D2R2, August 19th
What is D2R2?
Each August close to 1,500 bicyclists
Land Trust (FLT), last year the ride attracted cyclists from 26 states and 5 countries.
This year, which marks the 12th anniversary of the event, promises to be the best yet!
“D2R2,” as the ride has been nicknamed, offers EIGHT dirt-road courses ranging in length from a16 mile Family Ride to the 180K challenging course.
All routes begin at Old Deerfield and thread through agricultural land and forests in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont. The short course
has a flat run up the Green River valley, whereas the long course is regarded as perhaps the hardest century ride in the world.
Randonneuring is a vintage French format in which riders are challenged with hard courses but encouraged to keep the atmosphere social. There are no
prizes, and riders start in small groups at their leisure; however, the ride is timed and many participants aim to better their time from a previous
year. The
One of the things that
competitive road racers to recreational riders and mountain bikers. “D2R2 has a very egalitarian culture. Nobody cares how fast you are, what your
background is, or what you’re riding.” Whittlesey has resisted suggestions of turning D2R2 into a race, or marking the route to make it easier
to navigate. “We started the event with a stubborn insistence on the non-competitive, self-reliant style – if you wanted a race or a guided tour,
there were lots of those out there. As a result, we ended up with an incredibly cool, friendly, strong group of participants, and we feel very
lucky to host such a fun crowd every year.”
In the past twelve years, D2R2 has grown into the largest fund-raising event for the Franklin Land Trust, with entry fees being boosted by merchandise
sales, raffles, and corporate sponsorships. The Franklin Land Trust (FLT) is a non-profit organization in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts that conserves
farms, forests, wildlands, and other natural resources in western Mass. In many cases, conservation restrictions aimed at encouraging agriculture
and forestry are the conservation tool of choice, where FLT holds the restriction, and the land remains in private ownership. Because FLT isn’t
being asked to purchase the land, the result is far more land being conserved per dollar: last year, each rider at D2R2 effectively helped to conserve
an entire acre of land – something that surely makes all the steep hills and bumpy roads seem well worth it.