It's looking like a modified form of Cuba -> Grants dirt will be in the TD route this year.  (applause!  fanfare!)  This will help compensate for the forest closures and make it so there isn't 200+ miles of continuous pavement.  The idea, perhaps, is that it'll be required only when forest closures are in place -- that means it's unlikely clay mud and flooding arroyos will be an issue.  This is because the forests will reopen if given enough moisture.

Hoping to have first round GPX available Monday.

This is great. .....  I'm very glad to have been wrong about this.

Thank-you.  I am glad we got somewhere.  The misunderstanding is acceptable, but I feel like it should not have taken this long.  I wish you would have taken people at their word and accepted it when hard evidence was presented to you.  I wish you would have given us (and especially John Schilling) the benefit of the doubt.  That would have saved us a lot of time.  But it's OK -- in the end we realized we are all closer to the same page than it seemed and I accept that I could have been more understanding and concise in my comments as well.  Sorry about that.

And I do agree that rule 2 needs improvement and there should be a mention of contacting the race for neutral non-personal media permission.  This is progress.

-----

I stumbled onto an update today from the North Cape 4000 that is of interest here.  The update was concerning adding a minimum finish time (as some events in NZ have), but they mentioned:

"We also remind everyone that it is strictly forbidden to be supported by vehicles, even with the sole purpose of documenting the event. This is an unsupported event. "

A couple things to note here.  First this event is in Europe, showing we aren't in an echo chamber here.  Second they clearly consider a personal media crew to be support.  Third they worded it well -- it is clear they are not banning all media.  This rule is essentially the same as AZTR's #2.  

Also of interest is this recent podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-9-the-rise-of-lauren-brownlee/id1617949561?i=1000562607355

The last 25 minutes deals with media in races.  I am really impressed with the younger generation of bikepackers now taking to the sport.  The thoughtfulness and calm candor with which they approach the subject is laudable.  I found it interesting that the host (Ezra I believe) is new to the sport, studied documentary cinema in college, is a big fan of all bikepacking content, was introduced to the sport by finding content of Lael's and is a big fan.  Yet he says that though he is a big fan of Lael (and all documentaries) he is a bigger fan of bikepacking and of the events themselves and that's more important.

The host also mentioned something I hadn't seen before: a camera in your face can increase your focus -- it definitely changes your actions in some way.  There's no such thing as an invisible reporter.  Being a documentary guy himself he says he sometimes imagines a camera is in his face so that he will stay focused.  That's an interesting point on the self-supported question.

I haven't heard anything about Koko.  I'll see what Matthew knows.

From Matthew:

I have bad news, and good news about Koko. The latest report is above-average mid-mtn snowpack, meaning hike a bike. The good news is, IIRC, that region of the pass is HAB already, so it might even be faster if you can stay on top!

That's not quite it for this year.  We are hoping to cut off even more of the highway.  All of it.

I haven't heard anything about Koko.  I'll see what Matthew knows.

Good info on Richmond, thanks.

[personal]

Here's a way to make that clear: write personal media into the rules (but I don't think he's actually willing to do that).

I talked to John Schilling and he said adding the word personal sounds like a great addition and confirmed he never went so far as to ban all media. 

[my]

That is my question from the beginning. And the answer which I received many times is that simply knowing that there are people around the course gives you peace of mind that violates the self-supported nature.

Alright, so we have a fundamental misunderstanding here.  Much confusion will go away once you realize that nobody wanted to ban all media.  The arguments here on this thread have been about personal crews.  It's you that is conflating the two, and very erroneously -- much to the detriment of this discussion I will add.

I went back and see phatMike talking about personal crews with loved ones on them.  I see evdog saying 'dedicated crew' meaning a crew dedicated to one rider, that is, a personal crew.  I am sorry if you have misunderstood this from the beginning but don't try to say that others are arguing things that they are not.  Further, the whole discussion is under the context of Lael's recent ride, i.e. a personal crew.  You yourself have mentioned her and her ride many times in your arguments.

