BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Crush the Commonwealth is starting in Philly this year, on Friday April 29th. Might be tough to make it to Calvin's on the 30th, though... Since you're looking at most of a brevet series, you should check out other (reasonably) local randonneuring groups offering 600Ks, in order to get a full Super Randonneur series (sadly, cape and tights are not included with the award) Capitol Region Eastern PA Ohio You might also look into a fleche: that's a 24-hour team-based ride, with a minimum length of 360km, usually in the vicinity of Easter weekend...all of the above groups have one scheduled. Nice list...if you ride them all, I will buy you a tasty beverage of your choice. ;-)

It would work to maintain this over at the BikingPgh.com site, instead of trying to do it here. It's a better set up for trying to keep track of things over a period of time. If you made a comprehensive list of rides there you'd be making something that people can access over the year to see what rides are coming up. I would be happy to set up an account for you, as would Dan, I'm sure. Just PM.

Major Taylor's 3 State Ride - I don't know the date.

3-2-1 Ride in October. The long route, a metric century, starts in Connellsville (they bus you there if you need to) and it follows the GAP all the way into Pittsburgh

The Diabolical Double - 6/25/16 http://www.garrettcountygranfondo.org/diabolical_double.htm

Good info, TYVM! Another followup question would be whether there are any rides that sell out early. I'd hate to miss a classic ride because I didn't know to register quickly...

Mon Valley Century, in August http://monvalleycentury.com/

Okay, a couple updates made, and list with 2016 dates is now stored at BikingPGH here. TYVM!

An excellent resource. Thanks for putting it together!

Would the All Neighborhoods Ride count? http://localhost/mb/topic/a-ride-that-touches-every-single-pittsburgh-neighborhood/page/10/#post-316825

Looks annual and nontrivial to me. I added it, but greyed out due to no 2016 date yet.

"Annual and nontrivial" is one way to describe it. It will be the first Saturday of Bike Fest, assuming my friends have no scheduling conflicts on that day. The food and company are always good.

Ok, this sounds like it has lots of potential, first year for this event, but this is the hot new thing. Black Fork Gravel Grinder, end of April, Loudonville, Ohio. https://sites.google.com/site/bfggtest/

So, annual and non-trivial. Non-trivial in terms of distance or in terms of ridership? We managed to get just over 40 riders for the Channukah ride, but it's an exceedingly short and at parade pace.

I think he means not things like the Viking Ride, which although annual and well established, is more fun and hanging out than serious riding.

I wasn't sure how to think of it. The conversation started tilted toward the former, but following the link (http://bikingpgh.com/index.php?title=Annual_Ride_Calendar) it looks very agnostic and I don't know, I don't consider the Icycle Bicycle all that serious.

I don't think I see the Mercer County rides like Pedal the Lakes or Tour of Mercer County on the list. Visit www.mctrails.org for details. (Mercer County is about halfway north to Erie, about a 90 minute trip by car from Squirrel Hill.

mega-thanks for setting this up. I've added the first-round of Flock rides.

The OP asked for "nearby centuries and double metrics or other special events that I can plan my season around, rather than shorter weekly rides that clutter up the online calendars I’ve seen so far."

I think would be equally reasonable to have one page, with all the rides, perhaps color coded so someone could pick out those of interest (as the page name Annual_Ride_Calendar suggests) or to separate by randonneuring, fast/hill pursuing, fun/kitschy/special interest or whatever the major divides are... but if we do the latter I think the page names should suggest it.

We've never had a single-source list of most/all rides. I think it's a great thing to have. The PghBikeWiki serves a broad audience. Could it be that people with specific interests have to read the list and filter what's for them? Yes.

Maybe some simple Y/N qualifiers: * Kids welcome? * No-drop? * Road experience helpful? * Beer? * Night/twilight? * Hills > 5%? * Hills > 10%?

Sorry for the delayed response; I was traveling, having oral surgery, and visiting family. I’ve added Black Fork and the Mercer County rides to the annual rides page. Thanks for the pointers! As for the intent behind the page, I wanted a succinct list of major annual cycling events within striking distance of the city… The kind of significant rides that you would structure your year around. I’m becoming more skeptical about whether casual stuff like Icycle / Viking / Channukah should appear. I justified Icycle in my mind because there’s no real “major” rides happening at that time of year; but if it happened in August, I wouldn’t have listed it. I would be fine leaving them off the list, since they’re not major rides to plan your training around. While “non-trivial” was open to interpretation, “annual” is less so. It looks like the Flock rides are a regular monthly thing, which don’t make sense on a list of rides that happen once a year. If it were up to me, I’d remove ‘em, unless some of them are truly annual events that can stand on their own, outside the context of the regular monthly rides; I’m new here so I don’t know. As for creating a single page listing all rides, that was precisely what I was trying to avoid. BikePGH and PMTCC and others already maintain ride calendars that list every little weekly ride, so I didn’t see any point in duplicating those. I wanted something more of a high-level overview. It’d be cool if someone created a new page (or a Google Calendar) listing everything, especially with the ability to sort and filter it all; I’d just ask that we don’t try to use the page listing annual rides for that. Unless the owners of BikingPGH feel differently. One final question… The website for the Mon Valley Century was recently removed. Anyone know whether that’s a temporary thing, or if the organizers have given up on the ride?

