You got him with that one...

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Slideshow:

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I have been running longer than I've been cycling this year. I started running mainly just to lose weight and get in shape. However I have no desire whatsoever to participate in any kind of organized sanctioned "race" unless it's something like The Naked Foot 5K. Yes I'm a barefoot runner and that sounds fun.

For cycling, I have done both local informal group rides and also 1 charity organized ride. The latter was The Midnight Classic Bike Tour in Memphis benefiting Meritan. It looked fun to me because it was at night, police were working all intersections so no traffic to deal with, and there were TONS of people and bikes!

I really don't care about racing at all. But riding with others IMHO is more fun than riding by myself, especially if it's one where I can actually keep up with the others haha. :)

A few good reasons:

1. Marked course. Very helpful if you're riding on roads not familiar to you, which is often the case for those participating in organized rides.

2. Documentation that you've done the course. It's def an ego thing, but a lot of folks don't consider having actually 'officially done' a century or etc. until they've got one recorded on the books/internet. For race results, this is particularly important. People will doubt you down the road if you said you rode a 40k TT in sub 1 hr on your own, but when you have the race results to prove it, it's all good.

3. Camaraderie. Like it or not, you'll have many times the number of riders sharing the road with you on an organized ride than you will with your own friends. It does make it safer, imo, since there are so many cyclists out that cars pretty much start paying attention along the route.

4. SAG support. Not available in all rides, but there are folks who only do rides where there is significant SAG support.

5. It's an event! I've ridden some beautiful roads on my own, but I gotta admit, it's a lot more fun when you see all those folks out there on the road as well cycling. I love cycling events, even though I could definitely just ride my own ride and get the same workout.

All true, plus some rides you get to go where you can't normally. For the tour of Five Boros in NYC you get to ride across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

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I do club rides every Saturday. I ride faster when I am with a group of people that are faster than me. Also, ever week the route changes so it doesn't get boring. I just follow a route slip that I didn't need to create. I now have a lot of friends that ride from the club.

:roflmao2:

Sometimes it's just nice to ride when there are tons of other riders out there even if you're not expressly riding "with" them.

beer at the end

You get to wear a timing chip if you want to. You can ride for the fun of it but its a lot different than a Ciclavia which is way less fun.

Many of the organized rides have routes that don't lend themselves to self-support unless you're able to carry a lot of water. You sign-up and show-up, no mess, fuss or bother.

On the tandem we use the ride as a mini-getaway, arriving Friday afternoon and having a good dinner. We'll go to Palm Springs again this year and will probably stay two nights. All in all we probably do 10 organized rides/year. Once I retire in 2013 I'll do several more that are too difficult for the tandem.

Road closures are a big benefit. The most popular organized ride around here is the Vancouver to Whistler gran fondo and they dedicate a bridge and at least one lane to the ride. It makes it more pleasant for many people not to have to worry about traffic.

Organised rides are something different.

People might ordinarily ride by themselves or with a small group of friends, but the organised ride allows people to ride with a larger group of people. It's a whole different dynamic to share a century, for example, with 100+ people than riding it by yourself or with one or two other people. It's kind of exciting, a shared experience.

Also, for me, they are an excuse to ride somewhere I don't normally ride.

One particular organised century, I got a ride to the start of the century, and then rode the century one weekend, and then the next weekend I turned it into a 200 km ride by riding to where the century started, and then following the route again. But this time, I wasn't on any sort of time limit, so I stopped and had a look at various things I'd passed the previous weekend. So the organised century was a good way of introducing me to an area I was less familiar with.

On other occasions, I've travelled some distance to where the century or other organised event is run ... it's an excuse to go there and see what's there. In Australia we've made weekends of it. Drive down on the Friday, ride the event on Saturday, check out the area on Sunday, drive back home on Monday.




PS - I'm seeing several people making the assumption that organised rides are for causes. Only one of the many organised rides I've done has been for a cause, and I'm not particularly inclined to do anymore like that. When we're talking organised rides, I'm thinking of the local century, the annual 3-day cycling tour, randonnees ...

Another reason is to ride somewhere new. Usually organized ride routes have been plotted to be the most scenic, or challenging, or least trafficed, or all of them. I like using a map and exploring to find interesting places to ride, but it's also fun to ride someone else's idea of an interesting place to ride.

For organized charity/pay rides I like:
* Rest stops so I'm never too far from drinking water, snacks, and bathrooms. Much less water to carry, no need to lock the bike at stops, privacy for nature breaks. First aid, too.
* SAG so I don't get stuck in the middle of nowhere unable to finish the ride.
* Safety in numbers.
* Marked routes and people to follow so it's easy to ride in areas I'm not familiar with
* There's always somebody faster to chase and somebody slower that I can pass
* There's usually somebody very close to my speed to ride with for some of the ride, rather than adjusting my pace to accommodate friends.
* Traffic control especially intersections so it's safe and quick to navigate through busy areas
* The conversation-starter when you see a stranger wearing the event T-shirt later on.

I like them. Lots of different people from different walks of life with one thing in common.

Yeah, I get a perverse thrill riding on NYC highways where ordinarily you would instantly be squashed like a bug.

I like seeing hundreds or thousands of bicycles and cyclists all in one place (more or less) and being part of it.

In 2011 we were caught in the backup on the Gowanus, my wife and I bailed over the jersey wall and rode in the freeway traffic back down to 38th in Brooklyn to get out, truly hair raising sprint to get the hell off the freeway.

They make for good people watching.

And you get to see a whole bunch of different bicycles and equipment. :)

The organized rides give me a break from riding by myself. I don't have friends that ride, or at least none that ride hard enough to satisfy me. I've tried club rides with NYCC and 5BBC, and the NYCC rides always turn into hammerfests, and the 5BBC rides are way too slow. On an organized ride there is always someone or group going at or near your pace and you do get to meet people. And occasionally you get to ride places that are usually off-limits like the VNB mentioned above.

And speaking of organized rides, the Tour de Bronx is next weekend. It is more like a DIS-organized ride but can be fun anyway. At least its free.

Wheel sucking

Watching movies at home is fun, but watching something like the Dark Knight Rises at the theater is better! Something like that probably....

Riding for a fire department cycling team, we do up to 10 charity rides a year. I thoroughly enjoy them for many of the reasons previously stated. They definitely take the monotony out of riding solo all the time. However, because you are riding with people of various cycling skills, some who don't normally do group riding, it can get dangerous; also for reasons previously stated. I found this out last month on the last charity ride I did; got cut off by someone who didn't have a clue. Still, I think they are a lot of fun and I have a few more scheduled for this year.

I happen to enjoy being scolded by a 50-something woman in a sleeveless Novara jersey riding a Trek with whimsical squeeze toy animals lashed to the fenders for not calling out "on your left" when I give their 15 mph paceline only six feet of clearance when I pass them.

Man, she gets around! She was down here at Cool Breeze Century, riding FLAP and scolding all of us for passing her on the right. It's always an occasion and a merry gathering when she's along.