Today on the merch editor podcast episode number 31. I just directed a local mountain bike race that took place in a quiet little park just off the Washington DC Beltway. It might be hard to believe that Washington DC metro area has any quiet parks. However, Wakefield Park is 1 of those hidden destinations that only the locals know about. Don't tell anybody. And it is a must for anyone looking to mount bike gear. If you're lucky, you can plan your recreation, vacation,
just in time that you can race here too. Every summer, the Potomac Veela Club turns 4 Wednesday afternoons in a row into a Acura bike fest. They can only have 1 name. And the name, of course, is Wednesdays at Wakefield.
Now on its 15th year, Wednesday's Wakefield is 1 of the few midweek mountain bike races in the country, and I'm gonna take you behind the scenes of the first of the 4 races in the series. And give you some insights on what goes on inside the race director's head. Yeah. That's my head. It's kinda like a podcast lobotomy. A podbotomy. A podbotomy. Whatever. Get ready, get set. Let's go.
Greetings. I am your local neighborhood recreational engineer, Kyle Bondo. And as the Rechinir I'm here to help make the art and science a race promotion understandable and simple for those race promoters who didn't major in business. And today, we're gonna do something very special. I'm gonna take you inside Wednesdays at Wakefield. This is a race that I've been the official director of for the past 5 years, but have been involved with for
jeez. I think it's going on 10 now. And it became 1 of the races that I kinda cut my teeth with way back in the day when I was a a fledgling member of the Potomac Veela Club. And this is a race series that takes place. On Wednesdays, this is kind of a strange time for it to take place. You get off of work. You come to this race. And it's the, what, 5 o'clock in the afternoon. You do you do, what, 2 or 3 laps or a 5 mile course. And you go home. Go, you know, go have a beer. Go get a burger.
And that's it. It's not a race that takes place on a Saturday morning. It's not a race that takes place on a Sunday morning. It is a racing suite placed on a Wednesday afternoon where you don't have to worry about what to do for the weekend. You could race in the weekday and have your weekend's free. That's the beauty of a midday race, a midweek race. So I'm gonna get you familiar with the pieces and moving parts of Wednesday's Wakefield.
This is a pretty high level overview of kinda what I'm thinking at the time of putting the race together, the kind of the the checklist I'm going through. And then the aftermath of the race, and all the things that took place before and after. To give you an idea of what it's like to do kind of the the race operations, to be the race director, and kinda puts you in that place
to give you some insight. So hopefully, this gives you some pretty good insight into just high level race direction activities that you could then apply to your own
racing and that you could help build yourself better races just by seeing kind of behind the scenes how everyone does else does it. And when you find out how everyone else does it, that's when you realize that it's really not rocket science. It's really not like the secret sauce. It's not a secret community society of, you know, secret handshakes and chants and rituals. It's a lot of just good old fashioned, process work, preplanning, and time management.
That is really the essential pieces of race direction, is keeping everything in check and making sure everything is in its place. And then as the operation goes on, it's like it's almost like orchestrating a concert. You know when this instrument plays and when that instrument plays, you know, when this has to come in, when that has to go away, and when to stop. That is really the essential pieces of race direction is knowing
what the schedule is and making sure everything stays on course. And of course, the other thing is, of course, the ambiguity that you have to deal with too, is you never know what the heck is gonna happen. There's some crazy stuff that happens at these races. Some things that you never expect in a 1000000 years And they all happen and you have to be be prepared and be able to have that frame of mind to adapt to an ever changing environment of of things you cannot plan for.
So give you some insight into it. I'll take you through what we do before. What we do after, and then some lessons learned. I hope you learn something from this. So when you're planning a race, there is so many moving parts, especially when you have to consider what you need to have out of your garage and in your car to go to the race and have it there so you don't have to come back. And if you live far away from where the race is at, you have to be very very clear on what you have to do.
So in this race series that I'm directing that's coming up, it's the day before the race. Right now, it's a day before the race. So we're gonna look at this race director's dilemma in our in our first part of tales from the race director We're gonna look at what it is that I need to have going on. So let's talk about where we've already been.
So The course is already decided. We decided to use the course. It's a mountain bike course. We decided to use the same course as last year. It's a 5 mile course. Done at at Wakefield Park in in Annandale, Virginia. And this course is a fan favorite, local favorite. We get probably 500 unique registrations over a 4 week race. And it's called Wednesdays at Wakefield because it's done.
Guess you'll never guess. Exactly. It's done on Wednesdays. So Wednesday afternoon, when everyone gets done with work, if they can survive the traffic, they come to Wakefield. They either have preregistered. If you preregistered, we gave 3 races for the price of 4. So you got it. And it's only 20 bucks a race, so we're doing very low ball. With the club sport. It's done. Very grass roots, very boot strappy. We only have a couple sponsors. 1 is the bike lane at the bike lane.com.