Here's further proof if you need it, in Lael's own words (https://www.singletracks.com/community/lael-wilcox-talks-arizona-trail-fkt-media-support-controversy-and-the-importance-of-inspiration-interview/):

"And then, the race organizer came out to see me and take my picture at Picket Post trailhead (outside of Phoenix). And shortly after that he started texting Rue, my wife, who was documenting my story, and said what you?ve done so far is fine, because she was posting on my Instagram.

He?s like, ?Well, what you?ve done so far is fine because you?re local to Tucson, but if you continue documenting Lael?s ride, then her ride won?t count.? Or basically, I?ll have an asterisk if I get the record."

Key words here: "what you've done so far is fine."   Why is it fine?  Because it's visitation that falls under sparing and local use.  Because it's media, and rule 2 does not ban all media.  It bans support crews and that includes media support crews. 

Here's a way to make that clear: write personal media into the rules (but I don't think he's actually willing to do that).

Yep, I agreed that the rule could use the word personal to make it more clear.  I also think there should be something about the fact that neutral media may be encountered but that anyone who wants to 'cover' the race in this way should contact the race first.  (It's the only decent thing to do -- what journalist would cover a small, free event without asking the organizer first?  But it would help for clarity to say so).

Given all your responses until now, this one is weirdly unfair by taking what I said out of context and just pretending I haven't said some things. What I said was basically this: the participation numbers will go over the limit in the future no matter how hardcore your visitation rule is. In other words, your tools don't scale well with the problem and you'll have to look for more scalable solutions anyways. Why not implement a scalable solution already and relax visitation since it's primary purpose (as you write) will disappear in the future. I gave an example of an event that faced the same problem and solved it with lottery.

You've missed my point so there was nothing weirdly unfair about it.  I'll try again: the number of spots available is fixed: 74 in a Grand Depart.  Visitation rule is *not* a tool to keep the number of people vying for those spots down.  It keeps the number of available spots at 74, instead of much less than that if we allow personal media crews.  If everyone shows up with a crew capable of a high quality documentary we're down to a race of maybe 15 people.

So, no, the visitation rule doesn't kick the can further down the road so that we can survive a little longer without lotteries and the like, it preserves the race for the racers, which I think is exactly what we should do.

This is a very compelling reason for it.

As for the rest, I think it's time for you to restate your position and what you want here, given the major misunderstanding about all media not being banned.  What is your ideal change to the rules, given that limited media (with guidelines much like you have suggested) is already a thing?  There's already room to make a compelling doc about any of these races -- just keep the infringement on the race small and approved by the race itself.  Maybe add in some self-filming and shots after-the fact.  Is that enough?  Or do we really need to strike the rule in order to achieve these goals?

This is what I'm getting at with "what compelling reason is there to strike the rule"?  What is the benefit here?  What is the goal?  Is there anything to be gained other than consistency, completeness and lack of pettiness in the ruleset?

Looks like both Carson and Santa Fe forests are set to close tomorrow until significant moisture hits.  Those both have a very good chance of affecting even SoBo riders.

Then there is a fire that has the north star road through the Gila closed currently.  That one has a decent chance of reopening by the time SoBo riders get there.

The forest closures are making it look like it'll be pavement from Cumbres Pass all the way to Cuba.

There is an update to the route pending in Hartsel, CO.  It's a small reroute to remove 4 miles of busy US highway and it has ACA's blessing.  In other words they plan to adopt it as the official route.  We are waiting for a local to vet it for us.

Those are the route updates I know about as of now.

The answer to that question was back on page 3.
Instead of organizing an event that promotes the full-on-media-chase, the racer wants to "evolve" an event that presently exists.
The most compelling argument that the racer has made is that the public would be confused should another event be created.
Bad taste appears to be an issue too.

I agree with everything here.  Mike's suggestion is spot on and completely fair.  It's happened before and no event claims exclusivity to the routes or the concepts.

I also agree with you, Two Tired, that the racer (Jakub) is trying to evolve the event that presently exists.  All good with that.

