For those who just run a race or two each year, FLRC can be a bit of an iceberg, with a lot more happening under the water than is obvious. The club had an amazing 2023, coordinating a race or a group run every weekend, along with a coached workout every Tuesday night the entire year. Club membership hit an all-time high, and we ended the year in our strongest financial shape ever. All these accomplishments were made possible by volunteers, which is to say, by you!
Here are a few stats to give you a sense of the breadth and depth of FLRC’s accomplishments in 2023.
- Races: Although we had some challenging weather conditions that forced the cancellation of Super Frosty Loomis and the postponement of Twilight, we put on 23 races during the year with a total of 3,505 finishers from:
- 7 trail races with 728 finishers
- 10 road races with 2,064 finishers
- 6 track meets with 713 finishers
- Cross-country: We coordinated FLRC and High Noon teams in the five-race PGXC series, placing third overall in the Club Cup, behind only the much larger Syracuse Track Club and Checkers Athletic Club (Buffalo). Highlights included:
- 78 runners and 229 race participations for the season
- Pre- and post-season gatherings of roughly 30 people each
- Hosted the third PGXC race at TC3 for 270 runners from around the state
- FLRC’s U19, Super Vets women, and Ultra Vets women won their categories for the series
- 3 FLRC and High Noon runners won their age groups overall for the series, with another 5 placing second and 2 more placing third.
- Group runs: We organized numerous group runs, workouts, and team events with over 2,200 participations for the year, including:
- 22 weeks of MITHACAL MILERS indoor track workouts with 1,101 participations (and lots of kids as part of the Family Running Program)
- 10 weeks of Summer Speed workouts with 175 participations
- 9 weeks of XC workouts with 271 participations
- 9 FLRC Challenge group runs with 212 participations
- 8 weeks of Sunday Skunkday runs with 169 participations
- 14 general group runs with 188 participations
- 6 race course preview group runs with 85 participations
- 150 attendees at the FLRC Annual Picnic in August
- 6 weeks of the Happy Holidays Scavenger Hunt online game in November and December, generating oodles of amusing photos on the forum
- Volunteers: This was our first year of working with the Helper Helper volunteer management system, and it proved tremendously helpful in improving volunteer coordination and communication. (And it’s already making this year’s volunteer setup vastly easier.) Helper Helper also makes it easy to pull out some astonishing stats, such as the following, which don’t even include board meetings, committee meetings, and informal discussions among club leaders:
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- 220 people volunteered for at least one FLRC event, but we had a great collection of super volunteers:
- 50 people volunteered more than 12 hours (1 hour per month)
- 16 people volunteered more than 24 hours last year (2 hours per month)
- 8 people volunteered more than 48 hours last year (4 hours per month)
- 2,232 hours volunteered (over 3 months!), including:
- 360 hours for Skunk Cabbage
- 203 hours for group runs and workouts
- 145 hours for the Turkey Trot
- 141 hours for Trackapalooza
- 129 hours for the Hartshorne Masters Mile
- 120 hours for the Monster Marathon
- 220 people volunteered for at least one FLRC event, but we had a great collection of super volunteers:
- Donations: We donated or helped coordinate $33,140 in charitable donations, including:
- $12,410 for the Friends of Hammond Hill trail work (acted as fiscal sponsor)
- $6,730 for Loaves & Fishes (through Turkey Trot donations)
- $2,000 for the Ithaca Youth Bureau track and cross-country programs
- $2,000 in scholarships for two graduating high school seniors
- $1,550 for an accessible porta-potty on the Dryden Rail Trail from May through October
- $1,500 for a porta-potty on the Black Diamond Trail from May through October
- $1,500 for Wilderness Search and Rescue (for helping at our trail races)
- $1,500 from $500 each to the GIAC Navigators, Groton Sports Boosters, and Lansing Athletics for youth running development programs
- $1,200 to Girls on the Run programs at BJM Elementary School
- $1,000 for the Finger Lakes Trail Conference (Finger Lakes Trail maintainers)
- $950 for the Four Town Ambulance and First Aid (the profits of the Fillmore 5K)
- $800 for the Cornell Botanic Gardens (in relation to the FLRC Challenge)
- Fundraising: Although most of our donations are funded through income from race registrations, we also offset some of our donations through direct donations from the community. Plus, sponsors (and in-kind donations) made the Hartshorne Memorial Masters Mile and the inaugural year of the Trackapalooza Invitational possible. Thanks to everyone who donated!
- $2780 raised in donations during race registrations
- $400 raised for the trail porta-potties
- $9500 raised from track sponsors
- FLRC Challenge: In its third year, the FLRC Challenge once again gave numerous local runners structure for their running from April to August. Some stats from the leaderboard:
- 173 signups, with 140 people completing at least one course
- 98 completions
- 4 completions of the FLRC 100K Ultra Challenge
- 2,602 total runs logged
- 12,623 miles covered
- 874 run report “star posts” from participants sharing with the community
- $1,564 awarded across 201 prizes to 44 athletes
- Online presence: As much as we’re all about interacting in person, an online presence is essential in today’s world. Accomplishments include:
- Grew the FLRC Forum to 1,245 members, up 263 from last year
- Hosted 4,300 forum posts for the year
- Racked up more than 378,000 page views on the forum
- Increased the size of our photo library by 26 albums and 6,889 photos
- Media coverage: FLRC featured in three local media articles in the last year:
- A Challenge for Runners (Ithaca Times)
- FLRC’s Turkey Trot raises record amount for Loaves & Fishes (Tompkins Weekly)
- IHS Track Heads Indoors (Ithaca Times, technically 2024, but about 2023 actions)
- Club governance: With hard work behind the scenes, we:
- Massively increased club membership from 656 last year to a record 872 at the end of 2023 (and it’s now at a new all-time high of 897!)
- Managed over $147,000 in investments, the proceeds from which helped fund FLRC’s philanthropic efforts
- Brought in four new board members to replace departing members and fill gaps in the board’s skills, experiences, and demographics
Now let’s see what we can do together in 2024!