Inaugural Motomarathon event now in progress

June 12, 4:52 PMMotorcycle ExaminerKen Bingenheimer

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The route for Day One of the inaugural Motomarathon event

A new sport was born this morning. At least it was if John Metzger has anything to do with it. The first ever Motomarathon event launched out of Boulder, CO, with 31 riders signed up and others planning to join in along the way.

Oh yeah, riders. This is a motorcycle event. Each day the riders are given a sheet listing the checkpoints they have to hit and as long as they make all the stops in the designated sequence and reach the day's destination within the 24-hour period allotted they're good. There will be points scored but come Monday, when this ride ends, there's a good chance that a lot of people will be tied for first place.

Now figure on a second event in southern Colorado and New Mexico in August, and a third, perhaps in the Texas hill country later in the fall, and on until six or seven events have been held. Pretty quickly you see that the one or two people with the top scores are going to be the most dedicated, hard-core riders, who were willing and able to take the time and bear the expense to do a lot of riding all over the country.

Don't throw me in that briar patch, right? Go on lots of great rides all over the country? Where do I sign up?

Well, there's one catch. This is some hard riding. In this first event, that amounts to four days of approximately 400 miles per day. To put this in perspective--my perspective, at least--when my group, the OFMC, goes for its summer ride we figure 200 miles is a good day and 300 miles is a long day. You'll never get us confused with the Iron Butt people.

  John Metzger (left), Motomarathon organizer, briefs riders before the start

Still, even with the hard riding, this is all about riding some great roads and having a good time. Here's today's route.

The riders started out from Boulder headed toward Fort Collins and the Poudre Canyon and Cameron Pass, on to Walden. They turned soutwest from Walden to hook up with U.S. 40 at Muddy Pass and then ran to the top of Rabbit Ears Pass. Backtracking then, they headed toward Kremmling but turned off onto CO 134 to the top of Gore Pass. Then they backtracked again to U.S. 40 and took that road east until the reached CO 125 just west of Granby. A quick run up that road to the top of Willow Creek Pass and then a turnaround once again to U.S. 40.

From there their route went over Berthoud Pass and down to I-70, west on I-70 to the Loveland Pass turn-off, up over Loveland Pass, and on to the Keystone Lodge, which is serving as headquarters during the event.

Tomorrow they will be given the new agenda and off they go again, ending up once again at the lodge.

And so who is John Metzger? He's the guy who organized all this. I'll tell you more about him and his vision for this new sport as I follow the event over the next few days.

Day Two, Days Three and Four

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