Which is a local bike shop run by a Todd and Mater. And so they've donated to some some prizes. We have our registration at 20 bucks 20 bucks a race is not too bad. Little kids are getting in for 5, so we have a junior's race. So the trails for youth organization runs the the race at 530. So at 530, we have the juniors, which is the super juniors, which is which is what 10 and up. Then we have
male, female, or girl boy, 11, 12, 13, 14. That's for the 530 race. They take a lot of the big big features out. And that becomes the race at 5:30. And then when we get to the next group at 6 o'clock, we have a single speed, and this year we got pooped with single speeds male and female, which was a a new addition. We added a fat bike, but we put that at the end. So for the 6 o'clock race, we have single speed, we have masters 35, masters 45,
and that's male, female. I think Master 45 is open depending on how many people raised that. We have beginners, male, and female, We have another junior class, which is the 15, 16, 17, 18 class. So those are the best of big group that launches at 6 o'clock. They're doing between 1:2 laps. So it takes them about 20:25 minutes a lap. And then at 6:55,
we launched the next group, which is expert men, female, men and women. We do sport men and women. We do Clydesdale, which is the guys who weigh £200 or above. These are giant dudes. They don't wanna race anybody else. So you have the client sales, just special class. And then last year, we started fat bike, which is a a wheelbase of 3.5 inches or wider is considered fat bike category, anything of that, you know, as long as I'm a motor is considered fat bike and you race that, it's a lot of fun. So that is
That is Wednesday's at Wakefield. That's kinda how the system goes. About 7:30, 8 o'clock. We start wrapping up the The expert class, I think the fastest lap we had that last year was 19 minutes. That was done by a guy named Danish. So you have this you have this this very competitive with backyard kind of kind of fight going on with with race direct, with with racing in mountain bike racing cross country. Now, that's that's kind of the format. So how do we put this all together?
Well, the Potomayvila club has a trailer. And in that trailer, we have all our racing equipment, the stakes, and and podium and tables and tents. And we staged that at the racing location. And a couple weeks ago, 1 of the guys in the in the club
uses truck, got the trailer out of storage. We found out the trailer was out of inspections. We had to inspect the trailer. That's something you probably don't plan for. You take the trailer down to down through the river, and the trailer sits there, and that's how
That's how we would stage the event right there by registration. So tomorrow when the race actually kicks off, we'll get there around 4 clock, 3:34 o'clock. We'll set up 1 group will set up parking, which is along a gravel road by by a record recreational center. So we use the gravel side. We don't use the parking lot. We keep out of everyone else's way is going to the gym or going to the pool. So these trails are all behind in a park along a long skinny park along i495
just outside Washington DC. And you wouldn't even know it's there. In fact, you probably drive if you if you live here, you probably drive by it every single day, didn't even know it's there. You go past the tree line. Boom. 510 miles of single track. Shocker. It's amazing where you can fit a park in. Well, Wakefield's like that. It's a long skinny park. It's probably maybe cheese. I don't think it's a 100 acres. It's not very big.
So you have all this single track hiding in there, and it's a nice good network. So what do we do? So we set up parking at setups out in signage. And we have some parking attendants to set up parking, and then we set up registration. We pop some tents, set up the tables, and we've already gone through and got our bib numbers. Now bib numbers, we have to be very careful about the category or the numbers of bib numbers because we use We use a spreadsheet like timing system, which
has a you know, depending on who's using it, as it could be good or bad. And we use paper timing and stopwatches. That's how we control our timing. Because we're only dealing with maybe a 150 erasers a day, given Wednesday, You don't need to have chip timing. It would be great to have chip time. You don't need that total overkill, but you could.
But we use BIIB numbers. So we use the BIIB numbers with pretty good sized numbers. I think we use the rainbow system, whatever. And we have some leftover, some other races. So we're bootstrapping, and so even the branding isn't that right. There isn't correct right now. Could it be better? Sure. We'd love to have Lindsay's Wakefield branded Bibs. Maybe that'll be next year. But Bibs, we're talking about a series of of numbers that range from 1 to 14 1000 or 1400.
That's a lot of bib numbers. You go online and out how much it cost to print that. It's about 253100 bucks. So it's not cheap. It's not super expensive, but it's not cheap. So you have that kind of put together. So we have that that pre packaged, and we do that with preregistration. So all our preregistration, I think we had last time I checked, I think we had 60 or 70 preregistered We're ready for the whole series. So we've got though that preregistration
going on. We have the bib numbers. We already know. We're going to issue out for those people. We've already preloaded them in a registration
Peter. So in that spreadsheet, in our timing system, we already know what we have so far. And the rest is race day. So tomorrow afternoon, there's gonna be a whole bunch of people gonna show up who only like to show up on race day. They don't like to pre reg because they don't know if they're gonna be there for the whole series. So they're only gonna show up for for 1 or 2 races, and that's fine. And that's that's usually how we get, like, a 150 to 200 people standard across the whole series
versus the 500 we get of unique registrations throughout the entire series. So you get you get a core group of people and then you get these these 1 offs. These guys come to 12 races or they come to 12, and then 4, they come to 2 and 3. Or they only come to the last 1, etcetera, etcetera. So that's kind of the totality of it. So what happens next?
So right now, at my at my location, I have the clipboards, the timing sheets, the timing computer, the timing printer, the stopwatches, I have the water jugs that that I need to scrub out. And I have the sound system. So I have the I have the speakers, the microphone we use for and we don't do announcing because
We're not we're not that big and it's bootstraps. So everyone's got a job to do. There's no 1 standing around, you know, talking, which would be great. I mean, for a podcaster, that'd be fantastic. I usually do awards. That's kinda where where I come in at, but I'm I'm also I'm directing the race. I'm making sure the starts are going on making sure the finishing and the timing is taken care quickly and making sure all the volunteers in the right spot. Make sure the core marshals the core marshals are out there. Everyone's got everyone's phone number. The walkie talkies are charged. And we can talk to each other and everyone's re reporting in.
