Stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/56348585
Score: A-
Pros:
- Fun course that is modified a little bit each year. Good mixture of power sections, fast sweeping turns, and then a technical section in the upper wooded area
- Big, competitive amateur fields
- Close enough to NY and NJ to draw some different competitors than usual
- Northampton is a fun town if you want to stay for the weekend
- Typical, tight Verge series organization keeping events on time
- Races were staged by series points and then crossresults.com ranking (except UCI races)
- There were kids races on both days
- There was a specified area for vendors so it was easy to find food or product options to buy
Cons:
- It's 2 hours from Boston so it's a lot of driving to do one day only (NoHo is fun for staying overnight though)
- Look Park charges $7 for one day access (last year was $5, years prior was $3 I think) or $10 for 2 day access which isn't the race promoters fault
- The course layout on Day 1 was such that very few spectators ventured to the upper part of the course even though it is the more technical, exciting area. This may have been exacerbated by the introduction of tent row and the vendor area, giving people less reason to spread around the course. In years past, NoHo has had great cheering sections spread all over but not as much this year
Did I miss anything?
4 comments:
A- for those cons? The only one I agree with you on is the parking, but hey, I'd charge for parking too if a bunch of idiots were going to be tearing up my golf course quality grass. The two hour drive thing is a self made issue and I thought that the cheering sections were much more better with three main areas: near the base of the hill, over by the vendors and over by the team tents.
A+ from me.
No one has earned an A yet. As you said, the drive is a self made issue but for anyone else making a 2+ hour trek to get there, it's worth noting. If I lived an hour closer I'd probably give the race an A and I probably would have been able to justify racing both days.
Matt:
Look Park is a private park. Presumably the promoter pays the park a usage fee and then the park charges a parking fee on top. You could view this a couple of different ways:
1. Who cares, the parking fee is a small fraction of the race fee
2. The park is double dipping on fees
3. The parking fee is a hidden cost that should be folded into the race fee.
My opinion on the parking fee is this: If you believe that the Verge races are properly priced overall, then the additional cost can be justified by the higher quality level (better courses, better organization, better city to hang out over the weekend) of NoHo in comparison to the other Verge races.
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