Nashville Triathlon Club Expo

   No races for me this past weekend, but I did have another big event - the Nashville Tri Club Expo. I'm on the Board of the NTC, and the expo is one of our premier events of the season - and I was the Chair for it this year. Our plan for the expo is to have an event that brings everyone in the Nashville triathlon community together and kick off the Nashville race season. While the NTC had sporadic expos in the past, we brought it back to life last year and made it an annual event. We wanted an event that covered everything triathlon - training, coaching, injury-prevention, upcoming races...a little something for everyone. With almost 40 vendors, we pretty much had all of that covered. We also had two seminars scheduled - one for beginning triathletes and another for the more advanced athlete. What more could you want? Free stuff? We had that, too! Lots of giveaways from our very generous vendors.
   I'd been nervous about the expo for the past two months. I'd never put on an expo before, and I really wanted to do a good job. I'm kind of Type-A (a triathlete who is Type-A? REALLY?), and I have a tendency to obsess over things. This combination generally means that I do extra work to make sure I feel like everything is covered (spreadsheets, anyone?), but it makes me feel better. Fortunately, I had a lot of help from the board and things went pretty smoothly.
   There were two things that were stressful. The first was trying to figure out what booths went where. It was like creating a seating chart for a wedding, only without the drunken uncle. Some vendors wanted be next to others, and some had special needs like electricity. Only electricity was only available in one specific area. Then, of course, I had to spread out vendors who were similar to each other so two bike shops weren't next to each other. I spent WAY too long trying to figure all of this out, especially considering we had to pitch about 25% of my floor plan on the day of the expo because the logistics just weren't working out. I probably could have just told everyone to grab a table and set up wherever they wanted. Would have been much easier and had the same basic result.
   The other thing that was stressful was the fact that we had no idea how many people were going to show up for the expo. It was free to attend, but we it's not like we can ask for RSVPs or anything. We had almost 40 vendors there! What if no one showed up?
   Fortunately, I didn't need to worry. Everything worked out great, lots of people showed up and the expo was a HUGE success. Phew! Here are a few pics.

The Timex had some really cool watches.

Caroline (TriSuccess) and Faye (Team Magic) at the Triathlon 101 panel.

Bikes! Bikes! Bikes!

Brad (X3 Performance), Andrew (FTP Coaching (and my coach!)) and Kathleen (TriSuccess) on the Taking it to the Next Level panel.  NTC President Wes (far right) was the moderator.

People everywhere!! 

   Thank you so much to all of our vendors and participants who came out on Sunday. And a HUGE thanks to David at Buy Floors Direct, who generously donated his store for our event. I, additionally, want to thank the NTC Board for all of their help. It was a lot of fun, but I'm glad it's over!! 

   On a different note - the weather has been awful here in Nashville this week. Freezing temperatures, some snow and A LOT of ice. In fact, we had an ice storm that literally shut down the city for two days. The Mayor called a Stage of Emergency and everything. While I'm generally OK with exercising outside when it's cold, I'm not about to risk injury by running on two inches of ice. I'm being literal here. We have two inches on ice on our driveway. We can barely make it out of the neighborhood - forget about making it to the gym. We're supposed to get more snow tomorrow before finally getting above freezing on Saturday afternoon. So, I'm stuck with the bike trainer and floor exercises for the week. I know that our storm is nothing compared to the 6-7 FEET of snow that Boston has right now, but that's why I don't live in Boston. I hate cold weather and I'm kind of losing my mind. Come on, Spring!