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Tips For Coordinators
1. PLAN AHEAD! If this is your first event, start one year early.
2. Look at calendars for other events, here at MidwestBikeRides.com. Don’t pick a date that is being used by other events in your area.
3. Milestones. Choose dates to have items completed, such as shirt designs, route designs etc.
4. Volunteers. Gets lots of them. Make sure that they are competent to run registration, sag etc.
5. Use tents for registration. It might not rain, but it might be windy.
6. Drive routes early, and often.
7. Send route maps to officials at every government level for the area in use - County, State, Cities, Townships, and Villages. They will also let you know what permits may be needed.
8. Permits. Do get them! They are a communication device that let’s officers know where bikes will be. Often, they do extra patrolling of the area. This will speed up help in the event of an emergency. It will also help keep the peace between cyclists and municipalities.
9. List emergency contact phone numbers on the route maps.
10. Use the help of the local HAM radio operators. These guys really know what they are doing.
11. Get food donated for the rest stops. However, if your event is larger than 250 riders, don’t spend the time trying to get that much food donated. Just purchase it.
12. Rest stops are the hardest to control. Get very good help for these. Volunteers MUST understand that they will be very busy at times, then not at all for a while. Remind them that there are still riders out there that need their help. The SAG & HAM folks will let them know when they can close.
13. Plan your routes with mostly right-hand turns. This way riders aren’t turning left across traffic from ahead, or across the path of passing cars from the rear.
14. Use only bike riders/mechanics to be sag support. These people must know at least how to change a tire. For whatever reason, many cyclists don’t bring anything when they ride an organized event.
!5. Use your local Sheriff’s auxiliary to direct traffic at the start of the ride, or where needed along the route.
16. Use a good web site to provide info and downloads for your event. Maps and apps MUST be available online. This will increase your number of riders. There are also sights which will take registrations for you, but they do charge a fee. Try to have online registration on your site if possible. If you need hosting or a web site created, MidwestBikeRides.com will do this for you <info>. Make sure that the What, When, Where and Why questions can be quickly answered by looking at your site.
17. Order only a few extra t-shirts. There is no sense having a charity stuck with a bunch of extra shirts that they had to pay for. Maximize your usage of incoming money.
18. If you are organizing the event and you are not a cyclist, GET ONE INVOLVED!
19. Use a disposable e-mail address that you use for contacts. Your e-mail address will likely be posted on other sites and will therefor be harvested for spam purposes. A good example would be “yourevent2006@gmail.com”. If you’d like to get a gmail account, just email us. We have plenty to hand out.
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