The Turkey Rock Trot

I remember the day it kicked just six years ago. After months of preparation and planning we had our first race at the Meadows in Castle Rock on Thanksgiving Day. With an unexpected 400+ runners and walkers that first year we were unprepared and yet thrilled. All of use are part time volunteers, and yet every year we are more surprised at the turnout and the opportunity to support our local task force. In this blog, I hope to impart a little bit of what we learn every year.

Each year the biggest speculation is "how many tee-shirts should we order and what sizes?" It has become quite a joke with the team since we grow every year and it's always a "calculated guess". By the way, this topic has not even come up yet this year and we are a little over a month away.

After five years, we decided to kick this year off with a strategic planning session and determined our main purpose is to raise funds for the task force. Our mission is: providing a fun family community event that is a channel for the community to support a local cause.

So far our major decisions this year have been to change the route slightly to be exactly 5K, hire a professional to do the timing and promote the event at the Castle Rock Octoberfest which was last weekend.

What fun it was to partner with Harry and David and hand out Moose Munch as we talked about the event on Thanksgiving. It was a nice day in the upper 70's and many people showed up. In fact, we ran out of materials just before the end of the day so that means over 800 people were interested.

We broke up into groups of 4 with one person filling the Moose Munch and the other 3 handing out samples and business cards with the information on the front and a Harry and David coupon on the back. It was a super day with a huge reach.

Look for more posts on the Turkey Rock Trot as we progress into the next month.