Organising TTs

Pokerface wrote:

dennisn wrote:

Does any kind of sanctioning body need to be involved? Do you have any sort of liability insurance? For yourself and others who help work the race? Will you have everyone sign a waiver? How about road marshalls at intersections and or the turnaround?
Do you have at least two good stopwatches in case you screw one up? You'll be the object of a ton of complaints if you don't get ALL the times correct(trust me on that).
Is there a portion of road that riders can warm up on while waiting for their start time?
Is the start line off to the side of the road enough for traffic to get by(and not get so pissed off at you for blocking the road that they call the police, which you definitely don't need)? Do you need to paint the course with arrows? Or is it simple enough(out and back) to not need to do this? Don't assume that everyone knows the course. Do you have someone willing to drive a sag vehicle? Not absolutely required but a nice touch.
Anyway, I could go on and on. Let me know if you want me to. Good luck. It does take a bit of work.

Dennis Noward

Respectfully Dennis - as you are in the USA - you may find the rules and regulations for running a club TT in the UK are a little different.

Goat - the simple answer is you could run your club events without letting anyone else know if you wanted. But you might be leaving yourself and your club open to liability issues if someone was to get hurt.

You could contact wither British Cycling (www.britishcycling.org.uk) or the CTT (www.ctt.org.uk) for more info on registering and insuring events. The CTT deal with time trials. The cost to insure an event is minimal and would cover you in case of injury, etc.

Or - you can do like our club does and just run the event for whoever shows up.

Chip \'oyler wrote:

disgruntledgoat wrote:

I'm interested in putting on, initially, some club TTs later this year as a trial run for, hopefully, runnin gone or more of them as Open events next year and the ideas I have currently are a loop of Thirlmere and a series of hill-climbs (Honister, Newlands and Whinlatter).

For a club only event, do I need to do anything more than notify people where to turn up and get 2 people to time them and one to push them off? All help aprpeciated.

You need to get in touch with your CTT District Secretary who will put you in touch with the right person. For it to be run legally, even a club event needs to be agreed by the local committee, with a very precise course description (as per the ones on the CTT Site) along with a risk assessment. Your course, it is a new one, will be issued with a course code. If your new course is on a 'fixed' distance i.e. 10 miles, 25 miles etc then it will also need to be measured.

After that it is just a case of getting 2 people to time and a pusher off.

Good luck with your events

Chip \'oyler wrote:

Er Dennis - did you read my post?

I mentioned that a 'Risk Assessment' is needed. Doing this properly will highlight what safety concerns there will be with the course.

My 'flippant' line - "After that it's just a case of getting......" was just intended to mean that after the hard work of sorting the 'paperwork' out the rest of the organisation would be easier. Of course they will need marshalls, signage etc that will be highlighted by the risk assessment. But the beauty of TTing in the UK is that they are a damn sight easier to organise and sort than mass start bunch racing. And I do have some personal experience of organising TTs - I've sorted 10 of the buggas in the last three years.

Or there is another way - you could orgainise your events under the auspices of the TLI. But I don't know much about sorting these!

disgruntledgoat wrote:

Thanks for your input guys... The hill climb courses obviously would require less risk assessment than the circuit of Thirlmere, given they are simply on whacking great hills with no junctions on the ride or turning onto it.

The circuit will require a little more thought I would imagine, but it would be a fantastic ride, not a standard distance, but losts of twisty, quiet road and then a fast 5 mile blast along the main lakes road. I'll ring/e-mail CTT today!

knedlicky wrote:

I don’t know who arranged this or how, but some of the TTs I’ve done on narrow roads have had the road, or at least the lane in the direction the riders were travelling, closed off for through traffic during the event. Seeing if this is possible might be worth considering, especially since the Thirlmere road is windy, so often a bit ‘blind’ ahead to cars, and the pass roads are anyway fairly narrow.

When they weren’t closed off, or only partially, along some TT routes there were often temporary signs at regular intervals warning cars that a cycling event was taking place– which I think a good idea and which I haven’t seen mentioned in other posts above.

Denis mentions having a warm up area for riders while waiting. I think both at the beginning and the end, you need an off-road area, like a parking lot or minor track, where riders can gather respectively before and after riding the TT. They need a gathering area at the start between warming-up and actually starting, one after to recuperate and chat.

I’d think twice about including the Honister. I’d say it was too steep for a typical Hill TT event, and especially if the TT is to cater for a wide range of abilities. Remember, if you go strictly by the rules, any rider who dismounts on a hill climb has to be disqualified.

Chip \'oyler wrote:

And I did mention signs in my previous post.