Hello Knoxville Track Club members… and friends! We are excited to make the stories and articles from Footnotes, our award winning newsletter, available to everyone - not just members. For 30 years, we’ve shared news, training tips, race recaps, and numerous other features with the membership. We’ve decided we should really share these articles with the entire running community. For my first message, I’m going to tweak and rerun the note I wrote at the beginning of 2022…
The Knoxville Track Club continues be put on races, support local athletes, volunteer, and do all the other things that support our mission to encourage life-long physical well-being through running and walking as we try to realize our vision of “Healthy living, healthy community – one step at a time.”
Towards those ends, I will be challenging the staff, the board of directors, our members and friends, to help us achieve those goals. One way to think about an organization is by dividing its activities into three areas: Run the Business, Grow the Business, and Transform the Business. For us, we’ll tweak those labels, but the principles apply.
Running the Club is about the core activities and all the things that come to mind when you think of the KTC. We’ll put on road and trail races - including our premier event the Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon. RunKNOX training will help runners achieve their goals throughout the year. We’ll support local athletes like those running team relays or representing the Tennessee Running Club. We’ll provide operational and timing services to non-KTC races. We’ll do all the behind the scenes work to maintain our status as a non-profit organization. Running the Club is all about executing well.
Growing the Club is just that - adding members to the roll, increasing the number of participants at races, growing the RunKNOX training group, signing-up more volunteers to support the other activities, etc. These are the incremental changes that will allow the Knoxville Track Club to have a greater impact in the community.
And here is the first call to action…
Transforming the Club is the most exciting area, but also potentially the most difficult. These are the activities where the Knoxville Track Club tries something new. For us, we are still trying to figure out what this might be. Is it developing a deep partnership with another organization that has similar goals? Is it a capital project like building a community track? Or working with the University of Tennessee to support the Track and Field team? What can we do to fulfill our mission of encouraging life-long physical well-being through running and walking? How do we enable our vision of “Healthy living, healthy community – one step at a time?” How do we give back to the community?
The second call to action…
With an amazing 60 year history, the Knoxville Track Club has a tremendous foundation to build upon. I’m excited to see how it grows and transforms in the future!