pjcampbell

Anyone have a budget from a race they did. I am curious about how much all of this stuff costs. I'd be interested in putting on a circuit race in my town.

Want to know all about how much you have to pay for USAC insurance, permits, officials, etc. and all other costs that aren't necessarily specific to your location. Is this info readily available on the USAC website (if so I can't find it). Thanks.

carpediemracing 

A lot of this information is available on USAC. Usually your local association (https://www.usacycling.org/la/) will have local reps or at least a point person. NE-BRA, for example, stopped publishing the state reps' names, and rely on the area coordinator (Diane, who does a good job) to answer questions new promoters may have. I'd contact your LA's head person. If you're in NJ, it looks like you go here:
https://www.njbikeracing.com/officers.html

Start here for USAC stuff:
https://www.usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=1053

Permits:
https://www.usacycling.org/forms/RdTrkCXCompForms.zip
The form lists costs ($/day or for big events a % of prize list)

For officials there's a set fee per official, I can't find the amount. I think it was $100 per official for 2009. Your race/course will determine how many officials you need. Technically you have to cover their travel costs, add in food if they're there longer than x number of hours.

Then you start with the other stuff. Portapotties or building with bathrooms. Generator or power. Registration tent or building. Finishline camera or similar. Police for any town requirements. Course closure permissions. Numbers, pins, flyers, website, domain/blog site, on and on.

Post more questions if you have them.

Good luck,
cdr

pjcampbell

Thanks.

MDcatV

I dont have the club checkbook with me, but for our road race, off the top of my head (should be close enough for budgeting ... I've estimated on the high side):

usac fee and insurance: $1,200
local association: $269
officials: we have six, they're avg. $100/ea. for the day = $600
gas for motos: included in budget estimate for officials
police: we have 6 w/cruisers @ $350/day (this is the biggest cost) = $2,100
EMTs/local fire dept: donation in our area, we give 'em $300
portajohns (6 including women's only and w/hand sanitizer): $735
lunch for volunteers/officials/police/EMTs: $300
breakfast for ^: donated
Traffic Control (cones, flags, etc.): donated
permits and fees: $500
race numbers: $150
SRAM Neutral Support: $550

I usually figure it costs our club $6k - $7k to put on our road race.

carpediemracing 

Interesting.

We pay $600 for one cop with a car, $450 or so if no car.

No volunteers that get more than an hour of work so no food for them. We do ask if the longer working ones want stuff, but usually they're racing (they race for free - that's the pay off for them).

Portapotties are $300/week.

2 officials, $200. They live close by and they bring their own food. They won't decline fresh coffees and such, but they have their own food.

Paid folks - I agree to pay certain people, typically non-racers, for their services on day of race. Figure $600/week? Maybe $700.

Numbers, $500 for the series, sometimes more. I think we paid $1500 one year, that was kinda dumb. BTW I have a LOT of broken number sets, probably 5-6,000 numbers. If anyone needs numbers that may not be sequential, just ask. I gave away all my generic numbers (had maybe 3,000 of those).

Pins, $15? for 1440, we buy 20 boxes at a time (use 2 boxes a day at least).

1000 copies of the release form, $20, usually need two sets like that.

I kind of ignore the racer's insurance fees because they pay it when they register. There isn't a minimum insurance amount - it's $3/rider, and usually it's part of the entry fee.

NEBRA membership is $25. ($500?? holy smokes). Permit fee $150 I think, plus late fees if that applies. Fee for membership of USAC is $150 I think.

Domain for site (10 year registration, $145 I think). Hosting (currently donated or on blogspot).

We have 2 each of heaters ($50 ea?), tents ($500 ea, with clear and solid sides, forget cost of those), leaf blowers for sand ($500 ea plus dinky $100 one), generators ($1100 each + $500 for a noisy one), a dozen wood covers for grates (some are 16-17 years old now and going strong), folding tables ($70? on sale).

Laptops, $1200 for two, plus one that was donated.

Laser printer, $110 on sale, nice HP.

Wireless internet, $70/mo, for faster race result postings.

Finishline camera set up - camcorder ($2400 + $1200 for backup one), TiVO (donated), TV ($150?), tripod ($100?), cables ($100-150), laptop as back up to TiVo (listed above).