I'm making sure no one's hurt. I'm checking them take taking care of any kind of DNS or do not finishes. And I'm getting results to and from the podium area so that people can register or see the results and find out if they have a discrepancy or they have a complaint every now and then, there's there's a couple I would I beat this guy. I beat that guy. And it's all because the timers,
depending on where they're standing, may see a different kind of race. You have 1 side of the road, sees 2 bikes cross. Well, the other team at the other side of the road sees it the exact opposite, and the team up the road sees it sees them come out of the woods in a different order. But 1 guy sprints fast from the other guy. So you get out of order. And usually these are people who are worried about
9th 10th place, which is fine. And we usually everyone's usually pretty honest about it. People are pretty good moods. A lot of people like, yeah. Yeah. He beat me. Yeah. No big deal. Because we only do podiums up to to 3 places. And that's because, again, 20 bucks a race. Or bootstrap it, so we keep it nice, short and sweet. 3 awards per category, not bad. And then when we have the expert categories,
we give cash purses based upon how many experts actually signed up minus 50%, and that's how we break up the purse. Not a bad not a bad little race, not a bad little deal. And the teams come out. A lot of teams. So Potomac Veela Club, of course, is local team to Fairfax County, But you also get the teams from bike net, which is another bike shop up the street. The bike lane, who's our title sponsor. They bring their team. In fact, they help the the volunteers.
And spaces that we don't have enough PVC people for. You get Wicked Wash comes in. Wicked Wash is a a like, back lack of a better word, is a soap company. Only base specifically sells soap that washes mountain bikes or off road gear whenever you spray it on there, sticks to the dirt, comes off really easy. So we could watch as their own racing team because they're promoting their product. They're, you know, they've got a good good their system going on. You get XXL, and
I think it's called put DC NC or NCDC? I don't know. There are so many of them that I forget who's who sometimes and they go away in the comeback, Phoenix Bikes, which is a nonprofit charity in DC, has a group of kids. They are just awesome, and they are hardcore racers.
They come out, and this is a organization that takes broken bikes and discount bikes and old bikes are with. And they teach the kids how to fix the bike They come out with a team. You get trails for youth. They have a team. You have even the George Mason Cycling Club. Which which I'm up also another
none of my other 1 of my other side gigs. George Mason Cycling Club comes out. So you have George Mason Cycling University, collegiate riders out they're doing their thing. And every now and then, you get, like, some sort of celebrity will show up. We have a Joe Dobrowski shows up because he cut his teeth at Wednesday's at Wakefield. Wednesday's at Wakefield is 1 of those kind of races that sits in 1 of the most populous Suburban areas there is in Washington just outside Washington, DC. It's all sorts of strange personality to show up to these events. So right now, I have to do all the other fixings to get everything good to go. And then after that's done, The race will be tomorrow. I'll load the car, and I'll talk to you after the race tomorrow.
It's the morning of Lindsay's Wakefield race number 1. So what have I done so far? So I have
the volunteer list that was provided for him to me by by another member of the club. I've done all the updates to the computer. This is the last time we did a race. Windows decided to update in the middle of us trying to get registration into the timing computer. That was a huge mistake. Don't let don't let that happen again. I have a car pack. I have a table, 2 chairs. The stanchions for 2 speakers, the sound system, a fan because we learned last year that having a fan there was fantastic. So this one's 90 something degrees in the summertime. 2 saw horses I'm bringing this time. I learned during the collegiate race, the saw horses are really great for hanging hanging signs and things on. I have 4 coolers.
2 gay recoded coolers and 2 water coolers. I found the stopwatches and the clipboards. I found the orange vest, some survey tape, budget garbage bags, I've also discovered the the printer. Now we'll see. This is another thing that that the gotcha. It's the printer ink. Now I'm uncertain whether the printer ink was actually gonna be good or not. The printer ink the printer's in there regardless. I have the computer ready to go. So I've gotten all the updates. I've make sure I'll grab the power cord through the computer. I powered it up all night long, so that one's ready to go. I loaded the files to the computer. So I've got that ready to go. So the car is ready. But volunteer earth's list is ready. And last night, I had found out that a tree came down and there was puddles everywhere
and there were the trail was a mess. 1 of the club members went out there and helped get rid of the tree, cleanups on the trail mess, got rid of the debris. And then we found out that someone took all our arrows down. So we pre we premark the course we were given permission to by the park manager to premark the course 2 weeks prior to the race. So 2 weeks ago, 22 people went out there and put arrows up everywhere. They're yellow cardboard
with a big black arrow on them with our club logo on it, and someone wouldn't pull them all down. So the arrows got all torn down, and we think we know who's doing it. Think there's a local resident who just gets off on this. So someone has to go out and remark all the course. So someone's out there this morning remark in the course. I'm getting ready to go out there myself and I'll catch you up when during the race and then after the race. Alright? So As far as my race promotion
promoter duties are concerned, I believe I have everything ready. The only thing I'd love to do is pick up water and ice for the for the water and the gatorade. I have pretty much all my gear ready to go, plus the gears are restored at the at the location. I have got a my volunteer list, which you guys have it's pretty robust. So I got lots of different people on this list. A lot of the bike lane people came and and volunteered. I have the club members volunteering.
