Earlier this week, Emily and I headed West near Dayton, OH to visit former WVU Cycling President, Gef Moy. While there, Gef insisted we do a Wednesday night MTB TT called Fast Laps at John Bryan State Park. It was about 8miles of single track in Bryan Park. The course was amazingly well maintained. Very twisty, narrow, smooth, hardpack single track that reminded us all of NCSU racing.
The 3 of us being were rather agast at the assertion by the promoters that the thing couldn't be scored/timed without the timing crew which were using RFID chips in the number plates, but I had never seen the system, so I was curious. It seemed to work fine, except that they had to corral the finish line down to about 5', which isn't a big deal for a TT, and possibly even a MTB mass start finish.
I was very impressed with how the event turned out, with more than 50 people showing up. Registration was simple and quick: register, get a number and you start in that order of your number-no 'start list' needed. Entry fee was $5 for members and $7 for non. There were no prizes except for the kids, but there were some snacks, drinks and free magazines. Gef was disappointed with his results, and Gunnar had to rub it in later on Facebook, pointing out that he lost to Betsy's crippled brother.
Excellent event, and I'm actually considering trying it out, maybe at White Park.
3 comments:
WVU ShortTrack should be semi-urban @ white park. It would be awesome.
All the Events of a day have to be at the same location. We'd have a hard time running the XC at White. Could maybe run a DS though.
116 was the official number of entrants. Prizes are awarded for the series (best 2 of 3 TT's), and the last race of each series typically has pizza and a huge number of consolation prizes (some of them not too bad, like pairs of Kenda Nevagels). They used to time it by hand with two volunteers (which worked well when 11 of us showed up), but as the series has grown in popularity, it was probably saved by the speedy-feet timing system as the organizers were sick of trying to keep track of everyones times and the resultant whining regarding every little mistake. Harbin park (Fairfield, Cincy) has a July/August MTB TT series that's a bit less organized but a more challeging course.
- Betsy's 'crippled' brother
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