Bins, folders, pens, markers, clips, rubber bands, toilet paper, napkins.

I bought a van one year too. Insurance, gas (sometimes just 1 tank a year - I drove it about 400 miles that year), maintenance.

Etc etc.

cdr

pjcampbell

thanks for the info guys. I am asking my town about putting on a closed course circuit race in 2010. Is it not my favorite type of race, but we have very little racing close to home here. I think it'd be cool to do, and this one has a little kicker hill to make things interesting.

I'd like to charge a little more, in order to be able to pay cash in all (??? ) fields and possibly 5 deep. I am thinking $35 for pre-reg for the men, less for JRs, will that fly? I realize $2-3 will go to bikereg, then another $3 to insurance. Speaking of insurance, where does LIABILITY insurance fall in there? Is that the $3 fee?

I would do online registration myself, but I think bikereg has a monopoly, good advertising, and people seem to be very content with it. I figure I am losing about $2 per rider on BikeReg over doing it myself (minus the time I would have to spend figuring out how to do that).

Overall, I really would like to do this and break even, and give some money to my town's volunteer organizations (FD and EMTs) who I am sure would be there on race day helping out. I guess this would be dependent on how much the town wants to stick me with police bills.

For the RDs, I am also working on something (i may be re-inventing the wheel here.........if I am , please let me know). I am working on a program where, for Day-of registration, you scan or type in someone's license #, and it pulls up all of their info (name, town, race age, team,etc.), pre-fills a waiver and prints it out, they just have to sign and fill out emergency info. Then asks you what categories they want to race in, Picks them a Bib #, and adds them to a flat file or spreadsheet for that category or categories. Right before registration closes, that data can then be tacked onto the end of the existing pre-registered excel spreadsheet and given to the scorers for very easy integration. While it may sound complicated, it eliminates the need to copy over hand written registrations to the computer, and eliminates possibility of not being able to read sloppy hand writing, etc.

Thoughts?

carpediemracing 

Liability insurance is that $3/rider.

Cat 5s can't get prizes except non-valuable ones like medals or trophies.

You can have a scaling prize list. We do 3 places (4, Wm, M40, Jr) or 5 places (3-4, p123) minimum. We pay #field/10 places, so 80-odd riders is 8 places. This way if you have more racers, you have more money.

Bikereg - have the racer pay the fee. Don't absorb it. For each racer, a couple bucks is okay, part of a gallon of gas. Or a few, since you're in gas-cheap NJ . For you, a few hundred bucks to cover Bikereg's cut would be not as okay. Bikereg is cheap (I'd recommend buying the yellow highlight option), allow you to download in your format, and we pre-populate our race registration spreadsheet.

The lookup sounds good. It would be nice if it worked. I want to do something similar, without printing the waiver, so we can scan a license and have the data go straight into the spreadsheet.

There is a csv file that lists all racers, their status (i.e. are they suspended). I'm not sure how you get access to it since I didn't officially get access to it as a promoter or club "owner". You should be able to manipulate the data in that appropriately.

cdr

pjcampbell

I didn't know cat5s were actually not allowed to get prizes, but that is fine with me.

The waiver has to be signed anyway though right?, but yes the data going straight into the spreadsheet is the icing on the cake.

I was able to get access to the csv, which is great. This is very useful data. It will take me a little while to get the whole thing down but I'll show you what i come up with.

carpediemracing 

It would be cool to have a "scan a license and have the data appear" thing.

I forgot something on liability. The $3/rider gets you a $1mil policy. You can pay $500/day for either $4mil extra or a total of $4mil, I forget which one.

Waiver has to be signed. For pre-reg in New England we have to have separate lines (which is logical anyway). I pre-print all the waivers (bikereg has a way to do that), sort them alphabetically, and the riders find their waiver, sign it (MUST see a license, so you need one staff person on pre-reg all the time). Numbers are there too for pre-reg.

Then day of race is a spreadsheet and we update it with people's info as they show up and pay. Numbers there too, the unused ones.

We then print everything in triplicate or more, thus avoiding using the triple copy forms from USAC (results and such). We don't write anything - the officials fill in the race report form (by hand) and that's about it.

Spreadsheet looks up names based on numbers so we can just type the race number down one column and get the name/team for each row.