Further, I agree that the most compelling argument thus made is that splitting the event is not desirable and should be avoided.  It should be a last resort.  Is this issue of allowing visitation/media enough to justify a new event?  Not for me to decide.

What I was asking is if there's a compelling argument for striking the visitation rule within the existing event.  So far we've covered rule discussion, consistency, pettiness and completeness.  We've also covered that limited forms of media are allowed.  What I haven't heard is a compelling argument for why it should be stricken.

I am 100% sure that the rule does not say anything about media crew being personal. And if one means personal media crew, it's easy to write "personal media crews" into the rules.

Agreed, the word personal is not there.  I'll concede that adding it would make it more clear.

Surely you can't blame the readers for misunderstanding.

My question here is how can a neutral media crew covering the entire race be construed as a support crew?  The term 'support crew' doesn't make any sense for neutral media so the rule cannot be talking about that.

Further, a neutral race reporter and the decision to give one the green light is the decision of the RD and only the RD.  So there's no reason to spell it out in the rules.  The rules are for the participants, they aren't spelling out what the RD may or may not do.  None of the other rules deal with what the RD may or may not do, why would this one?

Yet here we are speculating about what a 3rd person thought when they wrote the rules...

There's no speculation here.  He granted neutral media access to the race in 2021.  He was out there himself during the event and during ITTs.  He clearly did not intend to ban all media. I don't know how to make that more clear. 

I did sense that you're less radical - much appreciated. However, not all folks have "a couple of races" to get their heads around the rules. Going by what I've seen on this forum, very few wrapped their heads around the rules correctly and most of them must have done a few of these events already (judging by what they wrote).

Yes this is an issue.  I don't think there is a solution to it.  Removing a few rules or adding a few, taking different views on what self-support is or isn't will not change this.  This is a fundamental problem to our sport.  Nothing we are talking about changing here will have any effect on the fact that people have a hard time getting their heads around self-supported racing.  Having said that for some people it's pretty natural.

Journalists already have various standards for documenting various settings. Adopting some of those, designating accessible and off-limit places on route, regulating numbers, etc. is all strictly better than status quo. And of course, followed by education. Explaining concepts at the bottom of the old AZTR page was great. Going on podcasts and talking about this is also great. Writing blog posts about these topics is further great. Bikepacking.com and other platforms (even Radavist I think) would be happy to publish various ponderings on these issues. There are heaps of ways to make people used to thinking the right way. Talking to other race organizers and cross-analyzing each other's rules would help too. And keeping all discussions open is important as well, so people can access context to the rules if they wish.

All of these are great ideas for guidelines as to how neutral media should operate, and how to communicate them.  And also for how limited scope personal media crews could operate.  You already know that I agree that limited personal crews are OK -- I approved Lael's 2015 REI movie.

But I think these events will hit that problem soon anyways.

So we should just accept that they are doomed?  Excuse me but we have made it nearly 20 years and that's remarkable.  It's in part because we have chosen to not allow spectators, visitors and media all over the route.  Just because it will get worse doesn't mean we don't try to do something about it. That's exactly a reason to do something about it!

Each spectator/visitor technically takes away one spot from a racer in the current USFS rules of 74 person limit non-commercial events.  There's plenty of justification here for keeping the visitation rule in place just for this reason alone.  The fact that visitation is not self-supported is just a nice bonus because most people find that easy to see as consistent with other rules and the spirit.

This is interesting. So in case there is a serious accident on course, you'd prefer to not have anyone spectating there (to make sure that they weren't tempted to help the other riders) over them being there when it matters?

This is a valid argument -- spectators in remote places does make the event 'safer' in some sense.  However I think we have all agreed that we are not looking for that kind of safety blanket here.  If we're going to argue along these lines we may as well put EMTs and aid stations all over as well.  This is not what we are looking for -- I think we can all agree on that.

I would prefer someone is around in case of an accident and would absolutely expect anyone and everyone to help out.  That's what I meant by the rules being silly and irrelevant, especially in cases like this.


