The 2013 schedule for the
RMCC is now available on the website! First a few notes about the
process of putting it together in general.
As a club we like to have
a structured schedule setup for the whole year as opposed to making
it up as we go along. Reasons for doing this are many. First, it
keeps the schedule varied—not running the same basic ride three
weekends in a row. Second, we want to have a reasonable progression
of rides in the springtime, as opposed to doing 60 miles one week and
20 the next. Third, it ensures that rides actually happen on a
regular basis—you'll always know that there will be an RMCC ride
this weekend without depending upon somebody to come up with
something at the last second!
Hopefully this makes
riding with the club more beneficial in multiple ways: You don't get
bored with doing the same ride week after week, you know if you come
out you'll see some of your friends there or be able to make new
friends without having to exchange fifty e-mails to get a ride worked
out, and you'll be challenged as a rider in ways that you aren't when
just ride on your own, which helps you get better!
Over the course of each
season we collect notes on each ride (how many people showed up,
problems with the route etc), and collect feedback on the schedule as
a whole. Then in the fall a group of us get together and combine all
of this information and work out the schedule for the following year.
Because it's a big schedule, a lot stays the same from year to year,
so I'll just highlight some of the key changes for 2013:
1) We are going to
experiment with “flex start times” during March and April. As we
all know, the weather tends to be variable in the spring—start the
rides early and it's sometimes too cold; start the ride late and you
waste half the day waiting for the ride to start when you could just
get out early. So, for 2013, March rides will start at either 9:45
or 10:45; April rides will start at either 8:45 or 9:45. The actual
start time will be posted on the website by Thursday morning for
Saturday rides and Friday morning for Sunday rides. As such, you'll
need to check the website each week to confirm the start time before
heading out! Depending upon how this works, we'll either continue,
expand, or retract this experiment in the future. Please let us know
your feedback on it!
2) We've moved some of
rides from more distant start locations closer to town. This means
fewer rides out of Monument and Exits 255 and 243. To try and
arrange things such that everyone has at least some rides starting
close to their home, we've added new start locations out of Cherry
Creek (one Sunday ride), central Denver (two Sunday rides), and US 36
and Wadsworth (a couple of rides). Despite this change, we really
haven't eliminated any popular rides; some rides that used to be run
twice during the year now just go once.
3) During the hot
mid-summer months, we're doing fewer flat rides on Sundays and
replacing them with rides with relatively easier climbing. This
seems to line up better with people's actual riding interests.
4) Sometimes we've had too
many rides happening on the same day between the regular ride
schedule, the Challenge Series, and the Brevet schedule. As an
experiment, we are setting aside 3 Saturdays where the special event
ride is the only ride for that day. These will be for the Foothills
Climbfest, and two mid-summer 200Ks. If you haven't tried any of
these events before, we hope you will! If you prefer something
shorter than these rides, we are pairing these Saturdays up with
shorter climbing days on Sunday.
5) With cyclocross riding
become more popular, we've added two mixed pavement/dirt rides in the
late summer early fall. One of them will take in roads west of
Boulder; we're still working out the course for the other ride.
One final note: For any
number of reasons, the schedule is always subject to change. We're
getting more such information e-mailed out through Constant Contact,
but the best course of action to check the website each week to make
sure you're up to speed on what's going on!
We hope you'll make the
RMCC club rides a key part of your 2013 riding, and look forward to
seeing you out on the road!
