Is there any protocol for these, ie choice of route, number involved?

Thanks. 🙂

The drop off system works great.

Depending on how much effort you want to put in, give every rider a photocopy of the route.

Make sure that any new or inexperienced riders don’t automatically hang around at the rear of the group. They may be nervous that they’ll be too slow and stay at the back through lack of confidence. The only thing is that the further towards the back you are, the quicker you have to ride to keep up due to the ‘rubber band effect.’ This is caused the time delay between the first bike and the one behind when making speed changes. The time lag obviously increases between each following bike.

As regards numbers, that really depends on the group. If it’s a busy route, then lower numbers or maybe a fast and slow group.

Have regular stops on the route so that everyone can RV. Doesn’t need to be a brew stop, just a few minutes to allow everyone to catch up.

+1 for dropoff marking, as soon as you’re above just a couple of mates anyway.

Number involved… Just like pushirons the bigger it is the more cumbersome it gets. Mine got up to IIRC 70 people on the road at one point, which is a hell of a lot and means you need to put some serious legwork into it- finding suitable places to stop, even to eat, not to mention that the more people you have the more likely it is one of them bins it. I basically planned for 1 minor crash and 1 breakdown.

It’s not brain surgery really but mate’s rides are a bit different to open rides usually.

Oh yeah- and you need at least one other person to be totally clued up on what’s happening. I always lead from the back 😉 Get some fast reliable person up the front to waymark, I sweep so I know when people have hit problems, but even then you really want to have someone else who can deal with issues too- I had to stop for a crash almost immediately in the first year of doing the big rideout, and it seriously bumped the timetable as there was nobody left rolling up markers etc.