Agree with all the earlier comments about the challenges of putting on a road race.
I’m in a similar geographic area as you, and in my opinion we won’t see road racing return to the mid-atlantic region until next year. These extra challenges and costs just make it too risky to plan a road race with any degree of uncertainty due to the pandemic. I have been thinking all along that this season is crits only, nothing else
As others have mentioned, you have to be prepared to drive to do road races. From where you live you will have a number of options once Joe Jefferson (great promotor) starts putting on his races again. I’d expect you to have to drive to PA, Jersey, or Maryland for the majority of your road racing. With enough dedicated travel time you can, pre pandemic anyway, get in 6-10 good road races within a 2-4 hour drive of DC
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Maybe, but, IMO I don’t see average fitness going down. If anything I think it’s going up with platforms like TR, PM’s and endless information at our fingertips. Not saying it’s better, just that peeps are wising up way quicker than years ago.
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Road racing is very hard to come by here in the UK too, as are crits. Many moons ago bike racing was strictly banned, so riders did time trials in secret (easy to just say you were just out for a ride and had no knowledge of anything else going on). Since then TTs have become legal on open roads but bunch racing is still a legal minefield of permits and road closures. We get quite a bit of racing on closed/private roads (motor racing circuits, old airfields etc), but proper races on public roads are few and far between.
That said, closing roads for a running race is seemingly very common, almost every town in the country seems to have at least one 10k/half/marathon a year. There’s one half marathon that I’ve done that uses a figure-8-and-a-half route (as in 3 loops, not 2), which would make for a nice road race course. The course never crosses over itself, but does use opposite sides of the same junctions a couple of times; if you did two or three goes at each loop you could get a decent distance out of it. It’s nice rolling countryside, good for a breakaway and chase. The half marathon has closures in place for a good few hours on race day and plenty of volunteers to marshall, I don’t see why it would take anything extra to make a bike race out of it.
since the courses don’t often have features that allow for a selection to take place
This. Directors don’t want to put on hilly races, because it discourages participation, but the lack of selection makes it more dangerous
Word. The worst crashes I have ever seen have been in RR’s.
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Pretty much tacking onto what everyone else said.
I put on a collegiate road race weekend a couple years ago. Saturday morning was a TTT, Saturday afternoon was a road race, Sunday was a circuit race.
Between permitting, road closures, emergency and police staffing, miscellaneous expenses, it cost the team tens of thousands of dollars to put on the weekend.
Road racing is crazy expensive and it’s hard for organizers to profit from them, let alone just break even.
Crits are easier to organize, especially if it’s on a small loop without much traffic or open businesses.
It sucks because I prefer road races myself. Seems like gravel racing is the closest thing we can get to road these days – easier to put on an event in super rural locations without much traffic on the roads.
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