Author Topic: Prospective Local Mountain Bike Race Series August-September (interest needed)  (Read 10954 times)

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Offline Sal Atticum

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A couple of us have been talking about having a mountain bike race series at the end of the summer and billing it as both a "get your ass in shape for END-AR" and "come see what MTB racing is like without going anywhere" sort of thing.  If you're interested in racing, great, now read on.

It's summer, so a lot of people from the club aren't around.  What we need for this type of thing to happen is people who are willing to get involved right now.  If not, well, DC is about to go incognito into double-eye, Mario and Tiff are about to leave us all for more job-rich climes ("Is this heaven?" "No, it's Iowa"), Sandman and Doublefist are having one of their deals where they go away for the summer, website extraordinaire Ted is staring into a laser in the Sierra Nevadas, does Chad even own a mountain bike?, Yost and I are scheduled to be gone for non-overlapping periods of time, and everyone else . . . well, if I haven't talked to you it's because I haven't talked to you, and I apologize.  For the record, I'm out of the moon boot and able to ride (although I won't be breaking any hour records anytime soon).

I quoteth from the DC:
The bottom line is this... we KNOW that people in grand forks are very bicycle oriented. We see this EVERY DAY when we see new people on the roads, the turn outs at the TT's/Tris/Newman/adventure races and to be perfectly honest, it makes me really mad*. In the end though, we need to bring people some convenience.

I think our plan should be this...

(I haven't looked at any dates)
Contact the people at TR and see how they would feel about us doing some trail maintenance.
Host a 6 week MTB race at TR. Depending on the dates, we could start this mid July (2 weeks in July, and 4 weeks in august) Market it as a GREAT way to get into some shape for the adventure race. Offer a $10/week or $45 for the series? and 1/2 price for trail maint?
Then
Tell Yost and Ted to stop being idiots and check the message board**.
Host a CX series (6 weeks) (2 weeks in sept, 4 in oct) Mountain bikes welcome. Talk to Greendahl and run a 50/50 between greenway CX course and TR CX course.

Sanders, we would run this the EXACT same way "normal" MTB races are run. (Beginner, Sport, Advanced) Anyone can officiate. If we get alot of demand, we can run the CX races as USAC, because it would GREATLY help the ND/MN riders for upgrading.

We need to do things this year more than ever to help GROW cycling here.


Inspiring, innit?

Since we're in the planning stages, we need to talk to Turtle River State Park about actually doing this.  Ranger Steve, are you listening***?  What does UND Cycling need to do for Turtle River in order to make this happen?  Regarding trail maintenance: we need to do some if we're going to host races, hence the discount for showing up to do heavy lifting (which is STILL great training for END-AR!).  Do we talk to Friends of Turtle River about this?  We also need people to officiate (i.e., write down numbers as people cross the line) on a rotating basis, someone to organize trail stuff, people to figure out a course (if we get TR approval), etc., etc.

Those of us who are around will do as much as we can, but hosting something like this (which will be awesome) will take more time than the few people who are interested can spare and is a great way for YOU to get involved more in the club (did I mention hosting races is really fun and something you can put on your resume?).

If you have any ideas ("hey, you guys should have a kids category"), offers ("I have ten acres of land and you guys can build trails for free"), or really want to help out so you can race (maybe there's a volunteer deal we can run), please post a reply.  It would be great to get this thing going!


*This is fairly normal.  Many things make the DC mad.
**Granted, he didn't know Ted was out of state.  Toaster's board karma explains the rest.
***I've never actually met Ranger Steve.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2010, 02:17:18 PM by Sal Atticum »
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Offline Plantains

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1. Chad does own a mountain bike. I know this because he calls me at 9pm the night before a 10 hour mtb race to ask me to rebuild his bottom bracket, and then doesn't even do the mtb race :P

2. I knew Ted was out of state, but my memory lapsed.

3. There is no 3...
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Offline Plantains

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4. Logan has stitches for running into a wall, jumping off of a wall, trying to go through a wall, or a wall fell on him? I have been unable to translate his Alaskan vocrabulary.
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Offline Plantains

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5. I'm not mad... I'm intense.

6. lol @ asterisks.

7. :colbert:
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Offline Plantains

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8. I quadruple posted so that you'll be very excited when you see there are many responses to your excellent post. It will most likely be a let down...
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Offline Plantains

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9. Hahaha Beek... u tricked us good!
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Offline Sal Atticum

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I've been thinking about more ways to make this a fun time.  It would be great to have swag to give away every week (wink wink to our sponsors), but even if people wanted to bring booty to contribute to the winner's purse it would be pretty fun (plus you'd never know what you were going to win!).

Also, t-shirts.
JUST EXTRA POLISH. I DO SOME WORK WITH EXCELL SO I KEEP THE CAPS LOCK ON :-P

Offline Sal Atticum

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I was thinking of sending an email out to all the email addresses we've been collecting.  What say ye?
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Offline Mario

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DO it!
The minimum number of bikes one should own is three.  The correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned.  This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner.

