on 7/14/10 1:10 PM, Anne Paulson at anne.paul...@gmail.com wrote: > I see. SFR is putting on a nice 75 mile bike ride for people who feel > like riding a beautiful 75 mile bike ride. Nothing wrong with that, > and undoubtedly the people who ride this will have an great time. I > hope everyone on this list who participates will enjoy themselves; I > know I would if I rode it. But what is the point of "introduc[ing] > riders to the sport of randonneuring" if they are not targeting riders > who would actually be interested in randonneuring? Lee says it's a > kind of recruitment event, and I say if it were longer, it would be > better for recruiting.
I think there are a couple things working in its favor as a recruiting/development tool - - By mid-summer, a lot of folks have been riding more miles. Someone who has been riding 40-50 mile routes can look at 60-70 miles and decide to make a stab at the longer distance. Then if they like the people, find it interesting, they can aim at the traditional distances. If you then increase your max distance by 10%/month, doing the first 200K in January is not a huge stretch. Which is (to my understanding) one of the tenets of randonneuring - that the increases in distance build upon one another. - It is run as a brevet, so you get to deal with cards and controls and route sheets. If that's a deal-breaker, then it's probably better to find out on a shorter ride. - July in the Bay Area is nice, warm, temperate and dry. The first brevet on the schedule is the last week of January, which can be snotty, cold, windy and wet. I think it's probably more a social "awareness-raising" event than a specific recruitment drive. Putting down a smaller step, as it were. Sorry to natter on about brevets/randonneuring here. Hope we're not putting everyone to sleep. - J -- Jim Edgar cyclofi...@earthlink.net Cyclofiend Bicycle Photo Galleries - http://www.cyclofiend.com Current Classics - Cross Bikes Singlespeed - Working Bikes "You must be the change you want to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
