Trouble finding race details?

hynesie

Anybody else find the level of communication within the racing scene a bit frustrating? I often find it very difficult to find details of races beyond the name of the race, contact number and province it's on in.

As an example: a few weeks back I was planning on doing a race in Tuam which was part of the Connacht league, I had spotted it on the Cycling Ireland calendar and on irishcycling.com. I took note of the event details and made sure my Sunday was free. On the Thursday before the race I checked irishcycling.com and the CI calendar and the event seemed to have disappeared, I didn't know what was going on. I gave the organiser a ring and it turns out that there never was a race. It was a mistake on CIs part and the race details were taken from a draft calendar from 2008! The event didn't even go ahead in 2008. Instead of putting a notice up that there was a mistake, the event details were just taken down and people were left wondering what the story was.

In an attempt to solve this issue I've put together a simple website which has a page for each event on the irish cycling road calendar. Anybody can come along and provide additional information on the race by commenting on the article. Comments can be questions/information about sign-on times, category details, route maps, results, links to photos or videos etc. Registration is not required to post a comment (at the moment, will see how this goes), the idea is to keep the site as easy to use as possible.

This is by no means an attempt to replace/replicate the cycling forum on boards.ie or irishcycling.com. It has 1 purpose which is the provision of information about races. At the moment I am sticking with road racing and seeing how that goes, if there is a demand it may be expanded to leisure, mtb or cyclocross at a later date. So if you have any info about a race, no matter how big or small or any queries about a race please try using http://racestarts.at

The idea may work or it may not, depends on if people think there is value in something like this and they use it. I'd really appreciate any comment about the general idea or about the site itself. The site has only been up for 1 day so it's in alpha/beta stage. If any issues or bugs are found please let me know and I'll try and fix them.

http://racestarts.at

Lumen

Excellent, that has great potential.

It would be great to be able restrict the scope of events to a given geographical area (e.g. 60km radius from my house) but counties or at least provinces might be more practical.

Chips Lovell

Good idea. I think the problem is twofold. First of all, a lot of cycling clubs are a bit behind the curve when it comes to the web. It's not that surprising given that they are run by volunteers, many of whom wouldn't have the know how to keep a good website constantly updated.

Secondly, there is a long standing reliance on word of mouth. The same races are often held on the same dates and courses every year and I've found that there is often an assumption there that people know the score and word will filter down of any changes. With more and more newcomers arriving into the sport, this doesn't work as well. I know when I was starting out, it took me a while to figure out how the racing scene works and where to get info etc.

I second Lumen's suggestion on the geographic aspect. Some sort of Google Maps mashup would work.

GlennaMaddy

hynesie wrote: »

Anybody else find the level of communication within the racing scene a bit frustrating?

Some clubs do a good job, but it's not consistent, things that are currently lacking are;
Is it a handicap?
If so, what time gaps?
Is it flat or lumpy?
Sign-on opens at?
Sign-on closes at?
Start times and order for the various rider catagories?

It'd be nice to have this info too but not essential;
Prizes for 1st,2nd,3rd...?
Prize fund?


At the risk of going off topic, online sign-on should be facilitated in this day and age, it's a pain having to be at the event a at least a half hour before the 'start time' case sign-on closes early.

Suppose some of this is down to the nature of events that depend on volunteers.

Great job on the site, hope it becomes established.

hynesie

Thanks for the suggestions guys.
@El Tonto: I think you summed the situation up perfectly. My hope would be that somebody from the organising club would be able to take 2 minutes and post a comment with the details on racestarts.at.

Regarding the map idea, I think it's a v good one, just a matter of getting the location data. I can add an map to each page and then have an overall site one with all the races on it.

Lumen

GlennaMaddy wrote: »

At the risk of going off topic, online sign-on should be facilitated in this day and age, it's a pain having to be at the event a at least a half hour before the 'start time' case sign-on closes early.

I've thought this too, but then I think it's a bit unfair to expect to rock up 5 mins before blastoff when the volunteers have been there all morning. It might make their job easier though.

The bit of stress I could do without is not knowing when sign-on will close. Carlow (for instance) seem to close very early but most seem much more flexible.

petethedrummer

The only concern I would have is...what is to stop someone entering provisional details of a race on January on your website and not updating again, if a race is cancelled or moved?

Maybe those entering the details should have to comfirm 7 days(or whatever length) before the event that it is still going ahead.

hynesie

petethedrummer wrote: »

The only concern I would have is...what is to stop someone entering provisional details of a race on January on your website and not updating again, if a race is cancelled or moved?

Maybe those entering the details should have to comfirm 7 days(or whatever length) before the event that it is still going ahead.

Good question.
At the moment each page is created from an entry in the Cycling Ireland google calendar so the problem is that nobody has actually registered and created any of the entries so I don't have anybody to confirm the details with.
One option would be to automate a text message or email to the person who's listed as the contact for the race. However, I feel a bit uneasy about this as it's kinda spammy.

Lumen

hynesie wrote: »

One option would be to automate a text message or email to the person who's listed as the contact for the race. However, I feel a bit uneasy about this as it's kinda spammy.

You might call the contacts for a couple upcoming events and ask them how they feel about the website.

Organisers must get loads of calls from people asking what's going on, and anything to cut that down (and get more people there) must be useful.

People are always banging on about how critical it is to get younguns involved in racing. The next generation believes that if it's not on the internet it doesn't exist.

