Like so many other cogs in a successful New England Classic Event, the road – navigational marking is crucial to a safe, enjoyable, and accomplished ride.
The volunteers who lay down these signs are themselves riders. This is of great advantage to the NEC cyclists as the quality and effectiveness is influenced by a rider’s perspective. From personal experience (wife Linda and I have marked Day 6 for several years) – NEC road marking can be a dangerous endeavor. Volunteer roadmarkers are a brave and marginally crazy crowd ( not so dissimilar to the rest of our riding family).
Road marking is a balance between effective communication and a level of respect for the owners of the roads and local scenery.
Road – travel – navigational signs, take many forms. The visual Dan Henry’s originate back in the early 1900’s as a cycling cue for directional travel. Other similar forms of visual signage exist in hiking trails, animal trails, and many other recreational trial markings. If you follow the signs: (1) you will follow the same route everyone else did (2) the caretakers and colleagues will know where you should be (3) you won’t add any mileage to the already long day.
The riders manual gives you the basics. The exact guidelines may vary depending on the road you are on, the town / city / state you are in, and the level of perceived safety for that area.
Don’t turn unless at least one sign tells you to. If you make a turn and don’t see at least one confirming sign – you made the wrong turn. There is nearly always at least one confirming sign after a major intersection. On a straight section – if you don’t see a confirming sign every 2 – 3 miles, stop to confirm direction (one exception would be Day 4 which is 90 +/- miles of Rt 302). Common Sense.
Emergency Numbers are on the Trip Tiks. Don’t hesitate to use them.
The future for the Event’s Navigational markings is fluid … changes may be in the wind.
Lastly – Continuous Improvement is never ending … if you have any creative / innovative suggestions please share them with the team thru Ryan Williams rwilliams@diabetes.org.
Join us
In three or four years of co-marking day three, and half of day four… The only way we ever found to make it easier, safer, and less hectic was to reach your starting point at 5:30 or 6:00 AM so that by the middle of the day, you were finishing up- Starting later in the day only added hours onto the route marking because of traffic (One year took almost 12 hours) but you’ve got to get there before the traffic- shaved 4 or 5 hours off the route marking time, and got us time for a nap to make up for the 4AM wake-up…