken the prizes from the three masters races and have added them to the other categories and increased the prize list. Also by running so many races, some of the categories, like the women's race was very short. Also the officials were there longer then the recommended 8 hours. So I was thinking for the series to eliminate all age graded categories and have only senior categories. Would this deter you from racing? Please vote on the poll but also leave comments to specific reasons if you wish.

Here are some other issues I'll be polling soon:

Is September too late to have the final race in the series? This race would most likely be a TT in Virginia Beach. I am trying to set up to use the same TT course that is used during the Sandman Triathlon. They race on Sunday and the course is set up the day before so I'm thinking we could use it on Saturday. I just would want to make sure that people would be willing to race a TT in September.

Would you prefer a larger price for overall winners of the series, or make each race a large prize and have nice trophies awarded to the overall winners?

I'm sure there are tons of other questions I will be posing. Keep posted and please vote. Tell your friends and teammates to vote and comment also. I am very serious about this project and the more feedback (documented feedback) that I get the better it will be and the more likely I am to get sponsors.

One more thing. I was checking out the old race fliers on the VCA website. It was kind of funny to me to see some patterns. I was not involve in racing from 1995 to 2005. People complain a lot about too many races at the sportsplex. But during those years we fell into similar patterns. There were a lot of races at New Horizon during those years. But one thing I was looking for were races that had happened that could be revived. Sort of like what we did with Sleepy Hole this year. So if anyone has any information about the following races please leave a comment. Especially if you have any contact information or the quality of the courses (since I have never raced these).

Franklin Downtown Crit and Road race
Smithfield Road race, Downtown Crit, Time trial

Thanks for any help.