What other reasons do you have for wanting the visitation rule stricken?

That would be nice, but given that 'personal support crews' is not much harder to spell out than 'support crews', I don't see why it wouldn't be written explicitly if the intention was to ban personal support crews. Ideally, John Schilling would be around to clarify (and maybe rephrase it on the rules page too - either way he meant it).

We can ask John if you want but I am certain he did not intend that rule to mean no neutral media.  In fact, he granted it in the 2021 event.  Jefe also granted permission for limited neutral media in 2021 CTR.  The precedent is all over, as many have pointed out: the films exist and many were given RD blessing.

If it wasn't a blanket ban though, it would be a substantial improvement over what I, and probably many others, understand the rules are now.

I can see now that if people are led to believe (not by actually reading the rules, but by narratives and articles) that absolutely no media is allowed, then an RD is being inconsistent in going out to cover the event in any shape.  Thanks for illuminating that point for me.  Fortunately that's not at all what the rules say or have ever said. 

This also shows why one might point to other films and claim unfair treatment. Easy to do if you don't understand the differences and the nuances, and if you don't read/comprehend the rules.

To be honest I think it is the personal media crew proponents grasping at straws here.

Re: "The RD is an official and cannot cause a participant to be relegated or disqualified by their own actions." and exactly because a disqualification is not really possible if the RD behaves incorrectly, they should make a lot of effort to rarely be in a position where that can happen.

I disagree.  The RD is a referee and fully within their rights to be anywhere on course for any purpose.  They rarely are, but it's their race.

The fact that Josh's crew didn't announce their intentions ahead of the start makes it even worse, agreed.

It was the decent thing to do (tell TD about it) but the crucial point here is that because it was hidden from TD there was no way that Lael vs Josh could be treated differently (i.e. unfairly).  I have see that claim, that unfair "demands" were places on Lael but not Josh, be mentioned in many places now and it's simply not true.

Also, I know that TD isn't AZTR, but when someone breaks the rules of AZTR, the RD makes a public post making sure everyone knows it didn't count. When someone does it at TD, public doesn't know that the run was "relegated" (they might know it should be, but not that it was).

This is absolutely a fair point.  TD does not publish results and this is a bone that I and many others have to pick.

I do not blame you for being worried when looking at Lael vs Josh and not being able to find any indication that Josh was relegated -- or any explanation about the situation.  My understanding is that he was confronted and relegated.  That doesn't mean he can't claim to be the 6th place relegated finisher.

And if not, then that comes with the responsibility of speaking up when subtle and non-obvious rules are broken.

Agreed that TD has dropped the ball here with respect to lack of enforcement.

I still don't see why sponsor bonuses conditioned on winning an event (not a bonus for participation, but a bonus for doing well) aren't on par with emotional support. It's like prize money, except not for everyone. Surely your motivation during the event is different if the stakes are higher

That's absolutely a boost to motivation but well outside the scope of the event.  Again, a bonus doesn't change the self-supported nature of *the event* -- that is, support that *occurs* during the event.  None of the rules deal with what happens before the event starts, so this is not a valid comparison if you're arguing for consistency or completeness. 

Well, visitation rule proves that no one around here is afraid of cans of worms

Haha, true.  Big difference in scale and intent, though.  When I think of dopers I think of calculated intentional cheating.  I do not think that way about anyone struggling with the visitation concept or being relegated for other self-support concepts.  It takes folks some time, maybe even a couple races, to get their heads around it sometimes.  That's why I've argued for clemency and for allowing small 'violations' of them.

They are consistent along that axis, I agree.

I'm glad you see them as consistent. 

We know that trail magic isn't only about gummy bears. Being offered a CO2 cartridge by a clueless trail rider (doesn't know about the race) when I just lost my tubeless would save my tubeless setup. Huge advantage on thorny trails. Compare this with "emotional support" of seeing your partner/friend. I think trail magic can be considerably more impactful.

I would hope riders would self-relegate if trail magic saved their race in some major way.  The rules talk about only allowing small uses of these things, small enough that I think they fall under emotional support, not tangible support.

