Silver Comet ATL / Race Idea Brainstorming..

icecube57

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Location
Austell GA
I want to organize a meet/race event for the East Coast. Georgia has an amazing path system. We have winding urban city paths and country straight paths. I was thinking maybe I could organize an Endurance Event or Stage race that partial city partially on the Silver Comet and collect tickets at participating and designated way points. The Silver Comet is a 100 mile paved trail system that starts in Georgia and ends in Alabama. The trail is 1-3% grade all the way. Few bridges and street crossings. Its very scenic. There is support via road access/stores/ bike shops on the city side/ Major Shopping centers along the way. I can sorta act as a chase vehicle meeting you at the next way points or whatever with your gear batteries or equipment. I think I can organize some charge points for either opportunity charging to get you to the next waypoint ... rest breaks for breakfast lunch or dinner. I can give you info on hotel stay. You can ship and stage stuff at my place. Im less than 10-15 minutes away from the trail. If Luke comes and bring his super chargers I know I can stage a rapid charge point at a relatives house thats right in the middle of the trail.

Ive calculated based on my rides out there that is going to take 1.5kwh pack or better to do the entire trail without needing to recharge. If this event is to long then I can organize some inner city rides that will take 750-1kwh of power doing some safe urban riding where you ride Atlanta's path system to designated stops and collect tickets or something. We have a 35-40 mile round trip stone mountain path system that is pretty nice. Its urban is scenic... its has a few long duration hills up and down.

I dont know about prizes. I have nothing of value to give or offer. Maybe someone can put up something or I can get my EV club to put a cash price together or I can write local companies to sponsor us. I have a strong contact at Georgia Power and Coca Cola that may have deep pockets. Im sure if i get the word out and drum up support It will be something worth while.
 
I think a lot of the ideas that you are kicking around sound good. I would put this in the general discussion area but not under events (for now) to get more input.
 
Silver Comet ATL / Race Idea Brainstorming..

by icecube57 » Tue Nov 15, 2011 10:06 pm

I want to organize a meet/race event for the East Coast. Georgia has an amazing path system. We have winding urban city paths and country straight paths. I was thinking maybe I could organize an Endurance Event or Stage race that partial city partially on the Silver Comet and collect tickets at participating and designated way points. The Silver Comet is a 100 mile paved trail system that starts in Georgia and ends in Alabama. The trail is 1-3% grade all the way. Few bridges and street crossings. Its very scenic. There is support via road access/stores/ bike shops on the city side/ Major Shopping centers along the way. I can sorta act as a chase vehicle meeting you at the next way points or whatever with your gear batteries or equipment. I think I can organize some charge points for either opportunity charging to get you to the next waypoint ... rest breaks for breakfast lunch or dinner. I can give you info on hotel stay. You can ship and stage stuff at my place. Im less than 10-15 minutes away from the trail. If Luke comes and bring his super chargers I know I can stage a rapid charge point at a relatives house thats right in the middle of the trail.

Ive calculated based on my rides out there that is going to take 1.5kwh pack or better to do the entire trail without needing to recharge. If this event is to long then I can organize some inner city rides that will take 750-1kwh of power doing some safe urban riding where you ride Atlanta's path system to designated stops and collect tickets or something. We have a 35-40 mile round trip stone mountain path system that is pretty nice. Its urban is scenic... its has a few long duration hills up and down.

I dont know about prizes. I have nothing of value to give or offer. Maybe someone can put up something or I can get my EV club to put a cash price together or I can write local companies to sponsor us. I have a strong contact at Georgia Power and Coca Cola that may have deep pockets. Im sure if i get the word out and drum up support It will be something worth while.
 
Hmm, the problem with an open course race, is the vehicles need to be street legal. I don't know much about road rally type events, but maybe that format would be better than a "race" As I undersand the "fun rally" format, it's about driving the course so you arrive at way points within a certain time frame, rather than faster that scores the points. So your times at the way points would be matching the speed you could get there, including stop signs and legal top speed.

For a real race, it has to be closed course. Bike races happen open course all the time, but they are street legal to ride as fast as they can pedal on most roads. Then they get a wavier for anything posted slower, often closing downhill sections of the race course, and the final sprint. Your race would have to comply with Georgia E bike, or motorised bike law if it's open course.

It may be possilbe to close a bike trail for a few hours for your race, but getting a 60 mph ebike allowed would be unlikely. Insurance and lawyers.

Or it could be a guerilla deal, like a flash mob race. The DR started that way, but had to go to a closed course once it wasn't 7-8 bikes anymore.

I'm not trying to pour discouragement on your idea, but maybe something more like a group ride is more suitable for a bike trail system. Maybe an endurance event where you try to match the legal speed on the trail, plus get points for efficiency too. There have been some ebike and ev races like that before. Electrathon style, rather than a elbows flying track race.
 
I personally would like the enduro group ride but there is always a quest for speed for some people. Out trail systems really dont have a speed limit but you have to respect people on it as well. There is nothing wrong with riding in the low 20s but some of the lycras reach 30 in the flats and often have drafting trains 5-10 deep and stop for nothing. I personally dont wanna be labeled ass an A--Hole. They have had triathlon events but never shut down the trail it always remained opened.

