ridestaffs-blog

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The thing about organising sportives is...

...that describing the process is riddled with the possibility for cliches. Some of my more grandiose thoughts about what I do might find a comfortable home in pseuds corner in Private Eye. Hey ho, here goes anyway. Here’s what I do. 

I’ve been a sportive organiser now since about 2010. The first one was done for Twinings the tea people and took place down in Wiltshire, but most of what I’ve done has been up here in Staffordshire where I was born and where I’ve done most of my cycling over the last 30 years. 

I’ve sat in rooms with people over the last few years who talk about the process of organising bike races and sportives as if it’s some kind of dark art. For me, it isn’t though. That doesn’t mean I don’t get the chance every now and again to add an artistic flourish to what I do. But the foundation on which it’s built is a simple, easily repeated process that can be summarised like this:

Would it be fun to ride here?

How can we manage the risks around getting people here and around the route?

What can we add to make it an experience rather than just a bike ride?

Will people pay what we need to charge to make the event work?

Plan, deliver, reflect, repeat.

Sometimes event’s work first time, but most of the time we feel we’ve done well if we break even in year one. The thing that does seem to work though is to keep coming back. If you deliver an event well, look after participants in the ways you’ve promised you would. Many will come back again. 

You can find out more about the events we organise at www.ridestaffs.co.uk

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Do you want one of our cycling jerseys?

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I've been riding past this place near my house for years. Then one day I googled them, then when I found out what they did I emailed and said 'do you fancy doing that fora professional cycling team?' They did. And this is what they did

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Christmas is coming, don’t make a gift gaffe this year!

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We did an end of season reliability ride with Lymestone Brewery, folk liked it so we're doing it again! 30th Oct, enter via https://rideandrevival.eventbrite.co.uk

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Always Good :D

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Join me for a bike ride in September? Beer & bacon inclusive!

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I wrote a guest blog for Simply Staffordshire this week about coffee and keeping it local wherever possible 

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This is the 2016 ridestaffs festival coffee. It's one of the things I'm proudest of that's come from organising the festival.

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This is our RideStaffs 2016 Indiegogo project. I hope you can support it

Cycling is a funny old sport. It’s one where fans don’t expect to pay for the experience and at my end of the food chain, neither do the teams that participate, or the TV channels that screen our event. 

So because we’re a bunch of crazy fools here at Leadout Cycling, instead of jacking it all in and organising a sportive instead, we decided to organise a sportive as well  in order to make up the shortfall of what can’t be raised through sponsorship. 

But thing is, it turns out that even that isn’t enough. 

So I’m asking the fans to do something for themselves this year. Here’s the deal

I bring the bike race

I bring the big screen

The fans finance live pictures of the bike race for the screen. 

Get involved: igg.me/at/ridestaffs

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I'm doing an indiegogo project. Help me to put my bike race live on a big screen this July.

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Since 2013 we’ve been working with Lymestone Brewery at RideStaffs. In 2013 they were the only people we could find that would work with us to put a bar alongside our bike race in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire. Since then we’ve become great friends and each year we now team up with them to produce a festival ale for RideStaffs. 

This year we decided that it would be fun to show you a little more behind the scenes of the making of the beer, so in the video above, we join Brad from Lymestone Brewery as he talks us through the process. 

If you’d like to join us to taste the beer before anyone else, click here to sign up for our tasting event on 1st June at the brewery itself. 

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In case you were wondering if you should have ridden today.

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Velog #9 is up - Head to ridestaffs.co.uk to enter our sportives now!

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Final 200m of the RideStaffs GP and RideStaffs Kermesse. Due to take place on 1st & 2nd July 2016 at Shugborough in Staffordshire. 

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Velog #8 is up. 

5 Reasons to enter ridestaffs, right now!

ridestaffs.co.uk