And we'll pick up some volunteers while they're usually, there's always somebody that shows up that didn't volunteer at all who always volunteer in volunteers. But just never responds to any emails or any communication, which is fine because it's a backyard race. Some of these people feel like live there, so they just show up because That's just what they do. It's when there's a way filled. They show up, which is kinda cool. It's kinda cool to have that kind of following where you just have people show up in volunteer where you never expected them to. So you always have at least 2 or 3 volunteers for this race. This is nice having a race that's been going on for 15 years. Actually, I heard that it's more than 15 years, but officially, it's 15 years. This is the 15th anniversary of this race. So with that all said, who have enough people there, have enough gear there, have the race prepped. So, really, the only thing left to do is set up, get our equipment in the right working order configurate, if it configured correctly, and start the race. Now, right now, the weather, the blue skies, partly cloudy, and the weather report told me that it's gonna be roughly
85 degrees out today. It's gonna be a nice day for racing. Thunderstorms later in the evening. Now our last race starts at 6:55 PM. So it's 65 PM. It's kind of the evening. It's kind of sketchy. So we'll find out, hopefully, we'll get and that's usually the it's expert sport, Clidel Fatbike. We'll get those guys launched. And that usually that race usually takes about an hour. To an hour a half. So if we're done by 8:30, awards podium.
Everyone out packed up and ready to go by 9 PM. And we miss the thunderstorms, then we're perfect. This is like a Wakefield. This is a weird place just outside DC where thunderstorms hit all around, but never there. Rarely do they hit there. So it's just really interesting place where you have to because you're looking at your office window,
at 4 in the afternoon right before you get off work to go come to this race. You see it pouring down rain. It's to the park. It's dry. It's a weird place. We always take with a grain of salt, the weather, and we usually give weight until about 3 o'clock to tell everybody that raises on or not. So at 3 o'clock, I will send out the communication via Twitter, via Facebook, and via email that the race is on. So that's that's the plan. That is
that is really all less than I'm left to do as we do this because the 1st race is usually the shakeout race. This is where you find out where the problems are. So when I talk to you again, we will have done the race and I have understood what is going what went wrong, what went right and kind of evaluate that. Alright? I'll see you in the next segment. So race number 1 has been completed. So let's let's talk a little bit about what happened. So loader the gear into the car,
the sound system, the table, most of the timing equipment. So I'm usually just on from the timing equipment. Everything else is already out at the field and what's not there, the registration stuff. That's the it's controlled by another another member of the staff. So the registration is being stored at 1 place. The timing is being stored at my at my place. And the not perishable, I guess, you could say, or maybe that unexpensive, the inexpensive gear stakes
and tables and chairs and the podium. That's all kept in a trailer at the venue, which has been is something that the park gave us permission to do. So we have a We have a Hallmaster trailer that sits at the at the venue. It's got a couple padlocks on it. So it's not the most secure thing, but if they broke into it, I mean, they're stealing tables and chairs. That's yeah. Okay. I mean, someone's stealing tables and chairs. It would suck.
But it's it's not computers, it's not high speed equipment, it's not people's data. So it's basically just a shed with wheels. So that's all that's all there. So I put this stuff into my into my car, drove to the venue. So you got to the venue quite quite early. So the first race kicks off at 5:30. That's a junior's race. That's super junior's tenant under 13, 14, 15, 16. That's run by an organization called trails for kids.
So that that's set up by Pat and Julie Childers. And they have they have their tent and their setup. Only thing they need from us is the Bib numbers. So they they can give their kids to BIP numbers. They have volunteers right with the kids. That sets up at 5:30. We kick off our 1st race at 6 o'clock, That's single speeds, masters, beginners, juniors, 15, 16, 17, 18, and I think that's it. Yeah. That's it for for pretty much the the 6 o'clock race. Then at 6:55,
We do the, I guess, you call it, the premier race. We have the experts with a sport class. We have Clydesdale, and we have Fatbike, which is a 3 and a half inch tire tire wider. 3 and a half inches are a wider tire. And client sales are £200
or above weight, for the writer. And both of those are open class. So men and women both can go in there, but it's always I think except for the exception of maybe 1 Fatback writer who was a woman most of those categories are done by men. They're usually just giant guys who can't compete with some 5 foot tall little tiny guy on a carbon fiber who goes super fast. So Clazale is a class for for just giant guys. So they can race against other giant guys makes it fair.
Okay. So so arrive there about 3 o'clock, and I'm not the first 1 there. Pete Daily, the other member of her team, is already out there, and he's already gone through the course. And then going through the course, he's discovered that the Arrow Band had struck again. Took all our arrows down. And, yeah, let's just left left us a note this time saying that he didn't see any any
any signage that claimed there was a race going on, so he didn't feel that the arrows should be up. What a pal. And we totally knew who this guy this guy is. We've re affectionate referred to him as the arrow bandit, but we're starting to call him Mister Murphy because he likes to mess with our race. So it's perfect. He is the embodiment of Mister Murphy.
