NUS Riders / NUSMS Night Cycling Event

The NUS Riders was priviledged to have been invited to marshal the NUS Muslim Society Night Cycling 2010. The event was on a Saturday Night and we have agreed to provide safety marshalls to help the cyclists around the stipulated route. It was an overnight event and was the very first official road marshalling event for the club.

There was about 160 cyclists and we have roughly 12 marshals to guide the entire operation. We were definitely lacking of manpower for the operation, however, we have to still make do with the numbers. Haikal, vice president was the man for the night being the point man, coordinator and despatcher for the event. We met up about 9pm at ECP macdonalds and have a briefing from Haikal. After which we went around to do a walkthrough of the route. Unfortunately, upon doing a u-turn at the ROM entrance, Norisha took a slip and fell down with her CBR400. We managed to rush to her attention, while sadly, another Super 4 took stationary fall, due to parking on a slope.

Luckily, no one was injured by the mishaps. The convoy carried on while I accompanied Norisha until her friend arrived and bike towed. After sending her off, we got news another Super 4's battery was flat and could not start. We were then left with 10 men for the entire operation. The entire route starts from ECP, Nicoll highway, Suntec, Mount Faber, Sultan Mosque through town area and finally back to ECP. It was quite a tough route compared to previous night cycling events, as the convoy will be travelling alongside the roads and at major roads in town area.

Upon flagoff, we have manage to secure the roads safely and positioned marshalls on the stipulated junctions. The convoy was unexpectedly long and we have to constantly cover the next junction after the last man have passed the last marshall. Along the way, the marshalls managed to take periodic breaks and pictures in between, with plenty of jokes from the riders especialy Ferrino. It definitely helped the riders overcome the fatigue level at 3am in the morning.

However, another marshall had to leave midway and our man count have to be further reduced and we had a little trouble upon reaching Lavender Road. Apparently, the convoy have to merge with a heavy 3 lane roads and we have to hold up the entire convoy to ensure enough placement. This has made the cyclistS rather impatient in addition to their level of fatigue. Hence, upon releasing them, they have made their way straight, with several uncontrolled junctions as the convoy size gets too big to handle. This was partly due to the shortage of manpower that we encountered, however, the cyclist have managed to cross each junctions safely with no incidents.

At the end of the day, we managed to return all the cyclist safely without any incidents. It was about 6am when the entire event finished and the riders as well as the cyclists were all definitely tired but happy that the event went smoothly, with only a bit of miscoordination at the end. It was indeed an eye-opening experience for all of the riders and hopefully, that the next marshalling event would be better in terms of manpower and coordination.

From the organizers and myself, I would like to thank all the riders that came down to help out in the marshalling as the safety of the event would be at jeopardy without your help. Hope you have enjoyed yourself and learnt a thing or two about road marshalling. See you guys again for the next event!