The South Mountain road racing brain trust has been discussing summer mid-week riding fun and do we have something good cooking for you!
As many surely know, Mark Laser has been putting in years of service to the South Mountain road riding community with the Twirly Top Time Trial Series, which morphed into the Ironmasters Time Trial Series, which has been interspersed with King's Gap TT fun and other delicious and FREE summer events for the two-wheeled inclined. But Mark's got other things cooking now, has put down the torch, so to speak, and, well, with it just sitting there I figured a few of us could probably manage to pick it up and keep the fun going.
And then there's this awesome South Mountain Summer Smackdown that we've been doing the last few years--a team style cycling competition, scored like a cross country meet--and we for sure want to keep that going, because AWESOME.
Well, we're going to sort of integrate the two this year, and this is how it's going to work: Every second Wednesday, starting next week, we run an event--either an ITT on the Ironmasters course on Pine Grove Rd, an ITT on King's Gap Rd, or one of FIVE South Mountain Summer Smackdown events.
Here's the tentative 2012 CALENDAR:
| Wednesday,
April 18, 2012 |
Ironmasters TT |
| Wednesday, May 02, 2012 |
SMSS #1 - E. Big Flat HC |
| Wednesday, May 16, 2012 |
Ironmasters TT |
| Wednesday, May 30, 2012 |
SMSS #2 - Pine Grove RR |
| Wednesday, June 13, 2012 |
King's Gap TT |
| Wednesday, June 27, 2012 |
SMSS #3 - Ironmasters TT |
| Wednesday, July 11, 2012 |
Ironmasters TT |
| Wednesday, July 25, 2012 |
King's Gap TT |
| Wednesday, August 08, 2012 |
SMSS #4 - Caledonia RR |
| Wednesday, August 22, 2012 |
Ironmasters TT |
| Wednesday, September 05, 2012 |
SMSS #5 - Ironmasters TTT |
And everything is FREE!
Scores will be kept. Boasts made. Smack talked. Please proceed.
If you're not on the regular Goates spam server then please leave comment below with some way to get a hold of you and I'll put you on the list...so you can get notifications of all our fun. (Or just join the "shipcycling" Yahoo group.) But if you're on my list, then there will be more reminders and notifications of slight schedule changes or reworkings or whatever, but the general idea is as shown above.
Plan to come play next week. Parking at the Mountain Creek Campground as usual. (You'll get a reminder email next week with the address and details and whatever.)
...
A short note on the team organization for the SMSS: I mentioned above that we score SMSS events like a cross country meet. That means the sum of first three riders' places from each team score the team's points, the lowest team score wins. Riders four and five from a team can displace the riders from another team, causing them to score more points (bad for them, good for you).
As for the teams themselves, the SMSS was conceived as a "club challenge," meaning area USAC clubs competing against each other. Like South Mountain Velo vs. YBR vs. Ship Cycling vs. Lost Boys, etc. And we'll still do that, and hope to get some of the AVC crew to join us too, and perhaps Round Here Racing, and maybe the Mountainside mtb team, and anyone else that wants to play... But we also have a place for anyone that doesn't have an official club affiliation or can't get anyone else from their club to come. In other words, composite teams. You show up on race night and we'll assign you a team. Makes it more fun.
Also, though we've schedule everything for Wednesday, if the weather looks nasty then things get pushed to Thursday. If that happens, there will be an email. So...more reason to get on the Goates spam server.
Ok, I think that's it. Get excited!
