Oh, this is inconvenient
The organizers of the summer 400k have decided that the workers ride should start at the same time as the actual ride. Which is 5am. From the expo center. Which is about 10 miles away from my door (or about 35 minutes if I stomp on it, 45 minutes if I go at a regular pace.) Which means that I’d need to leave home no later than 4am to make room for unforseen incidents. Which means that I’d need to wake up at ~3:15 to get myself ready and out the door by 4am.
Ugh.
To add insult to injury the outbound route passes about half a mile from my house. It almost makes it worth it to preemptively DNF the ride, then meet up with the other rides as they transit Sellwood. (And then I could ride a 200 on the Saturday of the ride – take off for Ripplebrook when the last rider clears Sellwood, then part company with the 400 riders there and return on the return leg of portland-ripplebrook-portland before the closing control opens at 6:30pm.
I’ll have to see if my portland/pacific city permanents are approved before I go to pacific city the day after the preride (or the day of the preride; my family wants to go up on the 29th, so if that happens I’d end up getting home at 9am, then immediately turning around and bolting for the Coast Range (yes, this would be effectively riding through another 600) and hopefully getting there before it got dark and I collapsed from exhaustion.)
And if I did this, I will cheerfully turn around and ask the local RBA if RUSA would waive their “can’t ride brevets/permanents on the days of a ride you volunteer on” rule for a ride that starts after the route closes.
Comments
I checked further and it is apparently okay to ride a brevet if the starting time is after the closing time of the brevet that the worker rode earlier, but it’s not okay to ride a permanent. I’m not sure what the logic is there, and maybe I misread that section of the RBA manual.
RBA manual, page 7: IMPORTANT: Notify your pre-riders that they will not get credit for the pre-ride if they ride an event or permanent, or pre-ride another event, whose event date conflicts with your event date. Do not submit results for a pre-ride if the rider rode another event for credit on the date of the scheduled event (and the rider could not have completed both events as scheduled). This situation can occur when multiple events are scheduled for the same date (in the same region or in different regions), or the rider rode a permanent.
Comments are closed
As I understand it, the RUSA results system intentionally barfs if there are two events submitted for the same date. It isn’t the RBA’s call.
That said, since I am conveniently out of town for all the 400k pre-rides, I am intending to ride a 200k on Aug 4th.
Cheers, The co-organizer