Gran Fondo New York - need your opinion!
 

We're organizing Gran Fondo New York in May next year. For those of you who have done Gran Fondo before: what did you like or dislike in particular at those rides? Course, food, post race ceremony etc.

For example, we are wondering if people would prefer a professional photo service like Brightroom, Marathonphoto and the likes with allocated bibs per photo or browsing through free pictures to download from a web album.

Many thanks!

Uli

Really would love to hear your opinion, not only if you have ridden a GF before. Any Centuries or the likes would do it.

Thanks!

Having done this year's Gran Fondo San Diego, I think an important factor would be not having any rain :lol:

NYC? pass.


there are far better parts of the state of NY to have a big bike tour.

We already spoke to God. He's negotiating hard but I think we can get there.

Will this "Gran Fondo" make many motorists want to crush cyclists even more? How will you manage to keep this organized all the way to Bear and then back?

I'm in just to see the carnage...

:popcorn

I hope you mean NY as in Fingerlakes, lower Adirondacks/Hudson Valley, or even Catskills. Oh, I see on your website you are talking out of NYC into the lower Catskills.

I was looking hard at the Colnago Gran Fondo Philadelphia (same as San Diego), but then read so many bad reviews of the organization that decided to give it a pass. If I lived closer well maybe.

There does need to be more Gran Fondo's. I want to pay a single entry, and get a ride with thousands of riders and swag. The Pan Mass challenge is like one, except if you don't raise the minimum thousands of dollars they charge the difference to you credit card. No thanks (but kudos to all the riders).

I'm not sure if the hassle of driving into NYC is worth it for me. What would happen with organization and attendance if it starts just out of the city on the train line? Phily goes from city to rural real fast. I'm not so sure from the GW bridge but maybe you found a gem of a route.

not even the Catskills.. Bear Mtn looks like the furthest point.

I'd much rather do a ride around Slide Mountain, north of Ashokan and end up somewhere in that corridor in the Hudson Valley where all the restaurants have Chefs from the Culinary Institute.

That's what we do.

We're very happy with what we figured out. Many people will come to GF NY just because it starts and ends in the city. Crossing GWB will be awesome. You will be able to park on the Jersey side and ride across if you want. We'll start uptown.

you are kidding, right? no disrespect, but this is the surest way to have people bad mouthing the event as it will clog up the entire GWB sidewalk

I checked out their website, it claims to have secured the right to close the GWB to cars for the event.

This sounds really interesting since it's going to venture outside of the city, for a moment I thought it was a ride through the city which for me just spells a whole lot of FAIL when it's big masses of riders. A ride up to Bear Mt. is always nice so I think I'd be interested if it's going to attract a good crowd.

i'd be more interested if it takes the back way to Bear Mountain, preferably via the Skyline Climb, then through Sloatsberg, across Harriman, and finally Bear Mountain. Otherwise, the thing would be no different than a normal saturday morning ride.

That might very well be the case because they seem to be after a ride with climbing and just going up 9W isn't going to give you that even if you go up HH Drive.

We're expecting 6,000 riders. I guess sending these poor people across the river on the GWB sidewalk would be a safe way to dig our own grave. ;)
So yes, we will be using the car lane.

We use other routes that will make the ride be different to your 'normal Saturday morning ride'. Also, the event itself will make it a completely different experience. I've done many Gran Fondo in Italy and it was always _very_ different to what I experienced while riding alone/training.

care to share what places you hit on your 110mile jaunt yesterday (yes, i read the blog). for the record, i'm actually interesested in this.

also, have you convinced the port authority to give you lanes and the nypd to clear the roads leading up to the bridge? as part of the organizing team that does one of the few out-of-park cycling events in NY (Grant's Tomb Crit in this case), i have some pretty bad experience regarding assistance from the police.

Once we have all the details, I'll let you know. If you're on FB, that would be the safest way to get the latest news on GF NY.
Maybe we bump into each other on 9W or in CP. I'd be happy to hear more about your experiences.

Thanks!

Although this could just be any Saturday like jimbo said, I am still interested. I've yet to take part in any type of an event this huge, 6000 expected riders. Wow.

Open both sides for the day? South side, GF, north side runners, etc.

Looks interesting. As for your photo question, being able to look up your bib number and see your pics is considerably better than having to scroll through thousands of pics you don't really care about.

Riding similar events in the UK, the things that get people irritated are the things that it is simple, but onerous, to get right. Having too few staff at registration, thus causing ridiculous queues. Sketchy route-marking - a disaster for the cyclist who is tired and ends up riding alone. Feed stations that run out of basic items so the slower riders have to fend for themselves. None of this is rocket science but they all - especially the route-marking - need time and effort to do them well. And for me the ideal route gets out of urban areas as fast as possible and contains enough climbing to make it interesting for the fast guys but not so much that anyone over 150lbs has a cardiac arrest.

Personally I'd forget about post-race ceremonies, but it's a matter of taste.

@chasm54: yes, all those seem straight forward enough but can be tricky if you look at the details. Thanks for your thoughts, hope you can combine a visit with our Gran Fondo. Send the missus shopping downtown for the day. ;)

i assume this gran fondo is in little italy?

To have a start and finish there would be cool for giving it more Italianita but neither do we think the city would allow that nor do we believe it is logistically even possible. Maybe someone wants to organize the first Gran Fondo NYC Crit.: 2,000 riders on a .7 loop in Little Italy. Let's see if anyone moves! ;)