Offline Plantains

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To gauge interest. Yes. But I might wait until we have some form of ok to host said event. It will look better if we can get permission from TR, that way if the event doesn't happen it's because of something we can control.
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Offline Sal Atticum

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I emailed Ranger Steve, but I think I'll try to get Toaster to go and see him with me to talk about this sort of thing.
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Offline Plantains

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Bring monies.
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Offline Sal Atticum

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Bring monies.

I was going to bring my winning personality.
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Offline Plantains

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Bring monies.

I was going to bring my winning personality.

Def bring monies.
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Offline Alaska Unicyclist

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ok guysss. sorry i have been away form the board, no excuse.. its just a different world when i get up here, and biking just seems to be in the distant past.. its coming back to me now though!!! I have nothing to add to the posts previous, just giving u a heads up and saying im reading everything now.. :)
"It never gets easier, you just get faster" - Greg Lemond

Offline Plantains

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When r u back there sir reads alot?
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Offline Alaska Unicyclist

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I'm not quite sure, I will be flying into Minneapolis 7-10 days Before classes start to purchase a 4 wheeled motorized vehicle, then to the GFK ASAP.
P.S. When do Fall classes start??
"It never gets easier, you just get faster" - Greg Lemond

Offline Sal Atticum

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I met with Jeremy at Turtle River this morning to talk about hosting events out there.  He seemed generally receptive to the idea as long as we make sure we don't conflict with other trail users.  Essentially, as long as everyone plays nice and doesn't knock down anybody walking their dog, we'll be okay.

Dates:  We talked about the end of August through September.  Anything midweek is better (fewer people around), so Thursdays are a definite possibility, unless Wednesday TTs stop around then, in which case people already have time slotted out for cycling.  Start time will depend on how much daylight we end up with by the end of the series.

Course:  We talked about a loop somewhere between 4-8 miles, with people doing one, two, or three laps (or something to that effect) depending on category.  Attached is a course Jeremy suggested that works out to around 4.4 miles (starts/finishes at the chalet).  If anyone has a good idea for a loop, post up.  We can use the chalet by the sledding hill as a staging area so we get bathrooms, an indoors, etc.

Monies:  All that Turtle River is worried about is getting their $5/vehicle fee or getting people to purchase annual passes ($25 and good until May).  If we want to incorporate this into our entry fee, we can work this out with TR but I think that would be extra hassle.  IMHO, we should keep entry low and give discounts for doing the whole series and for doing trail work, as well as letting those riders who would classify as "junior" race free.

Trail work:  If we want to do trail work, all we have to do is get a group together, call Jeremy to schedule a time, and he'll direct us what to do.  There is stuff that needs to be done now, and they have some tools.  Ideally we could make this at least twice a month while the weather is good.  As an aside, TR is working on a master plan for their trail system to plan for future trail movement, so the more help we can give, the faster we can get new terrain to play on (Jeremy's thinking about some technical stuff).

Insurance:  The club will need to sign a waiver to TR saying that we have liability insurance for these events.  DC, I thought you mentioned that we could get insurance through USAC for non-USAC races, but I am unable to locate that information.  I am going to email Missy at Student Orgs to see if we qualify for some sort of UND insurance, but is there any other way to get cheaply insured, by having SBS be the official host or something?

Cyclocross:  Jeremy was open to the idea of CX as well, later in the fall, as long as all our barriers can be moved off the course after the race.

Additional thoughts:  Any sort of food vendor might be welcome at these kinds of events.  I didn't discuss this possibility and I'm not suggesting we grill burgers ourselves, but if one of our sponsors wanted to chip in for pizza, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

Jeremy offered to come in to a UNDCC meeting whenever we have one again just to meet some people and talk about TR and this sort of stuff, at the very least so we have more than one or two people in contact with him.

That's how things stand: need course approval, need a start date, need insurance info, and need volees for trail work.  If you can help out with any of these things or would like to learn how to help out with any of these things, post up!
« Last Edit: November 30, 2010, 09:33:09 PM by Sal Atticum »
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Offline Plantains

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I dunno how the course is at whatever labeled section, but I am NOT in favor of running a section of trail that is 2 way unless it's wide and taped off. I am ALSO, not in favor of "closing the trails" per se, but there shouldn't be any people on these trails. If people are racing, people can't be out there with dogs and such... that's insane.

Someone should email Larry to inquire about possible ways to get insurance. Otherwise... it might be worth running it USAC and just making people get the damn licenses... I'm sick of this crap where we need to go crazy trying to find ways to make it cheap when generally the easiest (and best) solution is just to have people actually get a USAC or one day license.
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Offline Sal Atticum

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That section is quite wide.

The most anyone can do to "close the trails" is to 1) put up signs at the trail access points and 2) tell everyone who comes into the park that races are going on.  We can do #1 and Jeremy said they would do #2.

Someone else is going to have to do the math on whether we can afford to do this USAC, aside from not having an official anywhere near here, because I'm reluctant to spend more time on this unless there is more interest expressed.
JUST EXTRA POLISH. I DO SOME WORK WITH EXCELL SO I KEEP THE CAPS LOCK ON :-P

 

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