Flutterby™! : Marin Century: Post-mortem the first

Charlene and I were up at 4:00 AM, the team for the Pine Mountain rest stop assembled at 5:00 atop Azalea Hill, and the first double-century riders came through before 6. After serving nearly two hundred and fifty riders, replenishing water, taking their lights and jackets for delivery to stops later in the day, we tore down, only to discover that there were still two riders on the course. So Charlene and I followed them back up the hill, gave them what they needed, and headed back to base at Vallecito School.

First notes:

• Four tables, not three, with two devoted to drop bags. Also, rework drop bag work flow so that it's a little more linear.
• Provide better "where should my gear go" signage. Feedback from playing safety to the double riders late at night later: Be more aggressive about telling them when they should get their lights, and get some info from various experienced riders so that we can say "if you can ride a 9k' century in 7 hours, you should ship your lights to Nicasio."
• See about flow rates from 2.5 gal water bottles versus coolers, it might be better to just go from the water bottles.

Back at base things were under control, so we drove a drop box to Nicasio, in the process taking a pedal off of my bike to loan to a poor guy doing the 50k, who'd only had his bike for a few weeks, and who was having a bad day. You don't have bad days on my watch, damn it, so we fixed his problem. He later called my cell phone to say he'd dropped the pedal back at base, I haven't retrieved it yet, but that's okay, much like the claim that you can return snow tires to Nordstrom, I want the tales of sag support from Marin Cyclists to be legendary.

Went home and rested for a bit. Headed back over to base, did some sagging on the way back over, including stopping for someone who'd wiped out coming down Lucas Valley Road eastbound and someone who'd gotten road rash turning from Lucas Valley on to Las Gallinas, and picking up someone from the century who'd just had his second flat, 4 miles from the finish, and wanted off the course. Had lunch, damn we put on a good spread. Helped out around there for a bit, but realized we were staffed up, so I grabbed a sag kit and the drop bags for Petaluma and we drove up there, in the process seeing yet another person down on the Lucas Valley descent. We'd had some concerns about the staffing levels up there, but the AIDS Lifecycle folks came through with really competent people.

Headed back to Nicasio, where Carsten said he hadn't yet found anyone to warn people for the descent, so we went back up to Big Rock and spent until late into the night hollering "beware left turns, loose gravel and deer".

Recommendations:

• It would be really nice to have that staffed all day.
• We need to deploy our signs more effectively, and work on better signage. The guy we sagged off gave us the "watch for the sharp left turn" line. Sign deployment means another morning volunteer, and folks to check on it. Need to work on how to institutionalize this.
• It's quite fun hanging out and talking to cyclists.

More as I work through notes and such, but Charlene and I are both stoked for volunteering next year, hard work, but a lot of fun!