Its been a long time! Here is the night cycling update!
I have been overseas for the last week... No internet access (or at least no cheap ones that were convenient) Its been really hectic. Immediately after the night cycling (0.00 hours of sleep) the next morning I went on a training trip to malaysia with the basketball team... (bus sleep doesen't really count for me. A bad bed is much better for me than a nice chair...)
Anyway the night cycling was quite an exprience. Its my first time organising such an event (hey more chance to learn from my mistakes!) It started out with a nice dinner (too many people so the BBQ had to be changed to a catered buffet). Food wasnt a problem.
After that some group games to get the crowd (160 people! thats too many on hindsight!) going. Its not hard to get people into an excited frame of mind when they are raring to go. Make em run around in a big circle... always a good way to warm up! HAHA. After that safety briefing... (of cos!) and off we go. Getting 160 bikes into a convoy was challenging and I lost a bit of voice doing it... I wanted to use my whistle to make people move... but I decided to be kind ;)
Here are the bunch of guys and girls in my group about 20 in total, all pretty good cyclists.
The route we chose was about 40km. but because MANY people were not as good at cycling as necessary to complete in time, we chopped off about 10km of the route in mid course.
Finish time 330am
What did I learn?1. Communicate necessary skill requirements before people sign up. I made the assumtion that people who sign up for night cycling... know how to cycle... at night... this was a false assumption. My freind and I spend up to 545am picking up stragglers and their bikes in our pickup truck...
2. 160 is TOO MANY PEOPLE. each group was 18-20 people (to stay legal) and thats already too many to fit accross a road in 1 traffic light switch. 160 is just too many to organise (and it was just 2 of us organising... thats TOO FEW)
3. The route is easier by car than by bike (duhz!) yes... but the odometer on the car may have been misleading... it was tougher than the distance indicated. Most of the trouble with the route happened on the last 16km stretch. Dark, drizzling, foggy, super long road with no end in sight. I believe that has a great psychological effect when the riders get tired and some just give up. Those that press on to the end learn alot about themselves. If well processed, it can be a valuable life expreince.
posted by Coach Jonathan Wong @ 6/18/2006 09:34:00 PM
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