PMTCC has some metric centures that are on a calendar but they are no anual. I usually lead a couple by the end of summer/beginning of fall like Ride to Airport (depends on the route, about 60), to South Park to Clairton, to McKeesport and back to 16th st. Ride to Monongahella also. Among anual is Tour de Red Belt.

May be offtop... Dan just sent an e-mail that he is not going to leaf Team Decaf rides this year on Tuesdays.

Hello Riders, Before we get too close to the spring ride season, I want everyone to know that I'm not going to be leading Team Decaf rides this year. So will Tuesday evening rides continue? Only if someone else can help with leading, map printing and sign-in. If anyone is interested, please get back to me and I can provide details about leading the ride. Ride safely

So if you think you can support tradition -- you are welcome. Staying with fast group on this rides requires to be in real good shape. They could fly 25-28 mph and climb hills like crazy. And usually each ride has at least two good hills and ways around them for medium pace group.

So maybe as an example, the Ohio Bicycling Federation does the "Ohio Cycling Events Calendar" every year, and I absolutely love the format. It helps give me ideas for my entire year, and I would LOVE it if there was a "Western PA" version. It mentions, but does not focus on, local weekly rides, and seems to keep things manageable for the entire state. It isn't usually published for the year until early March, but the 2015 version is here; http://memocache.com/obec/2015cald.pdf Ornoth see if this in any way resembles your idea.

AFAICT the Frigid Bitch ride was not mentioned on the message board at all, yet managed to attract 41 riders over the weekend. I believe it is annual. It's an alleycat, not a randonneur, but geez, how many competitive rides attract 41 riders on a day when it's 10 degrees out? Oh, one other rather significant thing: Female only. Damn few of them around, whatever time of year.

Added the Frigid Bitch. Even if it's historical data at this point, it'll be there on the page for an eventual 2017 update. That Ohio calendar is nice. It splits the difference, providing both a year-long overview plus details like categories and writeups for each ride. OTOH, it looks like way more work than I'd want to be responsible for each year!

Speaking of Ohio, The Outspoken' Wheelmen have NEOC, usually in mid-September and SICCO, in April. Both are relatively nearby and are nice rides to attend. The WPW used to have a Fall Century Ride, ;having out of North Park. I'm not sure if they still hold that event.

@fultonco -- yes, they hold it every year. It is called Fall Rally.

@Mikhail Thanks

Happy New Season! Since this thread leads off BikePGH's 2016 Best of the Message Board blogpost, it's an opportune time to mention that the Annual Rides List page has been updated. 2016 rides have been added to an archive section, and announced events for 2017 have been added.

Could you add the Hilly Billy Roubaix to the list above? 6/24/17 http://www.abraracing.com/HillyBillyRoubaix.html

And Dirt Rag's Dirt Fest July 16-18 2017 www.dirtragdirtfest.com/

Great List.

Pittsburgh Babes on Bikes has posted an Event for Frigid Bitch: it'll be February 11 this year. https://www.facebook.com/events/358050627901507/

Added FB & HBR no problem. But... I dunno what to do for Dirt Fest @Andrew. Following your link, there's a PA fest May 18-21, and there's a separate WV fest July 14-16, but nothing on the dates you listed (July 16-18). Which of these did you mean? Also, I want to limit the list to major rides, and a 4-day fest isn't a ride. It looks like there are some group rides happening on May 20, but I'm not sure if there's one headliner. And there's nothing listed for the July event. Lemme know what ride(s) should be listed.

For anyone finding this thread and trying the broken direct link to the BikingPGH Annual Ride Calendar... The current direct link is: http://ec2-18-221-4-79.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com/wiki/index.php/Annual_Ride_Calendar Of course, I've updated the content for 2018. The only major holdouts at this time are 321 Ride; Every Neighborhood; WPW (Spring, Fall, & Mt. Davis); and if the Mon Valley Century gets resurrected.