If you ride in the Bend, Oregon area, you’re gonna want to check this out. 10 Barrel Brewing’s Riding Solo Series is a group of “low-key, high-fun” stage races held between October 10th-Nov 6th. Each week features a different course, you can run each course as many times as you’d like during the week, and each run gives you another entry into the event’s weekly raffle. All it takes is the willingness to race, a GPS-enabled device to track your time, and $20 bucks per stage.
If you’ve participated in digital events since the Covid era began, you know that most of the time you get to ride whatever course you’d like. The Riding Solo event is different because it takes place on a series of four courses around Bend—sorry out-of-towners. Each course is a loop, so your finish line is wherever you started.
Here are the deets from the event website.
- You can register for all of the stages or just one.
- The series consists of stage races. Each week will produce a podium (by gender and category). In the spirit of the Tour de France, overall leaders (by category) will be awarded yellow arm warmers to wear while riding as they maintain their lead in their respective category.
- You’re racing against other riders, just not necessarily at the same time.
- For each race, you’re welcome to do as many attempts as you’d like during the race window. Each race window will start at 12:01 am PDT on Sunday and end at 11:59 pm on the following Saturday (7 days).
- Load each race course onto your device by downloading it from the race web page.
- The courses are loops. That means wherever you start on the course is your start/finish line. So you don’t need to start your activity tracker when you start your effort. Just roll on into the course. As soon as you are on-course, that’s your start line, and your finish line. Just make sure to ride through where you started!
- Track your race attempts using your GPS-enabled activity tracker or smartphone.
- Sync efforts either by exporting a GPX file from your activity tracker or smartphone. You can also automatically sync using your Strava account.
- You must register for the stage before riding it to count for the standings (i.e. no riding first and then registering).
- You must follow the published course closely. If you deviate from the course by 200 meters or more, your race attempt will be excluded from the rankings.
- Your fastest race attempt counts during the time window.
- Efforts must be submitted within 24 hours from the time the attempt has started.
- Login and track your progress on the race leaderboards and activity feed.
- The race series calculates scores for all efforts during the 4-week series timeframe. Awards will be presented for top finishers in each Gender and Category.
- Post photos and videos to the socials using #ridingsolo #bendoregon #10barrel
Sound intriguing? Here are the rules.
- Racers must complete the courses during the race time frames
- Any GPS device that can sync to Strava or export GPX files can be used to submit your times.
- Race times must be submitted no more than 24 hours after that attempt has been started.
- Racers must follow the courses published (download the GPX to run it for turn-by-turn directions if your computer supports navigation directions)
- Racers must keep 6 feet distance from other racers as best they can. Passing and yielding is the only exception (aka NO DRAFTING).
- Racers MUST Follow all rules of the road/trail and etiquette
- Pack it in pack it out (aka Leave no Trace)
- Be a S.H.A.R.K (Safe, Honest, Accountable, Responsible, Kind)
Per 10 Barrel Brewing, “5% of proceeds go to four non-profit organizations that are so important to Bend (and Oregon’s) collective community: The Central Oregon Trail Alliance, The National Interscholastic Cycling Association, Mount Bachelor Sports Education Association, and the ADL Software Association.”
