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What We Do in the Winter

Someone asked, "what the heck do you and your crew do in the winter"? Well, I'm glad you asked. If you want to know more about what we're up to off-season, here's a snapshot. 

Personally, I get up with the sun so when winter creeps in so I sleep in, then I work late into the night. I go cross-country skiing after work whenever I can. That said, the work doesn't stop and organizing our events is full-time for me. I did take a two-week holiday for the first time since before Covid - I'm not sure if it helped or not because now I have 500 unread emails! :S 
 
Most of our crew are seasonal, with a few exceptions. Kirsti, who joined us in 2022, is the only other full-time person on the Sin Crew right now, and she handles the bulk of our social media and email inquiries, as well as project work. Alana is plugging away on fulfilling orders from our online shop. Cary gets busier in the winter as we have our year-end in November; he's swamped now. Lynn manages our shop but it's all tidied up with all of our gear stashed away, so she's working on updating our OHS plan. 
 
PERMITS – We spend a lot of time on permits, talking with landowners, and just brainstorming what to do next. With a full season of five races in different locations, we need separate permits from about 12 different jurisdictions or offices. On top of that, we have to contact a lot of public stakeholders. This could be anyone from grazing lease holders, to clubs that maintain trails, to logging companies. And any time we make a change to a route, the process starts almost from scratch, so there is a lot of incentive to keep the courses the same each year. Plus, each jurisdiction has different requirements, such as Parks vs. Public Lands. It's generally straightforward but does take time. 
 
PLANS – We also have lots of terrible ideas of what to do to racers.... er, I mean great ideas to innovate our events. We take a look at these ideas when they come up and decide if they can be implemented immediately. If they can't, we put a pin in it until the following year. I'm a big believer in SMART goals, so ideas stay as ideas until they become specific, measurable (this is a hard one), achievable, realistic, and timely. We have so many ideas but we're just a wee group of people with lots of passion for what we do, so we have to reign in it a lot. 
 
SOURCING – Our race season usually has around 3,000 to 3,500 competitors, and we really pride ourselves on having useful, quality swag. Sourcing wicked stuff for that many people takes A LOT of time. In order to get even the right amount of shirts, given that supplier issues now seem to be the norm, means planning way ahead. We've already booked shirt fabric from a supplier for the season! We're doing all custom shirts again this year since the major brands we dealt with previously seem to have wildly variable stock. So we're cutting out the middle-man and teaming up directly with manufacturers. 
 
RACER STUFF – Staying in touch with our racers is a big part of our day-to-day. No question goes unanswered (just give me a month or to, mm-kay). We also run our 
 
Believe it or not, we're still dealing with a lot of fallout from the Covid shutdowns and restrictions. That includes deferrals, not to mention all of the financial stuff. 
 
FUN – We do take time in the winter to get out and explore, and a lot of that is done on our courses.
 
So that's kind of what we're up to right now. It's a long process but we love what we do.



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