As the days get longer, the races and rides are already piling up. The Nacho rides begin May 7, though the trail and temperatures are fine now. People are even bike packing to area lakes already. Last week was mountain bike racing and gravel grinding. Before that was road racing and a new event called Trash Time Trials, which sounds pretty great.
It’s part of the RRR (Randy’s Ritual Ride) Gravel Series. It’s too late to sign up for the whole series now, but you can still race them individually. According to website excerpts (visit https://www.rrrgravelseries.fun/home for the full story) the mission of the series is to:
RIDE FAST: Competition pushes us to find new limits inside ourselves. As Randy often said, “All you need are two cyclists pointed in the same direction and you’ve got a race.” No matter how fast you are the best races are those between two evenly matched competitors. That opportunity does not often present itself day to day. So on these special days, where we all get together and point in the same direction, everyone is far more likely to find that person who is your exact equal on the day. Sometimes you’re pushing each other to “beat” one another. Other times you are helping each other to just finish. Fast is completely relative. To some it’s a podium to many more its just finishing before the sun fades and the checkpoints close. On that day we are all pushing ourselves so RIDE FAST!
DO GOOD: We have all seen it out on the road. The random bottle, the empty beer cans, the bags of household trash, tires, couches or other trash(ahem, gel packets) littering the gravel roads we ride down. Not many of us are going to note the trash location, hop in our cars and go back out to pick it up. Neither are we going to stuff our jersey pockets with garbage and haul it back with us. We probably have all dropped a wrapper or two without knowing it as well. So in putting on the series we decided to do something that helps everyone out and put in the effort to clean up the roads we enjoy. And not just the accidental litter from the events, all the trash. It’s a huge undertaking but it’s worth at least trying.
For 2019 we are doing 3 different clean up events. The first is a cyclist lead clean up event with participants doing spotting, collection and hauling by bike, as part of the Trash Time Trial the RRR point series opener.
The second event will be at the Solstice 100 Gravel Grinder. The final event of the series is Gravel Worlds. The goal is to leave the courses we travel on these days cleaner than we found them.
HAVE FUN: Tailwinds, 70 degrees, sun and fresh legs are seldom the conditions we get. When we do it’s easy to have a fun day in the saddle: type 1 fun. When you start flipping those good condition switches to the off position then it’s a lot harder to keep that smile going. To anyone who has done these types of events they will know the term “type 2 fun”. For those who are new to endurance sport the term refers to the feeling when you look back on a particularly hard day and it’s only fun in hindsight. Not necessarily while you’re doing it. In fact type 2 fun experiences can downright suck when you are in the middle of them. Every day on the bike is different. So whatever the type of fun you have, just make sure it’s fun, or you won’t come back. And we really want you to come back.
So there you have a sampling of what’s coming. In other news, Wednesday 4/17 is Great Plains Bicycling Club’s NSFMW (Not Sorry For Missing Work) annual ride. Visit their page on Facebook for more information if playing hooky and riding bikes interests you. Now go get some miles.