THANKS to everyone that came out for this. Especially if you were on the fence about doing it and gave it a chance. I hope you had a great time and will come back next year! We're already talking about next year, and are hoping to make it more of a MTB/dirt route in the foothills. Fingers crossed!!!
I LOVED this year's course though! Weather was great, and of course the people were awesome! I think a lot of people did the 50 + Crafton bonus route, which was a pretty good option. Didn't get to say hi to much of anyone except a little bit at the afternoon. I actually got to ride this year and was out with my son who is 12 and amazed me at how well he did. At least to SAG#1 when he sat down and basically collapsed!
And yes, the course was sabotaged at approximately this point:
https://goo.gl/maps/kBsPO This was the portion that was unique to the 50km route, so anyone doing the 100km shouldn't have been impacted by out. Our direction arrows were painted over sometime this morning, and hundreds of tacks put out there. I don't know if it was general maliciousness, or someone that is trying to teach us a lesson for daring to ride bikes on public roads in their neighborhood. Either way I hope it didn't totally eff up anyone's ride... :-( So sorry for anyone that had to deal with that cluster of a problem. Prior to the ride we ironed everything out with Crafton Hills Conservancy re. access and all was legit. Just someone with no regard for fellow human beings.
I didn't really take any pictures, which is my huge regret for the year! If you do have any pics, please consider adding them to
flickr, the
facebook event page or Instagram #redlandsstradarossa or #stradarossa. You can see a pic of the tacks on the FB page.
So wow, in the books. Thanks again to all that came out, and for letting me promote this here, the SCTR forum has always felt like a good positive space. I felt at times I was going on and on about it a bit much, but am crazy-enthusiastic about this event!!!
See you next year!!!
David