The first night of Tuesday Night Racing for 2009 at the San Diego Velodrome was last night. It was a nice warm evening and everyone had a great time. Coached rider Todd Woodlan was looking strong in the C group, and will be surely upgrading after a few nights. Chris Daggs raced with the A group and was looking pretty strong himself. I played race director for the evening, so no racing for me just yet. Below is a photod of me motorpacing the A group to get them warmed up.
-Sean
This clinic is designed to help you get fast! The focus is primarily road time trials, such as the 20K and 40k events, but triathletes can also benefit from this clinic. We will also devote a portion of the class to special events such as team time trials and track events like the 4K, 1K, and team pursuit. The morning session will be indoors at the Crank Cycling Training Studio and the afternoon session will be on the bike at Fiesta Island. This clinic features coach and exercise physiologist Sean Burke, coach and Fiesta Island TTT record holder Chris Daggs. Classroom topics in the morning include: exercise physiology basics and energy systems used during TTs, on the bike training, weight training, flexibility training, warm ups, power outputs, pacing, aerodynamics, and more. The afternoon “on the bike” topics include: proper starts, turnarounds, course management, TTT practice, and more.
This clinic can accommodate a maximum of 20 athletes. To to make sure you don’t lose out, sign up HERE.
Chris Daggs On The Way To A TTT Record
This past weekend the collegiate team I coach (UCSD) won there first race. It was a 2 day race weekend.
The first day was a criterium and the mens D racers were very aggressive, making many attacks and finishing in the top ten. Annabelle racing in the women’s Ds took 4th.
The following day was Road Race on a technical course. The Mens Ds started out aggressive again attacking and counter attacking the field till Josh Rudiger and Useff Azzasi from (UCSD) got off the front. Within a lap Josh had a minute on the field with help from Useff who then drifted back to the field. By the beginning of lap 3 Josh had 4 minutes on the field.
Thats when the rest of UCSD went into action they destroyed the field in the crosswind doing an echelon. 6 man chase behind the solo rider 5 of them being UCSD. Josh hung on to win and UCSD also took 2nd, 4th(Useff), 5th, 6th and 7th.
I lead race tactic clinics for the mens and women’s Ds in the off season and all their hard work and willingness to listen is paying off.
Go UCSD!!
Till next time
Cheers,
Coach Jesse
So I am running the financials for the 2010 Red Trolley Crit this morning, and I am always amazed at how much it costs to put the race on. Event though I know going into it, and have the previous years financials to use as an estimate, I’m still a bit surprised when I add it up. Wanna know why it costs $10,000 to put on an industrial park crit?
Here it goes:
USAC Insurance fees: $2000
USAC Permit fee: $100
USAC Officials Fees: $1900
Prize Money $1750
SDPD Traffic Control at the Corners: $1300
Ambulance: $1300
Race announcer $750
City Permit Fee: $ 100
Race Numbers and Photocopies of waivers: $350
Safety Equpment( barricades, cones, signs) $450
Toilets and handsinks: $300
Garbage and Recycling bins: $300
Pizza, Coffee, and drinks for Volunteers and Officials: $125
The biggest expenses are: Prize money, Ambulance, SDPD Taffic control, USAC Fees, Officials Fees, and Announcer fees.
Our Mens Pro 1,2 race has decent prize money, but the prize money for our other categories is admittedly small. The ambulance is required by the city of San Diego. In some municipalities you might save ~$700 by having an EMT but no ambulance. But you have to have the Ambulance in San Diego, and its probably a good idea anyway. The SDPD traffic control is required by the city. It would be nice to be able to use volunteers, but the city wants to send out their own people. To be honest, its probably better that way anyway. I think you get less BS from drivers when the traffic controlers are wearing a uniform that says “SDPD” on it. the USAC insurance fees are charged per rider. They’ve gone up by 50% over last year. Officials fees are the single biggest expense. It seems like alot, but you have 8 people working almost a 12 hour day. Some of them are coming from LA, so that may include hotel and/or mileage. All of them are pocketing less than $200 for the day before hotel expenses, so it’s not like they are getting rich. Ralph Elliot does and AMAZING job as race announcer and he is well worth it. He actually gives us a deal on the annoucing because he has a soft spot in his heart for the SDSU team. All of the volunteers working at registration are SDSU kids, or riders that have volunteered for a few hours in exchange for a few entries. I also typically trade a few entries for people that bring good primes. We have a few other little things that people do for free that really help, Like Andrew Lee from Adama Ave Bikes working in the wheel pit.
People always say stuff like ” Hey, Why don’t you get a corprate sponsor or something?” Well that’s far easier said than done. Espcecially when we are in recession.
The fact is that we made a little money this year ( split between the SDSU team and myself), but there is always the possibility of losing money. As of wednesday, the prergistration was only at $6,000 dollars. If the weather report had not improved, we may have lost money. A few years ago when it did rain, we only had $500 in day of registration. The SDSU team made a few hundred dollars that year, and I personally walked away empty handed. ( after countless hours of prep work and a 13 hour day in the rain!) It would be a bit easier to make a few bucks, or at least ensure you aren’t going to lose money if we only had USCF races. But we do collegiate races all morning, and the collegiate racers only pay $15 each. Most of your costs are fixed costs, so we are essentially losing money all morning long, and trying to make it up in the afternoon. In fact it is always a stressful coming into the race and being concerned that we are going to lose money on the thing, but thanks to the rain staying away for the day, it all worked out.
Many people walked up to me yesterday and told me they thought it was a great race. That is rewarding for sure. Thanks to everyone for coming out, I hope to see you out there again next year.
Sean
