Location: Various starting locations
Ride Type: Mixed Terrain
Dates: See below!
Time: Departs at 9:00am
Distance: ~25 miles
Price: Free
Description: The Saturday Morning 9am Mixed terrain ride takes cyclists all over via trails, dirt roads, paths, and paved back roads. The ride follows paved roads to trails, dirt roads, grassy areas, and other places off the beaten path.
Pace: All riders should be ready for a moderate pace. Moderate is defined as comfortable for riders who can maintain a 16mph road pace when on a road bike on the road and who have some level of comfort on dirt and trails.
We usually split the group into two with the first group going out keeping a slightly spicier pace than the second or third groups. The last group rolling out has an official Super Domestique to control the pace and pick up any riders who drop off the first group(s).
Route: The route is emailed to participants 8pm the night before the ride. All riders are expected to have it loaded on their GPS units.
Ride Notes: Emailed with Route. Be ready for riding some rocks and roots, though it’s a non-technical route. A mixed terrain ride isn’t as smooth as a gravel ride which features dirt roads.
Last Minute Information: Watch our Twitter feed for last-minute updates, weather cancellations or other changes.
Estimated time: ~3 - 4 hours
Contact Information: Email - connect@rideheadquarters.com, Phone - 413-461-7433
Riding Rules, What to Bring, How Our Rides are Different: All riders are required to read and are expected to abide by These Rules.
Waiver: Ride Headquarters requires a signed waiver before your first ride. Please fill it out online prior to your first ride.
Proper Bike for this ride:
32c knobby tires minimum. Wider tires are nice, too. Tire choice depends on your riding skill set.
Clipless pedals and shoes. These are important elements of bike control. If you ride with platform pedals you’re likely to be over your head in some of the more technical parts of the ride. 2-bolt cleats/mountain bike pedals are much more appropriate than road pedals/cleats.
A bike that’s in safe working order. We don’t stop for preventable mechanical issues.
Higher tire pressure than you’d ride on a cyclocross ride. We recommend about 80% to 90% of maximum rated tire pressure, for two reasons:
First, we want to minimize flats on the ride; waiting for someone to change flats is not why we ride. We typically see zero flats on our ride. One of the primary reasons for this is due to higher than average tire pressure.
Second, on average, about 30% of the ride is on pavement; having slightly higher pressure makes the road sections go by faster.
We do not recommend fenders since sticks and twigs can get caught in them.
How do we decide if we’re having the mixed-terrain ride?
Thunder storms: If there’s a 33% or greater chance of a thunder storm at 9am, we don’t ride. It is not safe to get caught out in a thunder storm.
Rain or sleet: There are a few variants of this. We don’t ride sensitive trails when they’re wet; this can cause damage that’s not repairable. Fortunately, we have some rain-friendly routes that don’t damage sensitive trails.
If it’s raining at 9am we cancel the ride. If it’s only threatening rain, we ride.
If it’s misting or drizzling at 9am, with less than 50% chance of rain in the coming hour, we ride.
If it’s been raining a lot for a couple days, but not raining the night before, we ride. Our rain-friendly routes avoid sensitive trails. Of course, every few years there’s such a bad storm that we won’t ride on a Saturday; we take the force majeure very seriously.
Snowing: We ride; it is so much fun to ride during a snow storm.
Snow on the ground: We ride. It doesn’t matter if there’s 1 inch or four feet, we ride. We recommend studded tires or fat bikes for these kinds of conditions. The only exclusion to snow riding is when there is a state of emergency and we’ve been asked to stay off the road.
Icy conditions: We ride. For this you have to have studded tires in order to ride with us.
Cold: It doesn’t matter what the temperature is, we ride.
Ride leader: While we’re coming out of COVID, so at times we may not have a ride leader. Everyone is expected to watch out for each other and come with the route so you won’t get lost.
If you'd like us to do any work on your bike prior to the ride, please email us the day before so we're ready to do the work as soon as you show up; we want you to be ready to roll before 9am.