Are UK sportives beginning to have a laugh?

In general though are people happy to pay around £10 for a sportive that has:

A village hall HQ and plenty of parking.
A well signed challenging route with choice of two distances.
A feed station or 2.

But doesnt have:

Electronic timing - what is the point of split second timing in an event that is NOT a race?
Goody bag/free water bottle/t-shirt etc etc
Free massage at the end.
A well known sportive photographer who wants to charge £10+ per photo?

If the answer is yes then I am thinking of organising one as long as others in the club support and help out.

I can see where you are coming from re the musettes, but I think in reality it would be a recipe for chaos. Imagine the sceene if a rider got to a feed to find his musette wasn't there.
Re gels and powders it is easiest to carry them in your pocket all the time. For me the feeds are about water and the odd savoury extra for a change. I have never understood the obsession some participants have with the quality of cuisine.
I reckon with photos that there is something of a vicious circle. If a high percentage of riders bought one, the price could come down significantly, but I suspect that they are bought by only a small number of mainly infrequent sportive riders. For those that ride one once a month I think the appeal is limited.. Most photographic firms seem to have more than one photographer on the scene, and I would put money on their hourly return not being great, particularly after travel costs have been taken into account.

Polocini wrote:

I have been following this thread with a lot of interest. I'm organising some sportives this year and one of the first things I did was to sort out the feeds.
We have a choice of a nutrition package with gels/bar/drink or the usual water/flapjacks/bananas/creme eggs etc.
With regards to the bars/gels if you wanted them we gave you three cards at the start. At each feed you hand one over so you are guaranteed a drink refill, two gels and a bar.
Everyone is guaranteed to get their moneys worth. I did think of musettes but it was too much work. I was worried the cards would be a nightmare but I didn't have a single complaint.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55119780@N06/5489923142/

On the back of the cards are route cards. So card one has directions to feed one, card two to feed two and then third to the end for a recovery shake.

AL

Now that seems like a great idea. It's simple and pretty well foolproof.
Lateral thinking at its best!

P_Tucker wrote:

Can't be arsed to read the whole thread, but the issue many people seem to have is that something is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, not what it costs to produce.

Besides, what's another £30 for your average 40-something dentist sportif? They've already spent £8k on a Dogma with Di2 and upgraded to titanium bottle cage bolts, whilst neglectiing the fact that they're 15kg overweight.

OOHHHhh, Handbag :shock:

dmclite wrote:

Feed Stations. Why not organise them a bit better ? One way could be that you have a musette or plastic bag, get your number on it and put the food and drink powders you want in it and hand it in before the event (day before signing or on the morning ?). Then all the organiser has to do is set the bags out at the feed stop, organise a water supply and hand them out once you show your number. This could be one way of reducing cost, making sure no-one is left out at feed stops and reduce the price overall for entry.

A nice idea but tricky in practice. I think it would be a lot more work and therefore more expensive. In one of my events it would mean over 600 bags to be numbered and transported, and not just in one trip either. If sign on and start is spread over one hour or more then people who signed on for a shortish route could be at the feed before others have even signed on, let alone had their bag transported, so doing it one trip would be impossible. If you had compulsory sign on the day before it might work, but not all riders will be able to get there the day before. Someone would be at the feed with no bag and then no food.

Also, you would need a good number of staff to give out the bags, as I know from experience that if you let riders take their own numbers, they will sift through others and jumble them up to find theirs and pay no attention to the order they were in, so the next person can't find theirs, so they sift through, and in the end it is chaos.

I think this system would need more staff than a conventional feed. If more imagination is required, then it would be best to put it into the food offering, not the format of the feeds.

Not putting down the idea, or ideas being floated for discussion, but I think the main problem people have with feeds is lack of quantity and variation, not the format.