Wow, that was some serious FUN.
I always liked numbers and stats and formulas and gradings and whatever, but when you have a super selective group and you go over runners’ numbers for a few hours, and get to evaluate performances… well… I felt like I was in another world.
I know I say this a lot, but sometimes I don’t understand how I get to do these things. I don’t take them for granted. I KNOW it’s a super cool privilege. I really look down sometimes and I don’t understand who or why dropped me there.
Anyway, I didn’t know what to expect, other than going thru the big binder that was ALL numbers. There were two lists for each Age Group based on different rating systems. I checked them beforehand, had some questions about the systems and the elegibility requirements, that got answered fast and I just showed up. I really didn’t know much what to expect, a group of 20, 30??
No.
I get in there. Pizza smell. There were 3 men in the Brooklyn room of NYRR’s new offices. One more joins through conference call. And me. Four men and me. This is it? It’s just us?? And I am the only non-NYRR person!!!!
Wow, now I felt special and scared. I realized I was gonna have a voice and it was gonna matter. Ok. Then, someone else joins us.
Want to guess who?
Another woman.
Mary Wittenberg.
Of course by now she finds me even in the soup, so she was super nice, as always, and greets me (another thing I still find shocking, not that she’s nice but that MW always knows me!).
She goes over a couple of changes and exceptions and rules that needed adjusting. Looks through the binder and brings a couple of good points. Then, once all was clear, she leaves us.
Should I be nervous? What makes me qualified for this?
Turns out, I wasn’t so bad, if I can say so myself 😉
First we picked the Fred Lebow Runners of the Year, and then we went through each Age Group category and picked the winner and nominees. In some cases, it was super super clear, then there were a few in which we battled it out for a while and ended up only agreeing on a tie. There were some really impossible cases. We did go through all the top runners for each category and looked at everything, their times, their age grading, their diversity in distances, amount of races, or whatever other thing we could use to decide. It was so so so so so much fun.
Seriously so much fun.
Now I can’t wait to see how this turns out at Club Night. I am confident we made all the right choices, though I know lots of people will be upset. Of course.
I, for example, didn’t even make it into the list!!!
Runner of the Year – Selection Committeing
runningandthecity 