I think we've well covered the consistency and completeness argument.  Let's move on to discussing rationale behind visitor bans.

As usual, I am hoping it won't be included, and therefore other little rules can also be omitted.

So you would like to see no visitation rule such that it's fully legal for a rider to have a crew of 500,000 friends/family/media all over the route?  Is there no line to be drawn?

What happens to the events if each rider has even 10 visitors roving all over the route?  The answer over here in the states is that the event is much more likely to get noticed, much more likely to get shut down.  Not allowing visitors, media or not, all over the route is not just about self-support but about preserving the event. 

There's also a component of 'keeping honest people honest' here.  It can be difficult for people to resist the temptation to help someone when they need help.  Helping others is a key tenet of life and I'm not a fan of anything that forces people to fight this urge: especially not for the silly rules in some silly race (yes these races are in some sense silly and the rules even sillier).  Not having visitors out on course, or only having them where services are nearby, greatly reduces this temptation and I think is overall better for everyone.

Before I respond to the specifics, I am beginning to think that I mostly agree with or understand most of what you write (yes, 2 quantifiers).

Yes, I don't think we are so far off.  Good.

At this point I think we need to be careful to distinguish between independent media crews (which are forbidden by the media rule on the new AZTR website) and personal media crews (which fall under excessive visitation rule). I don't think you're defending the ban of all media crews which is featured in the current rules.

I'm not sure there's a ban on all media crews in the current AZT rules.  The rule falls under 'support crews' which to me strongly implies it's only talking about personal crews.  I don't take it to mean that neutral reporters or personal media that adhere to the visitation rule are banned.

I would note that RD's are well within their rights to make exceptions to their own rules.  It could maybe explicitly say that, but if an RD approves a neutral (or personal) reporter and trusts them, that's ok and that is what has happened in the past on TD, CTR, AZT.  This reminds me that I've seen several arguments try to prove inconsistency or unfairness by stating that the RD went out and acted as 'media' during *his own race.*  This is absurd.  The RD is an official and cannot cause a participant to be relegated or disqualified by their own actions.  You can maaaaybe argue that it sets a poor example, but is it inconsistent or hypocritical?  Hardly.

As an aside, this is exactly what Josh Ibbett did not do in 2019.  He chose to hide his personal film crew from Tour Divide, even though it was more limited in scope than Lael's.  Therefore there was no opportunity to discuss the extent of his crew and evaluate it or make suggestions on their modus operandi.  As a further aside, he is 100% a relegated finisher in the eyes of TD.  Dotwatcher.cc simply scrapes leaderboard times from Trackleaders but that doesn't mean everyone listed is considered a full finisher.

I don't have a problem with evolving rules. Not even with additional rules if they improve the sport. And "no personal media crews" is very strongly correlated with visitation, so I see how that was "settled" long ago. But today's AZTR website bans all pre-arranged media crews. Personal or not. That's very different.

Thanks, I appreciate the agreement.  We're close, but I don't think it's banning non-personal crews there.  We might need to clarify this with John Schilling.  But it talks about "media support", i.e. personal.

I just noticed that my statement should've read (sorry...):

Rules should also deal with all other issues of the same and lesser pettiness, which they don't.

OK, gotcha.  Back to your argument of doping and sponsor bonuses and the like.  Both of those aren't fair in the strictest sense, yes.  The thing with these examples is that they do not affect the self-supported nature of the event itself.  Once the event starts it's just you, your bike and the route.  These other, lesser, petty things do affect the self-supported nature and experience of the event and of other participants.  I think that's a key difference.  If there's an example of a far less petty thing that is relevant to the self-supported event itself (not what happens before the event starts), I'd like to hear it.

Doping, I think, hasn't been dealt with for a number of reasons.  One is that it's just a huge can of worms that honestly I think we liked to fool ourselves that our little sport was "above" or that it wouldn't affect us.  I know that is naive and I don't think any of us actually rationally believed that.  But there's an element of accepting that we're taking ourselves too seriously as soon as you deal with doping.  It's unenforceable too, as many have said here on this thread.