The problem that I see with the enduro group ride is you have to have the watt hours unless some is willing to share. We dont have to do the entire trail cause if we did it would require hotel stay in alabama. But then again some areas of the trail are so remote that you could trade bike and ride a few miles. Hold min races and not see a soul. 75m round trip is doable in 4-5 hours with less than 1k wh. Also the trail cops dont bother you as long as they see ur pedaling. This is only in one 5-10 mile area they partrol and its back to being... alll by your seeeeeeeeelf! and their patrol vehicles have a govenor. their club car has a 25mph speed limit they have bike cops and a 4 wheeler. You can out run them on a 48v ebike. But that being said roads are always adjacent to the trails. You loose the advantage of the 1-3% grade for hypermiling and you are force to deal with the horrible elevation changes in GA. Some of the city trails are technical and ebikes would have a hard time with the transitions like driveways handicapped ramps and street crossing which make it better to ride in the street to maintain a higher top speed. But on the trail system you only have to worry about pinch flats. There is no road debris and crap on the trail other than what nature put there. The stone mountain trail i know for a fact has a road ajacent to it at all times and some of the connectors ride down back streets to hook up to other parts of the trail. That would be more appropriate for a rally event. The speed limit is 25-45mph on these roads which most of our bikes could do but we reduce our range in the process but I would fun.

On the stone mountain path I could tape tickets at street crossings... tear one off and keep riding. You can get into the park free although certain attractions you still have to pay for. Im sure they will allow you to charge at the park while we eat lunch or whatever. The stone mountain ride is about 25 miles round trip and 1.35hrs of ride time. I also burned alot of wh on that ride 1038wh at the cost of 38wh a mile for the entire trip. It was much better on the way there. I was at 18-21 but inside the park has some killer hills on the way back I was riding pretty hard to beat some rain.

[youtube]PxYII3J--Vc[/youtube]
 
Stone Mountain Route
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/58348748

Entire Silver Comet Route
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/58352396
 
What about something like a Rally, where you set a time and the goal is to finish the course in exactly that time? Closest to the time wins. Say 60 miles in 3 hours. doing it in 3 hours 1 minute would beat the guy who did it in 2 hours 58 minutes. That keeps the speed to something that won't give ebiker's a bad name on an open course.


I'd be interested regardless, but I'm not likely to have a bike with more than 1kw.
 
Drunkskunk said:
What about something like a Rally, where you set a time and the goal is to finish the course in exactly that time? Closest to the time wins. Say 60 miles in 3 hours. doing it in 3 hours 1 minute would beat the guy who did it in 2 hours 58 minutes. That keeps the speed to something that won't give ebiker's a bad name on an open course.


I'd be interested regardless, but I'm not likely to have a bike with more than 1kw.

I like your idea It keeps things safe and legal........ I think what dogman says you get bonus points for efficiency and time can be added or shaven off depending on efficiency. 20mph should be doable for anyone on any ebike. There should be rest stop areas that have outlets for charging if you have to. A meanwell could do some damage in 30 minutes you either have to make up the time by going faster or compensate by being more efficent so you could have a shitty time but if you are very efficient then you could end up beating someone with a faster time and poorer efficiency

60 miles makes it better cause it will be an out and back and you will be staying on the populated side of the trail where there is more support readily avaliable via fellow esers stores and roads crossing the trails. Also the trail is more level on the city side vs the rural areas. But what would be an intresting twist is if we did get into the incline sections of the trail that could crush the people who are efficient on level ground but suck the wh on long duration. This would allow the people with gearing to shine.

One thing i dont like is if this is a race then is everyone out for themselves or do you ride as a pack maintaing 20mph and who has the best over all efficiency.

This could work if everyone is out for themselves but to ride out as a pack would promote overall fellowship but then again if you are coming to ATL there should plenty of time for that during the night life hours.

To satisfy the speeders we can schedule a group ride or two in other areas.
 
Do you know about motorcycle poker runs? Basically a group joy riding with checkpoints where you get a card at each stop. Winning hand wins the run.
 
Another excellent way to make a group ride fun.

Repeating, triathlon on the open course is legal. The problem with the ebike race is that illegal vehicles would be present. So a rally or poker run makes sense.

That's why when I got the racing bug, I immediately started thinking about some kind of enduro event off road, off BLM bike trails. I searched for, but couldn't find a good place to have a flat track oval. But I did find dirt roads suitable for a race. I built a trail system off blm land too, so I could host a trail race now. If there was just one other off road bike in NM.
 
Looks like I'm late to the party. :)

I just got done with my bike a few weeks ago. Last week I went for a ride from Atlanta to Stone Mountain and back down that same trail.

I'd definately be down for a ride sometime.
 
Drunkskunk said:
What about something like a Rally, where you set a time and the goal is to finish the course in exactly that time? Closest to the time wins. Say 60 miles in 3 hours. doing it in 3 hours 1 minute would beat the guy who did it in 2 hours 58 minutes. That keeps the speed to something that won't give ebiker's a bad name on an open course.
When I read that I envisage the fast guys lined up 100mm before the finish line waiting and watching stop watches :lol:
You could even have stopwatch expiry trigger throttle.
 
One thing about a rally. You have to have the extra people on standby at the finish line to do the stop watch times. Which means someone is missing out on ride time. If it was a group ride based on efficiency we all ride in a pack and compare results at the end. I really want something public but private. I dont know who might show up but we just cant be leaving Esrs in the dust because we can.

I have a possible event for a hill climb time trial. It was a ride that i chickened out of in fear of burning my X5. It should be a nice challenge. Its 1.5 miles long. The elevation change to the top of it is nearly 600ft. I have a video of someone freeboarding down it
.[youtube]HYijSnKpjag[/youtube]
 
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