And more about him later. So we've redone all the arrows and redone the tape, and the 3:3:30. We set up timing. And right around that time, Jim Carlson arrives, and we have our first little meet decide to do we have enough volunteers? Do we have enough gear? A couple more volunteers arrive. And about 4 o'clock, we have most of the venue built It's usually
2 tables up front, a table behind those 2 tables. So those 2 tables up front are registration. That's where BIP numbers go. That's repay for your for your race. Behind that is a the card table where we put the registration computer. So as the waivers are being signed, they hand back to the registration person to put them into registration. We have another table off to the side where waivers are signed, so big Stack of waivers go there. And we're using USA Cycling's noncompetitive
waiver Let's see. I think I I have 1 right here. It's called Yeah. It's the USA Cycling competitive and non competitive release form. Because we're a USA Cycling club, we can we can use these forms. Even though this is not a USA Cycling sanctioned event, It's a training event in a sense, you know, it's a backyard race. You know, we're not keeping points away. You don't need a license. There's no, you know, there's no cat 123. We do our own cats.
That's the setup of the venue. So we have registration setup, we have timing setup, we have the flag setup starting line. We have the course marked, course tape, and we're usually done before 4:30 at the latest 5 o'clock, but usually 4:30, 4:4:30, we're ready to go. Turning music on. So you have music. People start showing up. So the kids guys are get get registered for racing or ready to go. So
In race number 1, that all went very smoothly. Plenty of volunteers showed up. Lot of racers showed up. We started getting we had the podium up and everything to go. Trails for youth people were there. Everything was was was rocking and rolling. So then we got to about a 6 bridges here for 6 o'clock. Made a couple announcements, close registration, sent sent racers over to the start line. Race started getting the racers set up for the start line. Lined up single speeds off they go.
Lined up masters 35 off they go. Masters 45 was huge. Something like 48, 47, 48 erasers. That's a lot of racers. So that group was was massive. And when you're starting off on just a dirt road, that then turns into single track. It's only like 4 bikes wide the most realistically. You could be 4 bikes abreast relatively 2 because it's a it's a fire road. So you've got, like, the grass in the middle and the 2 the 2 ruts where the tires go for a vehicle.
But made it work off they go. Then we launched we launched them the women group at Masters 35. And then for the first time, single speed women, which is a big deal. So did single speed women launch them, got the juniors launched, then the beginners, because the beginners launch, beginner men, beginner women. That was it. About 6 what? 6:12. Everyone's launched. Go over to timing.
Check my stopwatch to the time and computer to make sure we're on this right track at the right times. It's a it's a pretty close timing system. It's not a spot on timing system. It's not near real time. It's not RFID. It's not super precise,
but it's close enough. I mean, It's a backyard race. A lot of people are using their straub or their garmin to record their times anyway. As long as we get placements, placements key. Time not so much is not is not the critical piece. Time would be great, and we try to get as much as good as good as we can with timing. But realistically, it's placement. Placement is key.
So although we record times on the computer by using just tabular data and excel spreadsheet because you could call it application. Thanks both. Sell spreadsheet with a lot of formulas in it. That just kinda helps compute the time and placements.
We do that, but we also do paper timing. We use 3 paper teams. So we have a paper team up to where they come out of the single track for the final time on along the road. That's where the timing tent is. You got a good nice, good straight away. See him coming. We do timing on the computer. We do timing with another paper team, and then we do 1 individual who's usually 1 of the the senior individuals. Which is
a gentleman from the bike lane. His name is Mark. And then we have Jim who's doing who could do that as well. They're doing top 3 only. And the reason we do that because if timing completely
goes off the radar, if the computer crashes or nothing works or it's a bad data entry, which usually is the biggest problem. Number 1, probably have timing is human error, then we have the top 3. If we know 123, so if we have to do a podium with 123 and no other results, we can do that. So we have the minimum for an award ceremony, you know, at the event.
Now, sure. I could take all the data, and as I crunch the data, look at the numbers, I can usually find out what are people rather than putting in 1 6 or 8 16 put in 8 10 because the corners rolled up and it looked like a 0 I can usually figure that kind of stuff out. Usually, the racers will come up and say, you know, I think I was before this guy or I looked at the results online, and I'm not on there. Can find the anomalies. They'll they'll they'll self report, which is nice.
But you don't want to have to do that. So at least they got the top 3. And top 3 is someone standing there and knows that that's the 1st writer. That's the 2nd writer as a 3rd writer. And they're certain those are the big numbers that came across. That way, all the other results regardless of what kind of bad data entry we have is taken care of. So we did the 1st race, 6 o'clock race. They all came through. And right as the 6 o'clock race is ending, right around 6:55,
we line up the next race. So we redo the tape because we're all using the same they're using the same road kinda like the backbone of the park where we start diverting people off to 1 side. And then we start people back at the start line where we started the 1st race. So if you picture this, you've got a lot of bikes lining up at the start line, and then behind them are bikes finishing. So big 2 big groups and use a piece of use some tape and some some stakes to kind of
redirect the traffic so that we're running into the start. And then we launch the start. So that's experts in sport go off. And then we have we have client sales launch, and then at the end, come the fat bikes. And the fat bikes is is a new category, 1 I created last year. So fat bikes is fun. The first time we did with 1 bike, This time, it's 6, which is fantastic. So, you know, it's kind of a niche, you know, category,
but we do it, and it's fun and people show up with their fat bikes. Can't ask for more. So they launch and off they go. Right around this time, we're talking like 7 PM now. And 7 PM, they'll load summertime. Starting to get a little dark. Sun's starting to go down. We still got about an hour a half as before sunset. Starting to to go down. So I have people out on the course with handheld HF radios.
