Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

That is the exact reason it's difficult to address the question of if 
multiday rides are increasing. How do you define multi day. If you 
define it as people that are at a ride and do some number of days from 
one to all on the same or different horse. The numbers you get from this 
definition are vastly different than the numbers you get from requiring 
that the same rider and same horse enter all days.

But even with that more restrictive definition, they are increasing 
while the 100's are decreasing. I sent Mike some charts on the trends in 
the starts. All trends are up or flat except 100's. This sport is very 
healthy - excpet for 100's.

The multiday rides provide people the ability to get away maybe with the 
family and ride - that is probably why they have become popular - not 
the challenge.

It seems that people that want 100's need to figure out how to make them 
more attractive to new riders and how to turn the "one timers" in to 
multiple timers. From Mike's numbers on finishers of those 1700 that 
have finished a 100 in the past 9 years 35% only finished one and 52% 
only finished on or two. When I looked at the starters it turned out to 
be 35% of those that have started a 100 only started one and 65% only 
started one or two.

There are two parts to the equation, getting new people to try one and 
keeping them coming back. At some point it doesn't really matter what 
you or I or Karen think or would rather do. It gets right down to a 
numbers game. If the number of people attending 100's keeps in decline 
there is the possibability they will go below a critical mass where 
there will only be a few big rides. After all the 100's accounted for 
less than 5% of the starts last year. In 1996 they accounted for over 8% 
of the starts and in the SE region over 11% of the starts.

Truman

heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I do agree that the upswing in multidays has cut into the 100-mile entrant
> pool--it used to be that 100 miles was the only "ultimate" that this sport
> had to offer.  Multidays provide a different sort of "ultimate."  Some
> people are more attracted to one, some to the other.  But when you look at
> multiday stats, those people who actually go ride every day of a multiday
> on the same horse are just about as rare as 100-milers--the difference is
> that a bunch of us can go to the multiday and use it as I described above,
> as a bunch of single 50-milers.  So, the entry numbers are higher, even
> though the people who actually do the multiday as pioneer rides are in the
> minority.  It is no different than having a one day ride where there are
> 80 50-milers paying the bills so that 10 100-milers can go ride.
>
> Heidi
>  


--

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an 
optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.” Harry S. 
Truman



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=