Team Town Cycle
Well-Known Member
Due to poor registration numbers, this year's Ringwood Rumble, scheduled for this Sunday, April 19 is CANCELED.
Ringwood Rumble CANCELED!
- Thread starter Team Town Cycle
- Start date
Kaleidopete
Well-Known Member
I was surprised to see it wasn't mentioned in the JORBA races and events scction
Team Town Cycle
Well-Known Member
It's a competitive event, not a JORBA event, so we wouldn't expect it to be there.
This really is a bummer. I would've loved to race this course, Ringwood is awesome...but honestly April is probably the most congested part of the XC race calendar. Even moving to May could've done wonders for boosting registrations.
Anytime I talk to someone who raced the prime years of H2H I get super sad. There's really nothing for us North NJ folks at this point. Tons of confounding factors with that, I know the state isn't exactly playing ball with races either.
Anytime I talk to someone who raced the prime years of H2H I get super sad. There's really nothing for us North NJ folks at this point. Tons of confounding factors with that, I know the state isn't exactly playing ball with races either.
sundaydoug
Well-Known Member
I'm not much of a racer these days but I did a few H2H races back in 2004-2005 when I was learning to ride and they were really pretty fun.
Steve Vai
Endurance Guy: Tolerates most of us.
I honestly think the shorter format ruined H2H. It's a lot of effort to get out and race for 90 minutes. And riding through the beginners field during the Endurance race sucks.
I feel more and more that this state wants people to stay inside. New Jersey is becoming the anti-outdoors state more and more every year. I fully understand why people leave this state and move to places more outdoor-friendly.
I don't really know why the local race scene faded away so rapidly. I have 2 different perspectives, since I was a promoter and a cat 1 racer (at some point in history).
As a promoter, I grew tired of the rinse & repeat of it all. It's a lot of work to do these things, and to make it easier, you just kinda do what you did the year before. There's also the law of diminishing returns. The enjoyment of doing it fades a little each year. Then you decide to do something else with the time you have for hobbies. Much like Jorba, you need people to step in and take over for us old farts and nobody is stepping up to do that.
As a racer, it's more simple. It just became too much work to be average. I didn't have the drive to dedicate so much time to being pack fodder. People were always coming & going when I was racing. But it seems more people are going than coming now. Probably the same lack of people from the previous paragraph.
Or, maybe it's that the Millennial generation is just suffering from the crushing debt of our society and spends most of their weekends weeping at the state of the world from the comfort of their collective couches. All kidding aside, every now and again I think about entering a race just to try and finish it. The cost has become preposterous.
Sven Migot
Well-Known Member
I also think the growth of gravel riding & events has taken a toll on MTB.
Steve Vai
Endurance Guy: Tolerates most of us.
i.e. Length of Event.
We have barely any gravel events here though. JGG is basically $100 for just a route and a prayer that you come back alive.
MASS Fair Hill had 51 Endurance entries and 310 XC entries yesterday.
I’m not sure why nobody wants to race anymore either. It’s such a risk for promoters and I don’t blame anyone for canceling a race that has low registration numbers.
If someone asked me to come up with a brand new MTB race to attract the biggest group of participants, I’d have no idea where to start. I really have no idea what would generate enough buzz and get a good turnout.
If someone asked me to come up with a brand new MTB race to attract the biggest group of participants, I’d have no idea where to start. I really have no idea what would generate enough buzz and get a good turnout.
That race used to get close to 1000 iirc. It was one of, if not the biggest race in the area
This is probably a huge point. The time commitment to be a similar level runner is probably half the hours. Ironman had a similar fate back in the 2010's...that's an even more obscene time commitment.
Insane, good to know.
and the $ amount is a fraction lol
MMuller
Well-Known Member
1st race was 2008 as beginner and ended 2012 Cat 1. Large races and at least 8 per season I think. Between H2H and MASS you could do a dozen. Maybe that was the "heyday", I dunno. Problem for me, other than the time and effort it took to be competative (and really, why bother going if you're not trying to be somewhat competetive, if with no one other than yourself?) but after a few years it became clear you have to buy a new car every couple years just because of all the miles driven. This was not an option. Such terrible fun though. 2 lines I always said after a race "That was pure torture..." followed by "When's the next one?!" Maybe the next generation of NICA riders will provide a bump in turnouts.
Isn't it just the natural ebb and flow of these things? Racing doesn't seem popular at the moment. Ringwood itself is one of the better parks in the region and that race was always good. Personally, I'm getting older and my interest in racing is 95% dead. The PITA factor (basically a whole day affair between driving and riding, training just for pack fill results, unknown weather - look at today!) of it generally kills any rekindling of the flame. I've always felt this entire sport is better with a modest but enthusiastic rider base as opposed to huge numbers tearing up trails.
Hmm, that's a great question to ponder. No idea of the answer either. It used to be enduro but from what I've read that's really declining as well. Another one of those things that started out as grass roots fun and ended up getting super serious from both a competitive and difficulty of course perspective.
To a point, yeah I agree. We had our moment in cross as well. Sure it was a long ass day to race 45 minutes. But when it was huge, we had the tent and at MINIMUM a dozen MTBNJ racers on any given day. Back when we used to do Nittany, we would have a white board with the times & the team members who were racing, plus a huge clock so everyone could stay in tune with the day. We'd have a dozen people there just cheering for whoever was on the course.
Fast forward to the end, when those numbers were nearly gone. I think one of the last doubles we did was Northampton. D and I went up, and tall Sean went up, separately. We talked for like 10 minutes before/after the race then went our own way. The magic of it all was long gone. That was the final nail in the proverbial coffin, I think.
To me it was a people-social thing. I mean we could take 12-20 people to a bowling alley, toss in a case or 2 of beer, and have a blast with it. In 2 months it'll boil down to 1 guy with a 40 oz of Colt 45 wondering where his life is going.
IMO you have to do an event that maybe has a race. If you're tasking me with this I put together something along the lines of...BSA event, add in a short track element, but also add in something like a poker run. So you can combine the race subset with the non-race subset. You can toss in a special bonus if you're allowed to camp, then throw in a keg of beer maybe. You need to also have the food option, which could be a big grill with burgers and so on. You need to coordinate it so that people are done with their events at roughly the same time. Then you do podiums (maybe just a few) plus raffles plus then you also managed to land the RHCP for a concert after.
Seems plausible, right?
Steve Vai
Endurance Guy: Tolerates most of us.
In 2010 the Pro Race had over 100 people in it...