SFist: Cycling: The Marin Centurians

guest

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:26:07 -0800

Thank you for this wonderful and fairly accurate account of the Marin Century 2007. Your posting is beautiful. As the ride director, I do have to take notice that you did not mention much about the post event BBQ. Many participants secretly view this event as a BBQ party with a ride beforehand. We take a lot of pride with providing the riders with the best after-party that we can throw. It is my hope that this adds a lot to the overall enjoyment of the event. As to the rider limits, due to our success in previous years and our TV exposure, I made the decision to pull the plug on online registrations early, and state "no Day-Of registrations". We were reaching the limit of practicality, the number of riders we could support. Since I could not prevent riders who didn't know about our limits from showing up, we did offer limited on site registration. This may not happen next year. Although I hate to turn anyone away, having 300+ or an unknown number of riders show up day-of, can really mess up our ability to feed and support the people who registered early. It is every ride director's hope that people register 3 months in advance and the limit is met and we can sleep well until the event. Again, thank you for your write up, and we'll work to make next year's event even better. Michael Sexton

Dan Lyke

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:57:23 -0800

MalcoveMagnesia, I don't know about the bike messengers, but I've had no sneering from the Marin biker yuppies, even in cotton shorts and a T-shirt. If you're taking the bus up to hills to coast down 'em they may not find much in common with you, but if you spank them on the hill riding a 20 year old beater and wearing a T-shirt, you'll likely get awe and admiration. Of course not long after I started riding with 'em I did break down and get the lycra because modern technology does have its benefits, but my $20 garage sale beater wasn't the oldest bike out there, even among some pretty hardcore riders. sasha, yep, there are arrows (Gary does an amazing job of keeping those relatively fresh, small enough that the various governing agencies don't complain, but large enough that they're readable), and we tried this year to get cones and markers out by the major turns. I got home at 1:30AM on Saturday morning after driving a van full of signs all over northern Marin and southern Sonoma having set up about half the signs I'd hoped to, and if we can get the volunteers we'll do better at it next year. Chris, thanks for the write-up! I think this year set new records not only for the variety of terrain and number of riders, but for the variety of weather. My sweety and I were running the BoFax-Route 1 mini rest stop (on the southern Mt Tam Century and Double route), came dressed for coastal fog, got a little of that, but ended up really wanting some shade by the time we were tearing down. Then we moved up to the north course where we roasted, then froze once the sun went down. And if you think it's fun to ride it, you should come out and get involved in some of the excitement of putting it on! We get to meet some great people, see some spectacular countryside, and get a chance to give a little back for all the times that other people have supported our rides.

sasha

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:39:45 -0800

Not to nitpick, but (to nitpick) the course was actually marked, albeit subtilely, with small arrows painted on the pavement that were color-coded according to the route you were riding. One had to pay attention, but it was almost possible to follow the course without reading the cue sheet. Great coverage, though! @Malcove Magnesia: Feel free to cast aspersions at the biker cliques you don't feel part of, but you should realize that if it weren't for organized cyclists, there wouldn't be bike racks on the 76 to get you up that hill.

MalcoveMagnesia

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 01:04:07 -0800

I'm a casual biker, and once in a while I'll make it over the G.G. bridge to bike around the Headlands. Sometimes I'll be super lazy and throw my bike on the front of the 76-Muni bus, just to get it up to the top of the hill overlooking the bridge and then zip down the hill while watching other bikers huff, puff and push their carcasses & bikes up that awful incline Anyways... the mention of "tribes" in this post got me thinking. There definitely seems to be big differences between hardcore (speed/pot/meth-addicted?) bike messengers in downtown S.F. and/or the car-hating Critical Mass types versus the aerodynamic shirts & tighty short-wearing Marin biker yuppies who, if they're not ignoring my sloppy Le' Target brand shorts & sweatshirt-layers wearing self, they're outright sneering and snarling at me. Either way, I don't believe casual bikers really fit (or are welcomed) into any of these biker tribes. Which is okay with me. Biking can be a solitary pleasure.