So I'm communicating with them. They're watching the particular places where they either have There's couple spots where they have good venue observation. They can see lots of chunks of the track, or they're in places where I'll get the neighboring community. We'll walk on to the course, and then we can put someone there to warn them that there's bikes flying through. And we're only there from what? 6 to 8. Usually, the the 2nd race starts ending about 8, 8:15, 8:30. We're about done.
Then we have the last rider come across. That is that is what? 2 a half hours. If you had the junior kids, that's 3 hours. From 5:30 to 8:30, we're on the way to the park, and we're using a a big chunk of the trail. And then we're gone. It's on a weekday.
So we're not hogging up the weekend. We're out of people's way. We use the trail, and we're out. And we're out there fixing the dang trail anyway. We're fixing the potholes and taking out the trees. We make the park better, and then we get to use the park for 3 hours on a Wednesday 4 times in the summer.
Not a bad deal. Not a bad exchange for keep in the park maintained because with with more the Mid Atlantic offer enthusiasts, which is the the International Mountain Bike Association's chapter in Northern Virginia. In our club to my field club, and the bike lane, which is a bike shop, which is our title sponsor for the race and for a sponsor for Potomac field club by itself.
And you get bike netics, which is just down the street, which come and the wicked watch who come. So you have a pretty good group of people who show up routinely to fix the trails who come and raise. So you got a lot of team elements, a lot of individual elements, all packed together in a good backyard kind of environment, which is nice. So that is the info. That is the how this race kind of worked out. About let's see. So the 6 o'clock race right around let's see. So I launched the 655
just shortly after that. Could finally get the finishes I go to the timing tent. I get the results. Of course, every time you go to get the results, the results people are like, well, some things went wrong and So you have to get the printouts and you take the printouts and you look at the what happened and what didn't happen. You kind of jive whatever that is. You look at the top 3 results. I know what top 3 is. I have a pretty good idea while the rest lined up. Do some pin and ink changes to make it look right. Go and post them on the board. And by posting them on the board, people can see they go up, they take pictures, they look at it. It's not official.
It's official ish. And definitely is a huge place where we can improve. But that's the place where we go to to she'll result in allow people to come, you know, like, oh, I was ahead of this guy or this guy was I was actually not there. I'm not actually number 3 of number 2 or number 1. Or number 15, why am I in a second? Things like that. Then we use the top 3 results. So most times,
give few few complaints. We're pretty spot on, especially the paper time, we're pretty spot on. We got paper timing down pat. It's the computer stuff we're still working out. That's fine. Miles of paper stuff's right. Enough to have an award ceremony. So at 7:30, I launched the 1st the 2nd race. Get the timing. Come up post them. No 1 complains about 7:30. We have an awards ceremony. And the bike lane provided us with park tools and tires and pumps and the the tubeless
stands and stuff for for it's a mountain bike race. See a mountain bike stuff. Alright? So we have all the gear from mountain bike stuff. Plus, we have we have metals for certain categories, cheap, possibly junior categories. We get up there. We name the people. Everyone claps. They come up there. Get their photo off the podium. Next group, read all the groups, and we're done. And usually
half of that group sticks around to watch the 2nd race. In fact, some people that are announced as awards are in the 2nd So they race the 1st race as a warm up for the 2nd race. That's pretty hardcore. Some of these guys are pretty hardcore. So you get to you get some you know, there's not there. He's not racing. So you try to hold that award ceremony as long as possible. To try to get the people finishing the 2nd race to get a chance, but doesn't always happen. And that's fine.
So they come around. And and a lot of times, some of these people who get 2 awards don't even take the 2 awards. You know, they're not here for awards. They're here to have fun and hang out with their friends. And, you know, allegedly drink beer. So they they do the awards ceremony has sick around half leave. So the spectator group definitely diminishes.
Right? But it becomes a little it's a little darker. People are out. People sort of you know, have a good time. There's a there's a gaggle place, right, where people are finishing,
where the spectators like to stand, except for the other place, which is like the stream crossing and stuff where people like to stand. To take photos. So you gotta have photographers come out and take photos of all sorts of things. So you have photographers taking photos. They're looking for Rex, but, you know, they get some good shots too. You have the spectators waiting for their friends to finish. And right around 8:30 or so, everybody's done.
So we do the results again just like the 1st race. The results come up to the board. Get a chance for people to complain or make comments. Usually just maybe 1 or 2. But we fix that. We do the award ceremony about 8:30. Call out their names. Everyone comes up. The only exception to the word summary for prizes is experts. Experts, we give cash. So we take the amount of people that actually came in as a reschedule expert.
We divide that by half. They take that half, and divide that into thirds. And usually, it's it's like a 50% 2525. So that becomes the checks. Potomayvula Club is in isn't it has a, you know, because the bank account. So we write So it's a an official check with his Potomie Funeral Club across the top. So it's, you know, it's a real cash money. It's not cash cash. It's it's a check cash. So we have to have to have to have total transparency for for our finances.
And then those people are given checks. And then once they're giving checks, usually do the experts last because, you know, save the they're the best for last, I guess. They do their big podium shot, and then we say, thanks for coming. Hope you come to the next 1. Next 1 is on this date. Appreciate it. Get some verification of volunteers. And about 60, 70 percent of people split.
