I have taken some time to thing about what Russ has said in the previous post.  It turns out that New Jersey is in our conference and I did not take that into account.

here is the Northeast conference:

It turns out that Colby is 8 hours from princeton and syracuse.  This is a long distance for teams to travel for conference championships.  

Since this is a pilot season and we only have a month left, how does everybody feel about the following schedule:

#1 (9/3)  Boston Tri - Sprint - MA (season warmup)

#2 (9/10) Finger Lakes - Olympic - NY

#3 (9/17) HammerFest - Sprint - CT

#4 (9/23) Colby tri - Sprint - ME (regional championship)

And with the notion that only three of the four races count towards the series.  This will give teams the ability to choose one of the first 3 races to skip.  So three races in four weeks should not be too much.  If this feels overwhelming just let me know.  I am not sure how else to handle the fact that we only have a month after school starts and before the weather becomes unbearable.  

The longman/longwoman race will be moved over the summer, starting in 2007.  This will give a much better separation for those who want to compete in both competitions (the series and the long).  Sorry for the confusion for those who have not been informed in the competitions.  I will give a little run down in the end of the email.  For next year we can look for races that occur more in the middle such as Hammerfest for the conference champs.  The current situation is that we are getting great support from the Colby tri, it is cheap and it will be the ideal venue for the conference championship. 

Next year if Hammerfest will be up for giving a discount then we can look into that as being the conference championship.  Currently Hammerfest is $65 and Colby is $20.  Also there is already a host hotel at Colby offering a discounted rate.  This information is on the Colby tri website:

www.colby.edu/triathlon

I think it will be a great idea to get the pilot season going because it will help us to establish a 2007 season.  Also we can get a better understanding of which schools have teams in the conference.