Endurance Live in San Diego

I got an ad soliciting space to the Endurance Live show in San Diego this weekend. Yishai attended last year and said it was pretty small and probably not really worth going.

This year, with the help of the ever intrepid Garret Bean, we got California Adventure Racing Association, Desert Dash, SB Timing, and Renegade Racing to team up with us to host a booth there. It was supposed to be bigger and better and we thought it would be a great way to promote AR and our other events.

But talk about information overload. Each of the directors wanted their stuff hocked, and there were only three of us. And very limited space.

I had a whole design concept on how to draw attention to the booth (and if that fails, I have fuzzy poi balls to swing around and swag to hand out), but more stuff = overstimulation. So here’s what the booth ended up looking like:

Here’s Yishai modeling its good looks. We were set up next to “Team Challenge” for colitis and Crohn’s disease and they didn’t have a lot of attractant for their booth so we gave them lots of Snickers Marathon bars to give away (people like freebies).

If you look at the sign to the right, you’ll see I did a little whiteboard thing, and it says, “Like TRI? Screw Ironman, try AR.”

Yishai did some on-the-hoof engagement and I guess that pissed off some of the tri folks, but the whole point of it was to engage them. Even if they’re mad, find out why we say that?

Why did we say that?

Well, if you are looking for less structure, more fun, and more adventure, AR can be very approachable. The 2-4 hour sprints can be done by most as long as you can ride a bike decently.

BUT, if you’re looking to do something rough? Nothing beats a good 12-hour race, and that’s just the start? We’ve had past Ironman finishers tell us that our races definitely beat that experience if you want it to.

Seems like AR is a great way to get people who are tired of the same ol’ to keep pushing it, and we’re trying to tap into that.

Anyway, it was pretty fun, if not tiring. We made some great connections, hocked AR to the hilt, and I think people were genuinely glad to see us there. I just hope that in the end, everyone involved makes a return on the investment we put in. Booths are not cheap. Not to mention the BS charges for unloading and loading stuff up.

Also, I used to be really tolerant of cities, but I’m not. Driving the event F250 around was a test of my nerves! I ended up driving around PETCO park like four times, and while it’s beautiful – I JUST WANT TO GET STUFF LOADED AAAAHHH!

Anyway, if you were there, please let us know how you liked our booth!

Garret and Kristin say “what up!”