Having said that, I don't see a reason it couldn't be included.  Because it's unenforceable it has little burden or exposure to the race director, so there isn't much of a downside.  I personally don't want it on there right now, but my mind could be changed.

I wouldn't call them consistent.

To me they are all talking about small forms of support that should be tolerated in small doses but not be allowed to get out of hand.  That puts them all in the same class and very consistent.

Do you think that the emotional support of a personal media crew gives no more advantage than a fellow racer sharing a gummy bear?  Or getting a candy bar from a stranger?  Can you quantify how much faster a rider would be with an extra gummy bear in their stomach vs the promise of seeing a loved one at road crossings?  I don't think it's hard to see that the real boost from trail magic or racer sharing is emotional -- not the actual calories.

BTW, thanks for explicitly stating what you agree with and expanding on the rest. Really helps!

Likewise, I appreciate you are here to discuss ideas and are willing to make concessions.  Cornerstones of a good discussion.

These rules (thanks for the link btw) have a very friendly self-support explainer attached. It's sad to see that very part hasn't made the cut onto the new site. I particularly liked the "don't have any friends" joke.

Not sure why that was removed.  

But RD will naturally have more authority & probably make the final call. It would be good though if that at least correlated with sentiments found in the community.

Agreed.  Based on my limited view of the US (and NZ) based community, these rules re: visitation and media crew do correlate with the views of the community.  I am actually somewhat surprised at the consensus on this: almost no one I have communicated with wants personal media crews closely following a rider, especially with close relations.  Almost no one thinks it is fair vs previous efforts on the routes.  There are reasons that many of these (recent) discussions have not been public, sadly, because I am big fan of transparency.

It took me a while to read that thread (and the CTR thread it had started on). I can't help but wonder though - the thread does show that a discussion about reporting on the race (and visitation, the discussion conflates the two) happened. But it also shows that there were strong voices against regulating it any further. In fact, some people acknowledged that it could be a problem, others dismissed it as petty (I remember this because I used this word in this thread). But I don't think I read more than 1-2 opinions to the effect that yes, this needs further rules or rule clarifications.

Don't confuse those shouting the loudest with strong voices.  What I read in that thread is that a core group of us (6-8) were largely on the same page and did not want things like personal media crews all over the routes.  Whether or not we thought it needed to be spelled out explicitly in the rules is a different issue.  You asked for justification and proof we'd discussed it (ad nauseum as the thread is rightly called).

As John Stamstad said on this thread the natural tendency with these rules is that as people keep pushing against them and problems arise we start to feel the need to explicitly put things in the rules that were just simply understood before.  I think that's what has happened here.  Even in 2007 the core of us agreed that personal media crews were not solo, not self-supported.  We made it to 2019 before any RD felt the need to explicitly say so.  That's pretty good.

So I think we're looking at an even bigger mystery. ...... knowing that rules were introduced after a due process helps people trust them being fair.

Hopefully what I wrote above makes it less mysterious.

Agreed on the rest - proof of some process, some discussion, correlation with the community are all valid things to ask about.

In short, I don't think the previous discussion(s) deal with the problem of the visitation rule not fitting in with other rules. This leads to exactly one of the following problems:
1. Rules should also deal with other issues of the same pettiness, which they don't.

I don't agree that this issue is petty, i.e. inconsequential.

From my AZTR rules (below), these are almost equally inconsequential (not dealing with major forms of cheating like motorized travel and cutting the course) are they not?

6. Unplanned support from other AZT racers is OK
7. Trail magic (from strangers) OK - but please, no begging
8. Mailing stuff ahead to Post Offices is OK
9. Using public AZT water caches is OK (sparingly! do not rely on them!).  
No personal or race specific caches, please
10. Visitation by spectators (friends, family) is OK if they are local the route, the
visit is near town/services and the visit is short.  No pacers!

I'll agree they are all lesser things, call them petty if you want.  But those seem consistent with each other to me.  I don't see how visitation seems so out of place in that list.  