I haven't figured out a way to get all the days (5-6 weeks of races) in one spreadsheet in a way where everything gets calculated (points, standings, overall, etc).

cdr

*edit* one day I hope to have an "open source" Open Office (Sun Microsystems open source free suite of applications that works on mac and Windows) based spreadsheet where the spreadsheet does all that I mention. It would be most useful for a multi-event series with points, but it would also work for one day races. Would not work for track (with elimination heats and such).

bitingduck

USAC sets minimums per official, but your LA can charge more. I think in socal it's more than the minimum because it would otherwise be impossible to get officials (it's still not a lot of money for the work involved). It also varies by role- the Chief Ref gets the most, then the Chief Judge, then assistant refs and judges I think get less (and about the same as each other). You pay mileage for them all, and hotel if it's a multi-day thing. And lunch (or an allowance for it) as CDR mentioned.

[edit] Also, make sure you know who needs to be on the additional insured list-- entities like city, landowners, etc. You get 5 with the permit, and additional ones are cheap[/edit]

lots of good information in the other posts, too.

bitingduck

I'd be interested in it as well.

pjcampbell

Here is what I have, it is a bit rough around the edges but can be changed easily. Also as I just finished this, I am told by NJBA that someone has already done this, but I haven't seen it.

https://xj.cdevco.net/usac_reg.php

While this is online, this would run just as easily OFFLINE from your computer hooked up to a printer.

Basically you define the various races in a file, you define the name and date of the race in a file. You also define the output format of the CSV that it adds the rider to so that it is exactly the same as BikeReg or whatever. It will create a separate CSV for each category for simplicity. Then, 5 minutes before the race (or whenever registration for that cat closes), just insert the file into your pre-registered riders CSV or XLS file.

I had it so that you enter the bib # (as opposed to it pulling a bib# from a pool). I know there's always issued with bib #s with a number missing or whatever, so this seemed the safer way to go.

It also does not disallow things like a cat 4 rider entering a cat 3 field, or a woman entering a male race. I figured that these things are best left up to the human to figure out as there is some level of discretion.

It also allows for a last name search, I know people forget their licenses and even though they shouldn't be allowed to race without one... a drivers license + the up-to-date database really can verify that a license is in good standing just as much as the card.

If a suspended rider tries to register, it says "NOTE THIS RIDER IS SUSPENDED" in Red. Try doing a search for Tyler Hamilton to test that functionality.

It also fills out the Waiver PDF with as much info as is available from USAC. If a TEAM is not defined, it uses the club. If club is not defined it will say Unattached.

I am sure I am forgetting lots of things. When it tries to load the pre-populated PDF file, it crashes FireFox for me, but it works fine in IE.

pjcampbell

did either of you get a chance to take a look at this... does it make sense? would it be helpful?

pjcampbell

can anyone please paste to me the format of the standard (is there a standard?) bikereg pre-reg list CSV format?

I want to integrate my day-of reg program to output the same format as BikeReg .....

pjcampbell

again just want to say this program is free for all to use. it is not that fancy but could make your life easier. i know some people have their own software already but i do not know of anyone who is sharing their software.

basically you put in a license # (if you want to scan it, if you have a bar reader, that is ok) and it asks you what race(s) they are entering, it asks you to assign a bib # (I can make it assign a bib #, but feel like this is better left to the human based on my personal experience), and adds them into a CSV for each race, and pre-fills the waiver with their info. You can skip the waiver if you want to make them do that themselves.

efficiency

How do you guys typically run registration?

Do you have separate pre-reg and day of registration lines?
Do you pass around the one startlist between people working pre-reg and day of registration lines?
Do you use carbonless copy paper for the startlists?
What information is on the startlist?

Matt2.8NJ

What town are you looking at?

Have you spoken to the chamber of commerce?

pjcampbell

sorry the original post about doing a race is old. i am just working on polishing off my day-of registration computer program right now and wanted to know the field order for bikereg pre-reg spreadsheets.

pjcampbell

for me the start list goes to the officials on a USB drive 10 minutes before the start after registration closes. tere will be separate pre-reg and day-of, since pre-reg takes about 30 seconds each and day of a little longer. my program should speed up day-of reg.

bitingduck

We do our pre-reg through socalreg.com -- it's got very low "convenience fees" and works with the local association and promoters.