EN, 50 Guaranteed Ironman Slots, and You
Team,
As you know, Endurance Nation was named the 2013 WTC TriClub Program Division I World Champions last year. As tri club champions, we were awarded 50 guaranteed Ironman slots(!!)
What is a guaranteed slot?
Basically, we connect you with WTC and you register & pay (the slot is NOT free) for the race via a backdoor, private process.
Many of these races sell out crazy fast, often requiring you to be on site for race weekend to even have a chance of registering. So the ability for us to guarantee registration for our members is a major benefit of your continued Endurance Nation membership.
We have decided to allocate these slots across our three Key Ironman Races for 2015.
These events, for 2015, are:
Ironman Lake Placid, 17 guaranteed slots allocated.
Ironman Chattanooga, 17 guaranteed slots allocated.
Ironman Florida, 16 guaranteed slots allocated.
How will these guaranteed slots be distributed to the members?
As you know, Endurance Nation routinely fields squads of 40-80+ athletes at these Key Races, so a quick look at the math will tell you these guaranteed slots are in high demand. And so we’ve created what we feel is the fairest and most equitable way to do this.
Ironman Lake Placid is the first race on deck, and this is how it will work:
On Monday, June 16th we will publish a link to a Google Form. The link will be emailed to everyone on the team and posted prominently on the dashboard.
Athletes interested in receiving a guaranteed slot for IMLP will complete the form, giving us their name, email, and phone number. The form builds out a spreadsheet, with each athlete assigned to a row with a number.
The form link will be turned off on at 5pm EST on Friday, June 20th. Don’t worry, we will send everyone a last-call reminder.
So let’s say 65 people fill out the form, creating 65 rows of names. We’ll use an online random number generator to basically pull 17 random numbers, from 1-65, out of a hat.
If your number is selected, you get a guaranteed slot and we’ll be in touch with next steps.
If you are not selected, we’ll notify you so you can continue to make plans to get into the race via normal channels.
After reviewing how the process works, we’ll improve it and then repeat the slot allocation process for Ironman Chattanooga and Florida about six weeks out from each event.
Why six weeks?
We need to provide the names of the winners to WTC no less than 30 days before the 2014 even. So firing up this process six weeks out gives us time to sort everything out, ensure everything runs smoothly, while also giving you time to make other arrangements if your name is not selected.
What is the Key Race Program?
Please go here to read more about our Key Race Program, including “most” of our 2015 schedule, still a bit TBD.
Holy crap, this is soooo awesome! How can I help ensure that Endurance Nation crushes it in 2014 so we can all benefit from this in 2016??!!!
We’re glad you feel that way! Please go here to read more about the tri club program!
Please go here to learn more, including our “mostly complete” schedule of 2015 Key Races.
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Comments
Thanks Rich.
That is a great extra feature I was not aware of as a new member. 2015 IMFL is definitely on my hit list so its nice to know there is another alternative to the expensive Foundation slots if I couldn't get a slot through the normal mad rush on Active.com. And it seems the randomized name selection has a very fair ring to it.
One suggestion: (Even though this could negatively affect new members like myself) If you are writing a randomized algorithm to choose the slot I think if an older member who put his name in last year and did not get the slot (and did not get in through the normal channels) puts his name in this year then they could get their name put in twice. It could be another benefit of membership longevity. It would be easily achieved on the form with a checkbox that someone could tick if they fell into that scenario above. Adds a bit of complication but just thought I would throw that out there.
In a purely Machiavellian approach a nonmember could to sign up for EN free one month trial...put their name in the bucket, and hope they get the slot and then not renew the next month.
Notes:
Please understand, at first pass we wanted to make this as egalitarian, truly random, and as easy to understand and administrate as possible.
This is awesome, although it already kicked off the "I thought this was going to be your last Ironman" discussion in my house.
To maximize the number of EN participants, and help get people into races that they didn't get into this year, it seems fair to open the EN lottery to EN members who aren't already registered for this year, since they'll have first crack at sign-up for 2015.
No, however, these are established races and I can't see WTC changing the date of these??
Hey Brett, that's a good suggestion. We'll include instructions / a note to that effect in the emails and the form we'll use to organize this.