So what's that left? So left is the whatever volunteers you have left, who've already started taking down tents, taking down tables, putting away the cords, the the tension cords of the generator, generated some music's plan around 8:30, about 8:35. Actually, the word ceremony is over. Music goes off. You know, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
He gets all the teardown, all everything back in the trailer, goes in the trailer, everything goes in the gym's car, goes in Jim's car, everything goes in my car, goes in my car. And about 8:55, 9 o'clock. You pour out ice. You got the garbage bags taken care of. You picked up all the trash. Of course, every race, I find something new. This time was a camelback. Found a nice little nice little camelback, I'm sure, and the the race number 2,
I'm going to announce that, you know, hey. I found a camelback, and that the owner will come up. And, like, that's where it went every time. Sunglasses, sunglasses, bottles, and backpacks. Those are the key. 1 time we found a bike and next race, the guy came and got a bike. So these are the kind of things that happen in a race. When everyone splits, They forget what they brought. They forget their stuff. Camp chairs.
I've done camp chairs too. I found, oh, usually you find the owners for most of it. Some people just never come back. So at the end of the series, no 1 claims it. It goes in the the lost and found box.
So in the lost and found box, usually if people want it, they have it. And if not, it goes in the trailer for the next year. We've had people come the year after and say, you know, I left some sunglasses here, like, last race. You don't have a loss of bound box, dude. I do. It's full of all sorts of knickknacks and pattywacks. So that's the kind of thing for that. So about 8:55, 9 o'clock,
We're we're we're walking the venue. We're looking for garbage. We're looking for anything on a gear wheel loft. The sun has gone down. It's dark. So right around the time the the last awards ceremony takes place and the time we're finished packing up and locking the locking the our mobile shed the trailer. We are in the dark. And so when that's done and that's the race, we have to go through the road, to pick up all the signs along the road, throw the garbage away,
and go home. And that's it. That is the end of race 1. So getting home after race 1, first starts off with unloading the car, and you're exhausted, and you're covered in dirt and sweat and bug bites. And you smell funny, and all the gears got dirt on it. And the coolers have gatorade in it, so the coolers gotta be washed out. You have to unload everything, put it in the garage. You realize that the minute you start unloading things, that the things you took to the race that morning,
are not in the car. So, hopefully, they're in Jim's truck or they're in the the trailer. They're somewhere. But you always you leave with stuff. You don't come back with it all. And then you got some extra things, I think, this time. Someone forgot a camelback. So in 1 of my buckets, I had a camelback. So we'll figure out race 2, who that belongs to. So you go through all this, like, decompression of all the gear you put out and make sure you have the vital things.
In this case, I have I was given all the waivers I have the race results that I posted up that are covered in duct tapes. You got a pillows apart to know what you told people what the race results were, and I have the timing computer. So I have a majority of all the pieces to build a results list. So a lot of times, post race the day of the night coming back from the race is decompression time. Give it some time. Let it sit for a minute. Go enjoy some family. Go,
rest, relax, eat some food, watch some TV, just let the race just be. Just let it be. And the next day, That's when you come at results. That's when you kind of you've you've kinda let it sit. You pull apart all your papers. You pull out your timing, and you start putting together a race list. Now what I do is I use Google Docs. So I'll open Google Docs, a 1 of the spreadsheets and Google Docs. I'll look at the Excel spreadsheets on my computer.
And I'll start moving things around now. Because I've done this to race for many, many, many years, I have pre existing templates of all my race categories in there. But this year, we had single speed women, and that was a change. So we had to add, you know, we gotta add a new column. We gotta add some new formulas in there and make sure your sums add up correctly. Then you have to go through and compile all the results you have into the spreadsheets.
And this is a simple data transfer. I download the Excel file off of the computer and put the data into the spreadsheet. Then I go and look at the paper file. What did I tell people at the race? What are they expecting to see? So I go through those results and look at, do they match? Do the times I told people, versus the times that are in the computer the same. And most times it is. The majority of problems I have with race result is is data entry.
This is when the timers see a plate come across the finish line that says 816,
Only it's not 8 16. It's 8 10. It just happened. The little corner got turned up or the bib the bib was just turned the wrong way. Can't see it. It looks like a 10. Caller calls out a 10. The timer is looking at the keyboard. Can't look up and see if it's a mistake. So these mistakes in all the time. Looking at their computer, I found out that 810 was put in there 4 times. Decoupling some of these data errors is part of how you do this. Part of how you you reconstruct the results and you get a 90%,
95% there. And it's the parts that you don't get there that you have to go to your paper timers. The paper timers with 3 teams set up I have an idea. First, I know top 3 because we did that. And usually, top 3 is also collecting usually doing top 10, but don't tell anybody.
But we do have top 3. So I have those. And then I have paper timers to tell me what order they came across the finish line and what order I should have them listed. So I have an understanding of how their races put together. I may not have exact seconds, but I have minutes, and I have bib numbers in the correct order. And together with all the paper timing and the computer timing together, I can compile results.
