Twin City Track Club was recognized by RRCA (Road Runner’s Club of America) as the winner of the 2024 Excellence in Communication Award. Road Runner’s Club of America is a national level running association that encourages running clubs and groups to be encouraging of individual runners, empowering them to join the running world in any capacity, be it for health, competition, camaraderie, or otherwise. Twin City Track Club is an affiliated club to this organization.
Team Members include: Alicia Rider (Social Media & Marketing), Er Ralston (Webmaster), Jay Welch (Flyer Editor) and Marisa Browning (Member at Large/Article Writer). The club sent 3 members of the Communications Team (we missed you Jay) to the 2025 RRCA Convention to represent our club and to bring this esteemed award home. The convention provided an opportunity to meet and network with different run clubs, coaches, prestigious runners, vendors and others to learn about differences in club workings, acquiring new skill sets from information sessions and more. This year’s RRCA convention was hosted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is also known as the Twin Cities. And, yes, it did create a lot of confusion and we had to specify every time that we were Twin City and not Twin Cities. Of course, the convention ran concurrently with the Get In Gear race hosted by Twin Cities in Motion, which featured a 5k, 10k RRCA National Championship, and a half-marathon. The weekend was a combination of fun, personal growth and learning that culminated in new friendships and running connections.
The RRCA convention was an incredible experience. One would not initially think that a bunch of runners getting together would be all that interesting, and we’re more than happy to have been wrong about such an assumption. It’s far more than just runners getting together and bragging about prestigious races and fast and furious times. It’s the opportunity to meet board members of other clubs across the country and get some insight as to how their teams operate and what works and doesn’t work for their clubs. You get to see different levels of running group representatives from community clubs like TCTC to Regional Reps, even up to the nationally recognized RRCA. The convention held different sessions throughout the weekend to give club members an opportunity to learn something new either for themselves as individuals, as coaches, or for their organization as a whole. There was a little bit of something for everyone. The TCTC Comms team did a bit of a divide and conquer strategy – trying to attend as many sessions as possible in order to maximize what the convention had to offer – so they could bring back as much knowledge as possible to help further the mission and vision statements of the club.
One of the favorite sessions among our group, and the convention as a whole, was a session about the top 10 lessons learned about race directing by Dave McGillivray. Dave is well known for being the race director of the Boston Marathon and was the featured speaker of the winter seminar for TCTC in 2019! Dave has made a massive name for himself through his career including motivational speaking, race directing, and some philanthropy projects including pulling a Forrest Gump in the truest of fashions by running the 3452 miles from Medford, Oregon to Medford, Massachusetts across an 80 day journey for the Jimmy Fund in the 70’s. His story was incredible to hear, exceptionally motivating, and gave valuable lessons on race directing and honestly, life in general, that all three team members could not miss.
Alicia, as a RRCA Level 1 Certified Coach, enjoyed attending the coaching sessions, especially the one about injury prevention where she learned that the #1 best recovery and injury prevention tool is SLEEP. During day 2, she felt particularly moved by Dakota (Lindwurm) Popehn’s luncheon speech, so much so it brought tears to her eyes. Dakota was humble, kind and reminded us of the importance of goals. Alicia and Er also thoroughly enjoyed the Run Sign Up session and were excited about the improvements being made to the platforms to bring better user interface and engagement for our club. With Er’s prior certification as a Race Director and Run Lead Badge, he plans to utilize what he learned from the convention to continue to make improvements with planning and organization to create running events that run smoothly.
Marisa particularly enjoyed the session about Managing growing pains for a growing club and board. The speaker, Nikkia Young, President of the Richmond Road Runner’s Club, was incredibly engaging with her stories and tips on how to manage common dynamic issues between board members, club members, and board and club members. The other session that Marisa gained a lot of perspective from was a session on integrating nutrition education into a youth running program by Michelle Pettinger. She is a runner, coach, author, and business owner of P3 Running which is an educational site by a collective of coaches to support the education of fitness nutrition! Marisa appreciated having access to a session (and now a book, thank you Michelle!) that gave both an overview and interpersonal methods of educating kids on the importance of nutrition, and how to handle difficult scenarios.
A favorite highlight for the team was the opportunity to accept the Excellence in Communication Award, where Er gave a wonderful short and sweet speech giving thanks for our award and how the TCTC Comms team has evolved over time. The three of us made great connections with other members, clubs, and individuals who share a similar passion about supporting and improving the running community. Er appreciated the further camaraderie (and sharing of notes, thoughts, and lessons learned) that was built among the three of us by sending as a team rather than an individual (Er had the privilege of representing TCTC last year as well in Mesa, California).
While most of the country is aware that spring is in season, which was clear in the sunny and warm parts of NC, it seems MN didn’t quite get that memo. The team went from warm and muggy 60’s of WS, NC to wet and cold 40’s of MN. Upon arriving at the venue, there was still some time to kill before the welcoming session, so the trio set off for a walk around the city to explore. On their walk, they got to see the Mississippi River on the Riverfront walkway, a few sights like a challenge for finding 13 worms (sadly, not a single worm to be seen despite the hefty rain), and some fun little turtle and frog statues. They had enough time to spare before the 1st session to change out of their wet and cold clothes to head to a beloved local restaurant to carb load.
Day 2 of the convention started bright and early for Er and Marisa as they did a shake out walk/run the day before their races on Saturday. The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who has quite the extensive running background himself, participated in the shake out walk/run as well! This of course worked up a bit of an appetite, and boy was it a memorable breakfast to start the big day 1 of the convention! We were surprised with a performance by the Minnesota Vikings’ Skoline Drumline. They are a ragtag group of musicians, comprised of different musical backgrounds that perform for the Minnesota Vikings Football games (we’re runners, what is that?) and special events! If you haven’t already, check out the TCTC socials for clips from the performances! What a way to wake up in the morning. A full day of sessions later and we had worked up quite the appetite, so we set off once again to carb load before race day.
Day 3 brought the crew another day of sessions, but first… RACE TIME! Marisa and Alicia tackled the 5k and Er took on the 10k. Marisa ran faster than she had anticipated, after dealing with several health complications over the last couple months, she’d expected an 11 min range pace, and she ended with an average of a low 10 min pace and a 9:45 3rd mile! You go speedy! Alicia had just come back from the Boston Marathon, so she wasn’t looking for any PR’s but still put on quite the performance running a time of 21:26. That time gave her a 3rd place award out of 98 other women in her age group! Way to represent NC in MN! Er also did very well in the 10k. He was so fast that Marisa just missed getting photos of him crossing the finish line! He finished in 50:32, placing 11th out of 47 others in his age group. Wow those are some fast runners. After the race, they were bussed back to attend more sessions followed by a closing ceremony to end the evening.
The trip home was pretty uneventful. The crew enjoyed conversation with other attendees while waiting to board the plane. After a safe flight and a drive back from the Charlotte airport, the comms team arrived home, ready to share what was learned. Check out our social media platforms for more posts and pictures!