I can see this really taking off with links to youtube footage and the like.

petethedrummer

Best of luck with it anyways, its not a problem confined to cycling. Local Level GAA can be exactly the same.

hynesie

Lumen wrote: »

You might call the contacts for a couple upcoming events and ask them how they feel about the website.

Organisers must get loads of calls from people asking what's going on, and anything to cut that down (and get more people there) must be useful.

My plan is to try and email the secretaries of the clubs to try and raise a bit of awareness and after that get in touch with some organisers.

Lumen wrote: »

People are always banging on about how critical it is to get younguns involved in racing. The next generation believes that if it's not on the internet it doesn't exist.

I can see this really taking off with links to youtube footage and the like.

Yeah, your dead right, in particular some form of social network integration might help. I'm going to have a look at Facebook Connect and related plugins to see if they can be of benefit.
On the video front I've added some of the videos from Stamullen that were posted on the boards thread.

Bikerbhoy

This has potential to be of great benefit to all and its super that everyone is so positive about it.

I know you are planning to concentrate on racing first and then follow on with the other disciplines but if I may be the voice of non racers for a moment, having the leisure section up and running sooner rather than later would be fantastic, as alot of leisure riders are not part of any club scene and for that reason are a bit void of info regarding upcoming events. Nearly every event I do I get talking to guys and girls who are not in fact aware that you could, if you wanted to ,a sportive or organised event nearly every weekend during the season its just the info isn't there or obvious enough.


I will gladly help in any way I can with the above when the time is right.

Best of Luck

hynesie

Bikerbhoy wrote: »

having the leisure section up and running sooner rather than later would be fantastic, as alot of leisure riders are not part of any club scene and for that reason are a bit void of info regarding upcoming events. Nearly every event I do I get talking to guys and girls who are not in fact aware that you could, if you wanted to ,a sportive or organised event nearly every weekend during the season its just the info isn't there or obvious enough.

That's a good argument. I've mainly been focusing on road racing because it's where I noticed the problem but clearly it's not just in that area. Is there a cycling ireland google leisure calendar or any cycling ireland document with the leisure event details? One of the great things about the road racing was that there was at least some data available that I could start with.

I'll try and get some time over the weekend to take a look into the leisure side of things.

Bikerbhoy wrote: »

I will gladly help in any way I can with the above when the time is right.

Depending on how the above goes I may take up up on that

hynesie

hynesie wrote: »

Is there a cycling ireland google leisure calendar or any cycling ireland document with the leisure event details?

To answer my own question (with some help from google): http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/cyclingireland.net/embed?src=leisure%40cyclingireland.net&ctz=Europe/Dublin
But I guess this isn't all of the leisure cycles, just the cycling ireland sub-set of them.

Bikerbhoy

hynesie wrote: »

To answer my own question (with some help from google): http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/cyclingireland.net/embed?src=leisure%40cyclingireland.net&ctz=Europe/Dublin
But I guess this isn't all of the leisure cycles, just the cycling ireland sub-set of them.

Thats the one and I suppose if you got them onto your site anyway to start with and sure we can take it from there..... Great Stuff

GlennaMaddy

@hynesie Just logged using OpenID and posted a comment, one less password to remember -thanks!

hynesie

GlennaMaddy wrote: »

@hynesie Just logged using OpenID and posted a comment, one less password to remember -thanks!

I'm a fan of OpenID, wish more places would use it.
I tried to go one better by contacting boards.ie to see if I could get access to their authentication service so that boardsies could login using their boards.ie details. Unfortunately it's not possible at the moment but it's something they're considering for the future.

hynesie

I've added the information from the Cycling Ireland Leisure calendar to the website: http://racestarts.at/?q=leisure-date-browser

Unfortunately the CI calendar is missing quite a number of events (e.g. ROK, Croi Corrib Cycle) so these will have to be manually entered

Raam

Hynesie, that website really is a great idea. Fair play

Bikerbhoy

hynesie wrote: »

I've added the information from the Cycling Ireland Leisure calendar to the website: http://racestarts.at/?q=leisure-date-browser

Unfortunately the CI calendar is missing quite a number of events (e.g. ROK, Croi Corrib Cycle) so these will have to be manually entered

Hi just to clarify.... want to update say Orwell Randonee for tomorrow and mark it as postponed what is procedure
and secondly to add new event as you said above say ROK Croi etc
cheers

hynesie

Bikerbhoy wrote: »

Hi just to clarify.... want to update say Orwell Randonee for tomorrow and mark it as postponed what is procedure

At the moment the way to mark it as canceled is to write a comment saying that (afterwards I'll add "canceled" to the title of the page). It's not a very elegant solution but I can't think of a better one unfortunately.

Bikerbhoy wrote: »

secondly to add new event as you said above say ROK Croi etc

To create a new cycling event you must:
1) create an account if you do not already have one
2) click on the "Create content" link on the toolbar on the left of the page
3) click either "Cycling Leisure Event" or "Cycling Road Race" and enter the details of your event.
4) Press "Save"
5) The event details will then be checked by a moderator and then published to the website.

Bikerbhoy

hynesie wrote: »

At the moment the way to mark it as canceled is to write a comment saying that (afterwards I'll add "canceled" to the title of the page). It's not a very elegant solution but I can't think of a better one unfortunately.


.

Great stuff think I have that sussed I will try add a few missing events later....this is great