iRide @ BC Superweek and Prospera Valley GranFondo

Last week iRide provided free community events in Tsawwassen and Fort Langley, in conjunction with BC Superweek and the Prospera Valley GranFondo.  Students enjoyed a modified iRide session featuring practice courses, obstacles and stunts under an open-practice format allowing students to ride up to 60 minutes.  The two events took place at Dennison Park in Tsawwassen and Langley Fine Arts School in Fort Langley respectively.  To wrap up the session, all riders participated in the kids cycling races and received a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory gold medal.  Over the course of the two events, iRide met its modest target of 100 participants at BC Superweek and continued to learn how best to tailor the program for festival-style events before expanding the free community events in the future.

Ben reports:

Marc Campbell provided a first rate crew of helpers when we visited the Prospera Valley package pick-up last Saturday for our iRide event. With their help, we created a fun grass track before iRide coach Julian Base and I added some iRide “flare” with the “lava pit” and “ragging rapids”.

We ran 3 different races for the 55 participants in Langley. We had about 10-15 run-bike racers, 20 U7 pedalers and another 15-20 U11 pedalers who completed 2, 3 and 5 laps respectively.  All of the riders loved their medals and there were even some frisbees and bells thanks to Prospera’s support.

Since Julian ran the open-practice session prior to the race, he also oversaw the kids race.  This continuity is really important for creating a great session, especially when the young riders are nervous, excited and a little over-stimulated in the new racing environment. I have also found this continuity is critical for our regular in-school programming and I am making policy changes to iRide’s scheduling in 2016 to improve coach-athlete interaction and overall program effectiveness.