report by peter. 

we had agreed quite a while ago to put up a tent at the festival of cycling that was part of the tour de perth.  when the idea was originally floated i was a bit unsure of what to expect and what we should do to make ourselves stand out.  my initial thought was that all the wa clubs would be there so what could we do to show that our club was different.  in the end, there wasn’t a big club presence which is kind of disappointing yet good for us as we managed to capture a lot more attention.

we rocked up early, well actually, chris rocked up early and called me while i was still brushing my teeth.  punctuality and kids do not go hand in hand.  as i had the tent and most things, there was not much he could do until i turned up anyway.  by the time i arrived, lorriane had parked her car over the spot that we would set up out tent so that no-one else could set up camp there.  we unloaded everything and started to work out where everything should go.  we are not well practiced at this as it is usually just a place to sit after a race.  we now had merchandise that needed to be on display and the how and why’s of good marketing practice came into play.

we pretty much got everything where we wanted it and by then darryl and scott had also joined us so we had many hands on deck to help out.

chris was attempting to show me how to get the power/weight ratio test set up but the cycle-ops head unit was proving more difficult that we had hoped.  to show the average power meant a complicated 27 button push operation that was well beyond me as an engineer.  a quick call to melvyn (who luckily was around the corner on his bike) and we soon had his new ANT+ powertap running through lorraines garmin.  neatly set up it showed current power, average power and time all on the one screen.  made things a lot simpler.

in the meantime, darryl, scott and lorriane seemed to flag down every single person that wandered past and told them all about spr and what a great group we are.  handed out flyers and offered them brownies.  we had quite a lot of interested people wandering past and even if they didn’t stop in for a chat, saw that we had a lot of people just hanging out in the tent.  once the first race was over the crowds came down off the course and i think we sold quite a few more drinks at that time.  if anything it was just our hook to get them close enough for our marketing people (darryl, scott and lorraine) to talk to them about spr.

it took a while but we finally got a few people to have a go at the power/weight ratio test.  first cab off the rank was our test pilot “the stig” who posted a decent 8.92W/kg.  the test was basically get on the bike and smash out 20 sec as hard as you can to give and average power.  this is then divided by your weight to give a power to weight ratio.  this test cannot really be compared to anything except the results of others doing the same test.  so it all came down to how well you went against “the stig”.

women’s results

men’s results

a good mix of spr regulars with some passersby just wanting to know how they faired.  lennie and jarrad get themselves an spr prize pack of bottle, hat and t-shirt. 

at the end of the day, we managed to sell some drinks and some spr drink bottles.  distribute some kit, hand out some flyers and give away some brownies.  getting our name out there is the most important thing and selling us more as a support group for people with a cycling affliction rather than just a club is what make us stand out.  a huge thanks to lorraine, darryl and scott for all their help manning the tent.  chris, lisa, melvyn, kimbo and ryan for providing equipment and support, and all the others that made us look like a good community group to be apart of.

oh, and there was a race on as well.  we had brendan, matty and nicole in spr kit but also had steve, jack, davina, bec, anna, lisa and jill all out competing.  all the riders that i have talked to have said what a great level of support they felt as they went around the different circuits.  so also a big thanks to those that just turned out to support our riders on the day.