by
Mark Jimenez
I love what I do. I love being in Las Vegas.
I get to talk to owners of stores like Red Rock Running Company around the country. Often the topic of conversation turns to seasonality. Running stores around the country are often victims of the weather. There just aren’t many people outside running when it is below freezing and there is ice on the road.
We don’t have that problem in Las Vegas. You’d think we slow down in the summer, but we remain pretty consistent all year round.
We do have two very busy times, though: Track season and Cross Country season.
Usually we have shoe nights for high schools around the valley. We bring them in after closing and offer a unique discount for track spikes or running shoes. It’s always a good time, but it can be exhausting. Sometimes we have 5 of these in a row, and staff staying until 8pm and then repeating for 5 days can be a very difficult experience! This year I decided to try something different. One event where all the kids could come to us.
Track Festival was born.
Free t-shirts from Track Festival
We partnered with Nike to head out to Coronado High School where we set up a pop-up shop. But we didn’t stop there. We had a DJ to keep the energy level up, free pizza and donuts for the kids, a free t-shirt for showing up, and a glam station where kids could glam up their spikes. Our partner Nike went above and beyond, helping us to organize everything and make sure the day went smooth.
Like any first time event, we weren’t sure how many people would show up. We put a lot of work into this event and we advertised it on Social Media and we put the word out to coaches. We brought every single track spike we had in our stores to the event to get things going! And because we don’t do anything half way, the event was the same day as our Swipe Right event! We started at 7am with Swipe Right and then Track Festival started at 2pm!
As the clock got closer to 2pm we had our tent set up and ready to go. We still weren’t sure how many kids would show up, but we were excited to put our best foot forward for the kids of the valley.
The pop-up store ready to go!
As we were about to get started Kory Anderson, president of the Southern Nevada Track and Cross Country Coaches Association (say that three times fast) texted me and said, “they’re practically lined up around the school!”
The doors opened and we were off to the races.
People coming into track festival
We were non-stop busy from 2pm until about 5:15pm! The event was scheduled to end at 5:30pm. Everything went smooth, except for some reason our payment processor slowed down so people had to stay in line a little bit longer than they wanted. That being said, there were lots of activities for the kids to do. Nike had demo spikes and there were blocks setup at Coronado for the kids to practice on the track. Nike brought games like Cornhole and Slammo. Some of the kids every brought a football to throw around!
Cornhole at Track Festival
There were so many smiles on so many faces! I was absolutely amazed at how the kids went crazy at the glam station, glamming up their spikes for the season. What an adventure it was!
We can’t wait to do this again next year, maybe even at two locations! We love supporting our youth, and we can’t think of a better way. Thank you to everybody who came out to track festival and helped us with this great time! Thank you to the volunteers who made this possible!
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Every Run is a Good Run
