"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - ATTN MABRA - Murad Road Race update - postponed

please check the mabra listserve or www.gamjams.net for details. sorry, we need to postpone due to a conflicting event on our race course that would impact course safety beyond a reasonable risk that we were willing to accept as promoters.

Thanks for the note!

Thanks. What the heck is the event out there? Should I avoid riding out to the poolesville area on Saturday?

Thanks. What the heck is the event out there? Should I avoid riding out to the poolesville area on Saturday?

This is a really good question. Should we be avoiding the area on Saturday?

Thanks. What the heck is the event out there? Should I avoid riding out to the poolesville area on Saturday?

I would avoid River/Hughes/Sugarland in general as there is a soccer tournament on 5/23 at the polo grounds (where we stage the race) that expects approx. 700 cars (many from out of state) at any given time.

We would have been sharing the fields used as parking area, which we could have managed, but the influx of so many automobiles, many from out of state, and results in backups the entire way from hughes/sugarland to river at times, was too much interference on the course. We thought that not only would this potentially create issues with race fairness, we thought it made our "worst case scenario" of auto/racer incident more probable.

We've promoted this race for years and thought all the i's were dotted and t's crossed. Even with all the permitting, arrangements with the owner of the polo grounds, and conversations with MD youth soccer, this news fell through the cracks until we confirmed our committment from the EMT services yesterday, and they expressed concern over being spread too thin with the "big soccer tournament".

After spending about 10 hrs. that I didnt have on the phone with various folks yesterday, we came to the conclusion that we didnt like the added risk to racers and that we couldnt put on a quality event.

A big disappointment as many of the club members have logged big bunches of hours in this effort, and now we've gotta try and pull things together again for a re-schedule date of 6/14.

It's a shame as I realize how much work goes into race prep well in advance of the race date. Sorry you folks had to bust your asses only to have to do it again in a month. Good on you for pulling the plug in order to keep things safe.

b