The Happenings of Race Day at the 2010 Rebel Sport City to Surf for Activ

Another week has gone by and what an eventful week it was! Finally all the hard work and effort came together at the 2010 Rebel Sport City to Surf for Activ on Sunday 29th August! Before I leap into telling you about the day itself I will let you in on the madness that was the week leading up to the iconic Perth event.

Firstly, the office was one crazy and busy place to be. There were so many final details that needed to be put into place before the event and stress levels and frustration was high! The phone calls were non-stop and hundreds of e-mails kept coming in.

I prepared several post event press releases in anticipation as well as press releases for the week regarding weather, road closures, the event expo etc. I was continually updating our twitter and facebook accounts and really encouraging people to register for the event, as we were desperate to break the 40000 registrations barrier (and we did)!

I also put together and sent out media kits for the event including the media guide, media passes, parking permits and maps for the day. One of the days I worked from 8am til 7pm (11hours) with no lunch break and I was far from the last to leave! Busy was an understatement!

I helped with the organisation and set up for the pre event press conference, which was held on Friday morning. This was a great experience for me! We had the elite athletes from around the world attend as well as the people from our human-interest press stories. We had media attend from all across Perth and it all went very smoothly!

So now we’ll move on to race day itself! Well, I was up at 4:00am and down at the course not too long after that, we had a big day ahead. The morning was spent ensuring everything was all in order and setting up the final touches. Some staff had been there since mid night! Stress levels were surprisingly low, but everyone was nervous, just hoping the day would all go to plan! Its crazy to think that 12months of hard work is all over in about 8hours!

I was to be based in the media tent as the ‘media assistant’ at the finish line for the day. At about 7am the volunteers started to arrive and I had 12 event students from TAFE that would be working for me throughout the day. Once they arrived, I prepped them on what I needed them to do (I definitely felt a sense of responsibility and they all looked up to me as though I had done this many times before!).

Their task was to catch the people I needed as they crossed the finish line, make sure they were ok, and bring them to me while I ensured they were sent to the right media people at the right time according to the schedule. We had to get top 5 male and female marathon winners and the male and female first and second Australians along with the top 3 male and female winners from all other events plus the human-interest participants. We had media attend from Channel Nine, Mix 94.5, The Sunday Times, The West Australian and various other smaller media journalists.

The day was high pressure, but in a good way! It was very full on and at one stage it seemed all of my volunteers had disappeared on task and I had people coming up to me in every direction with questions regarding media. The atmosphere was great and I stayed calm and on top of all of my tasks and saw that everything ran very smoothly!

The overall experience of race day was excellent and I really enjoyed being a part of it all. I am learning so much from my placement and feel as though I have been thrown into everything head on and have come out on top of whatever I put my mind to. I’m looking forward to seeing how everything works post-event and to celebrate with the team on the huge success of another City to Surf!

For event results visit the Rebel Sport City to Surf for Activ website - http://www.perthcitytosurf.com