Updates 2

1. The online registration for the Cup Series and Wednesday Night Series are up, register online now.
2. The new MCA website is up. The new url is mbcycling.ca. You will be redirected from the old url. More importantly we now have a mountain bike page (woohoo). Take a look and see if there is anything you want added. Race organizers take a look at the "Race Organizer" tab on the page - let me know if there is anything you want to find here. All of our races are up in the race calendar (you can get to it by clicking on the dates on the race calendar or by going to "Races & Events" and then clicking on the 2010 MTB Race Dates and Results. If you look at the Grand Beach race it shows the race bible that we want up two weeks prior to each event, sooner is even better.

Updates

 A couple of important updates:

1. Karleo online registration is ready to go for the Cup race series and the Wednesday Night Series. The individual races will be up shortly.
2. The information forms that all organizers need to fill out will be online in a day or two. Right now they are in PDF form but will be made into online forms shortly. Check the MCA site.
3. We're working on still getting a commissaire's course for this year. I know it is late, but things have not lined up the way they should have on this - keep checking here or the MCA site for updates. 
4. All the clubs have agreed to change the levy system from $2 per U15 and older racer for Cup races to $1 per U15 and older racer for any MCA sanctioned mountain bike event.

April Online Meeting

Four items are posted below for the April meeting. Each item is its own post, please comment on each item and offer suggestions etc. If you want to add another item please comment to this post.

1. Promotion
2. Plates
3. Commissaires 
4. Canada Cup

A couple of documents will be posted shortly where I am looking for input before they are published - please keep checking this site.

Also, I am looking for a volunteer to track the MTB Cup points and the inter-club competition, any takers?

Thanks,
Hal Loewen
MTB Coordinator

April Online Meeting - Promotion

These cards where designed as a promotional tool for our MTB races. The idea was to have business cards beside cash registers in the shop and have them hand them out, directing people to our web site for more information.

I priced out that it is roughly $100 for 1000 cards. We have roughly $120 in our budget for these types of promotions. 1000 cards distributed to roughly 10 supporting shops might last a few days or a week or two, do we want to pursue this? Can somebody get a better price than this?

April Online Meeting - Plates

Last year we used the plates from the previous season, saving a lot of money. Our inventory is running low and we will need to get new plates for this season. We have lost a lot plates over the last two years, mostly at events where we use the plates and they do not come back at the end of the event.

We are currently pricing them out the cost of getting new plates but we need to come up with a strategy to get the most use out of the plates we order; what are your ideas? Here are a couple to get started with:

1. Issue a plate for 5 years - the only time you change the plate is if you go to a new category, you would then have turn in your old plate to get the new plate.
2. You loose or break your plate you need to pay for the replacement.
3. Buy a bunch of tyvek sheets  with numbers to hand out at events that are not races or to participants who are not MCA members - if they do not get returned no biggie, also, it makes it easier to distinguish who is and who is not an MCA member (don't know if that is important).
4. Other ideas???

April Online Meeting - Commissaries

After many attempts to try and organize a commissaire training course this spring we came to the conclusion putting a session on this year is not possible. Our only qualified commissaire who can teach this course was unable to do so this year. We tried to bring someone in, but we could not make it fit our schedule.

After speaking to our head commissaire we decided that we have enough current commissaires to run this year's schedule., which is fine for this year but does not bode well for the future. It is imperative that we continue to train commissaires so we have officials for our races. To accomplish this we have three options before us:

1. Continue with our one current commissaire who is qualified to teach new commissaires
2. Look to bring in out-of-province commissaires to train new commissaires
3. Send one of our commissaires to get the qualifications to train new commissaires

Both #'s 2 and 3 are costly and our budget's are tight. I am inclined to go with #3 - thoughts?

April Online Meeting - Canada Cup

Since we are shooting for a Canada Cup in 2012 there are a couple of things that we can do to prep:

1. Prepare a course - this we are starting to do by holding Provincials at the likely venue for the CC, Falcon Ridge. Falcon Ridge has been secured for this year's provincials and will have to be the location for next year's provincials as well. The MTB committee is in charge of the provincials and we'll be going out early to scout a course. We will meet with the organizers of the other events there this year to see how much we can work in conjunction with our events - maybe by helping each other out we can enhance all the events there. We will call a meeting of all of the organizers who are putting on events at Falcon to plan this.
2. There is a Canada Cup in Edmonton and Canmore this summer. Edmonton is July 11th weekend (same as weekend as the Swan River Cup race) and Canmore is the following weekend, July 17-18 (same weekend as the Training Coop event). Any one who is interested in going to one of these and is also interested in assisting with the CC should contact me - I would like to go to see how it is organized and what we are getting ourselves into.