And once I have the results compiled, I check it with a couple other folks that are part of the team to make sure that I've got everything right. In this case, I had a couple misspellings because when registration comes in and the racer just scrawls some babylonian hieroglyphics on the on the piece of paper and you can't read his name or her name, they put in what they think they see
and we figure it out in the wash later. We can figure out what's there's a lot of people who we see come to these races all the time that we know But when we read their handwriting, it's an n, becomes an m, and an s becomes a scribble, and you just you'd be surprised. How bad some people's penmanship is. So what the lessons learned of course would be fantastic to do data entry correctly at registration. That'd be nice, but that requires
some some new trainings or new process and maybe a tablet with an app on it, that would be kinda cool. Wouldn't it be great too that if I didn't have to take the and so when I had to put it on thumb drive and run it down to timing and then plug it into the timing computer, then we cut paste really quickly.
In the 19 minutes, it takes from the first start at 6 o'clock before they start coming across the finish line. It's about 19 or 22 minutes roughly for the 5 mile course. It's like 4.9 something. So the record is 19 minutes and so. So you really have 20 minutes to get the last little bit of registration, run it down to timing. Timing has a cut and pasted into this this thing for it to work. It's a very it's a very time zone that it's a time box. It's a very, really tiny small time box.
But if you do it right, then you can get all the names in there correctly. So you know names at the finish line. So if we had to do a like an announcer, and had announcing people come across the the finish line. We know what bib numbers equal what people. So we could do an announcing thing. Another lessons learned. We could have announceers at the finish line where the spectator is and know who those are because we have the names in the computer and we have the names on the time and computer.
We can connect the 2. We just need some some orchestration and better way to do that. Maybe we need some Wi Fi, put up a big old omnidirectional antenna and allow ourselves to do a kind of a closed network, private, little private network, or we can just Send the data to the other computer. Have a little database going on. Again, lessons learned. These are great things we could always do. This takes time, takes effort, takes people,
takes takes a whole lot of orchestration to get it right. It takes some time to sit down, right software, and build out applications like this and test them in the field so they work. And we've tried some other things.
We've tried some off the shelf stuff in WebScore. We've tried. We've tried a couple other things. The stuff is difficult when you have 1 person who learns it and then they go away. They even have another person who learns it and goes away. The race director can't do it all. So I can do this stuff. I can manage these kind of things, but I can't do timing and restriction at the same time. Neither can's j neither can's gym. Neither can compete. We can't be everywhere at once.
So we have to delegate. We have to divide and conquer. This is how our race is won. Is if you try to do everything, your race will fail. That is a guarantee.
So you have to delegate and you have to have good people to delegate to and they have to know what they're doing and has to be the way you want it done. And this is this is how you orchestrate or an event is you have to have enough people who understand the process at a process in which you were able to to explain to somebody, quickly because some of these people are brand new. Otherwise, it doesn't get done, or it gets done, sorta.
So, you know, we give you paperwork. Right? So that's kind of the process for getting results. And then the results, you know, I'll put them as a PDF, put them on the website. And then when they're out on the website, then you gotta let Facebook know. You'll let Twitter know. You gotta let all your social contacts know. So that, hey, it's out there, and you'll take a look at them. And sure enough, there'll be 1 or 2 people to say, I don't see myself on there. And I know I finished or, hey, I got a like, the it says I got a d n f. That's a did not finish. I looked on there and I got a d n f and I'm pretty sure that I finished. And I have I have my straub and my grammar times,
but, you know, what do we need to do about that? And sure enough, looking at a time computer, I found out they were labeled DNS, but yet had 2 lap times in there, and they only 2 lap rates. Mistakes. Okay. They happen. They happen all the time. You're talking we had, what, 200 plus racers in race 1. So That's a lot of numbers to crunch, and it's a long day.
It's a it's a not a perfect system. So you have these kind of issues you have to work out, but you have to work them out, you know, in an environment where you can work them out. You know? And on the field's tough. On the field, the crunch dad is tough. And if you're not a data cruncher, it's even tougher.
Right? For data entry that you understand that, that's fine. But you pull down big huge spreadsheets and start crunching numbers and realize where the discrepancies are. That's tough, not an easy thing to do in the field.
So we don't do that in the field. We put up preliminary results and that's where we stay until we can do a final or we can get all the information collected all and know where the problems are. So once it gets on the website, people call in to call in. Hey. Yeah. I'll literally do. Phone calls, emails, whatever, and say, yeah, I need you to fix this. I think in in 1, you know, like, a master's 45, The guy guy the guy who I said was 3rd place, he was missing completely gone. I was like, well, that's odd. So Hooten looked up the results and he was on the timing computer.
But for some reason, when I when I downloaded the file, he just didn't show it. Baffled. So that is timing done. So that's out there. I have all that taken care of. But for right now, that's the lessons learned for this race. As I as I explore this more, I'll do another podcast. As I finish this series, we'll do the whole series wrap up. But for right now, that's race 1, wins his away field, as as point of view over the race director, you know, inside my head. And now you know.
Do you wanna build your 1st race or need help making races better? That's where where to start. Well, today's sponsor is Rechinir. And [email protected]
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and learn more about what Rechinir can do for you to help you build better races. That'srechinir.com/start. Thank you for listening to the Merchants Group podcast. If you have a question or comment or you wanna tell me about how you plan on reaching out to your Trail Stewardship Organization and cultivating that relationship, please hit me up at [email protected]
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Meanwhile, I hope you take what you learned today and go build better races. Take care.