Discussion: Facebook AR Clubs

Hello Guys, I help manage a AR club on FB called "Front Range Adventure Racing Club" (link found below) I was wondering if people new of any other clubs and your thoughts on how this type of club can help the community. We have over 150 active members and I know lots of people have teamed up because of the group.

Thanks


https://www.facebook.com/groups/146839625465126/

Yes, there are many underground, secret, and hidden adventure racing clubs around on facebook. ;) Its such a niche sport and many adventure racing athletes tend to also be involved in other clubs as well; such as running, mt biking, road cycling, canoeing, rock climbing clubs, etc... since we are in a multi-disciplined sport. But there are a lot of AR clubs out there I think most people do not even know about. For example, here in Michigan we started the International Fragile Flower Adventure Club (IFFAC) which is for women adventure racers only (sorry boys).

The Fragile Flowers have been known to help male teammates find female racers, many of us race together on all female teams, there are Fragile Flower outings we put on such as hiking over the weekends together, some of us are able to train together, share nutrition tips, share gear, etc... Most importantly we started the club to get more women involved in the sport and create a more healthy community. Thus far we have been able to do just that and our club has been expanding since the creation of it which is great to see.

Thanks Double M! And if you are interested in joining, send one of us an email. We have folks from all over the U.S., Canada and happy to be beyond.

Under the semi-hidden category, there is a closed FB group for Adventure Racing in Ontario, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/groups/2366711000/1015276...
Posts tend to be infrequent and not always based on http://www.oarps.ca/ events. To have the same positive impact as Front Range AR, it needs to be public and have many more active members, IMHO.

Double M / Work4justice nice work on getting IFFAC going and generating interest in multisport events!

Due to the fact that I live so close to the border, almost half of my races were in Canada this year (2 AR and the BPMR). So being able to have a better connection to the Canadian scene would be great. Actually, that goes for quite a few of us here in Michigan. It's closer for us to attend several of the Canadian events than it is many of the other races in the states. Better advertising of the Canadian races here in the states could attract a lot of us to come over the border! It doesn't hurt that you Canadians put on amazing events :)

Wilderness Traverse has done Facebook advertising in several of the closest states. It was about twice the cost per click compared to advertising in Canada but it did attract some new "likes" for our Facebook page. I'm not sure it has paid back in participants from the U.S. who didn't already know about us from other sources though. Attackpoint and word-of-mouth have probably worked best for us.

If there are websites in the U.S. where we can post info on Canadian AR events at no charge, like the Get Out There events calendar in Canada, it would be good for Canadian RDs to know.

JustMe: If you want to relive the BPMR 2014 some more, read our 100km relay report: http://yooreyneeuhm.com/bpmr/2014bpmr.html (Eroc and havarti on AP)

Bash: Good timing, as Bob and I just talked about cross-promoting 2 hours ago. We'll promote Wilderness Traverse, Logs, Rocks & Steel, etc. and he will promote our new 8-hour Silver Lake Edition (along Lake Michigan) and 2nd-year 10-hour Epic Edition (Flat River Valley east of Grand Rapids, MI). Hopefully we can keep the border agents busy with teams crossing over more often. Certainly need more U.S. teams to show up at the WT.

Awesome! :)