Section 7:
Rocky 12

To say that the 2002 Rocky Mt 1200 was a success would be an understatement. Our volunteer team made a complex event run extremely smoothly and seemingly effortlessly. Everything came together - as Susan pointed out in her recent newsletter editorial, it is something we can be really proud of.

Of course we've created a bit of a monster. I think there'll be a buzz out there about the event and the challenge for 2004 will be how to contain the event so that our limited volunteer resources can still cope. Whether the cap is set at 50, 80, or 100 there will be great pressure from riders trying to secure their entry in the event. It will be interesting to see how PBP handles the same issue this coming June/July.

I suppose it goes without saying, but this is an event which needs real leadership - our very best event organizer(s) and operational director(s). It would be easy to take this for granted at this moment. If in the future there is no one (or no leadership team) available to run a Maserati event, we may still want to hold a Mini. On those years when we feel we don't have the leadership oomph to run a full-sized international event, a sensible fallback position might be to downgrade the Rocky Mt. 1200 to an unsupported closed club event - all qualifying events ridden within BC.

One detail worth a mention is the finishers' award(s). The system is a little confusing. Finishers received three medals (kind'a) - the Randonneur Mondiaux 1200 medal, the medal at the top of a wooden plaque (Harold's design), and the plain plate with the finisher's name and time engraved on it. ...would the real finisher's medal please stand up...

I was feeling a little funny about choosing Real's Randonneur Mondiaux 1200 medal as the thing I hung on my own pins and metal board, but the wooden plaque just didn't fit in. (I considered drilling a hole in, and then nailing up, the plain plate [the one with the name and time on it], but didn't do this because it was the least appealing of the three medals. I'm not alone either. Five of the eight riders, who wrote stories about their experiences on the Rocky Mt 1200, have them posted on their own remote web sites. Two of these have their finisher's award as a graphic on their pages. It both cases the riders choose to display the Randonneur Mondiaux medal as their official finishers award. Awarding a simple medal with a hole in it, so it can be nailed up on wall along with the other medals for that year, is the standard for the sport - our plaque system is at odds with this.

And there's another problem with the plaque system. If you finish one rocky Mt. 1200, you have a plaque which has three empty spaces - it looks unfinished. The message here is that you need to fill in the gaps by riding more Rocky Mt. 1200s. Psychologically it imposes an obligation on the rider. It's as if we are unwilling let the rider enjoy the accomplishment of finishing the single event. Why would we do this?

Clearly we should have one real finishers medal. The simplest solution would be to adopt the Randonneur Mondiaux medal as the Rocky Mountain finishers award. It's nice design - people like it. This is, however, at odds with our own tradition of designing year-specific pins and medals. Also, having begun the cumbersome plaque system there is perhaps an obligation to see it through for people who have bought into it. Perhaps what we need is an exit strategy for the plaque... We could come up with an imaginative pin design that is in the general size and shape of the plain plate. This way finishers from previous years, who have adopted the plaque system, could put a future medal on the plaque without it looking out of place. The same metal could also be a stand-alone award - it could have a nail hole and would fit in with the other pins and medals on a riders wall.

One more thought on this: If I were designing a medal from scratch I would make it larger than our annual 200-1000 pins, but in deference to PBP, smaller than the PBP finisher's plate. There should be room for the finisher's name and time.