Thanks a lot for this. The whole post is packed with info that I need to go through properly instead of writing something half-baked, but this summary you wrote clears up many things for me.

Good.  On that MTBR thread it's pretty clear that emotional support and a bailout option were two of the main things we were thinking about.  That thread is eerily similar to recent discussions, with many of the same arguments being made.

If we're talking about Lael's case, then what you write in this quote is hard to disagree with. In the future events though, media crew does not necessarily imply violating the visitation rule. I have hope that it can be done well, with enough remote filming (by drones, remotely operated cameras) and filming in overly public areas (towns, gas stations, etc.). To be fair, the way the visitation rule is phrased, if a film crew employs enough people so some member is always local to the filming location, they would not violate the visitation rule. And if they are not friends, acquaintances or family, then it's even less in the face of the rules. I did read the "don't look for loopholes" and "elevate yourself to the level of the race" - I am only writing this to point out that the media rule does actually seem to be an additional rule, i.e. there is a non-empty and non-trivial area of the media rule which is not a subset of the visitation rule.

Yes, I agree with this.  The visitation rule does allow for certain amounts of media on route.  AZTR's new media rule isn't just a clarification but can be seen as a strengthening of it.

A number of documenting efforts have been tolerated or encouraged over the years, usually because of things like: they are limited in scope (not following the entire race), are done by neutral parties and don't contain close relations of riders.  The RD has given approval to such endeavors for these reasons.  That was true of the 2015 REI movie on Lael's ITT attempt, which I did give the green light to.  The understanding was that they were going to get most of their footage after-the-fact with only limited 'live' footage and it was a crew that was unfamiliar to her.  The crew seemed very concerned that their presence didn't affect the legitimacy of the ride in my eyes and (more importantly) in the eyes of the bikepacking community.

[Do. It. Yourself.]

I know I wrote at least one more variant of these rules before checking out of the petty pissing contest that this sort of event was becoming. I know they included a Do. It. Yourself.  Emphatically in bold.

But I cannot find those.

Hey Mike.

It's still here, at the bottom of the old and defunct AZTR site:

http://topofusion.com/azt/race-rules.php

Actually it's on the current AZT rules page at the bottom, too.

"do. it. yourself." - including the documenting, photo taking, story telling.  Having personally spent energy taking photos and thinking about stories while racing, that certainly resonates with me as I'm sure it does with you.

The earliest draft of that I can find is from 2007/2008. 

I don't think it's particularly relevant when or how rule changes were made.  But I appreciate that Jakub respects the history enough to bring it up.  There's no doubt in my mind that the original intent of the divide/azt/ctr rules absolutely does not jive with a media crew following one racer at many road crossings.  I remember discussing this issue with MikeC after AZTR 2006 when one racer's ride kept showing up at road crossings and taking photos.  I also remember that during 2007 CTR someone was out interviewing (youtube!) the leaders in a remote part of the route (and I understood it to be a romantic partner of one of them).  I questioned this idea (not the actual occurrence but the idea) and suggested it did not fall under self-support.  A 'spirited' debate then ensued.  That thread can be found on the MTBR forum because it predates bikepacking.net (which was started in 2008):

https://www.mtbr.com/threads/solo-self-supported-race-rules-rehashed-ad-nauseam.323295/#post-3351707

Visitation was spelled out as early as 2010 for TD, meaning the 3rd year of the event and 12 years ago?  The AZTR adopted the same stance shortly thereafter if I recall correctly.  It was certainly in our minds well before that.  The wayback machine could probably be used to check the actual rules if we want to be pedantic, but again I don't think it's important.  The rules are, in my mind, always up for debate and discussion, regardless of history (a living document as John Stamstad nicely put it) and that seems to be what Jakub (jsliacan) wants to do.

To me, a closely following media crew is clearly against the visitation rule.  Explicitly calling out a media crew was just a necessary clarification but not really a new rule.  I think that covers the 'no discussion' and 'no history' arguments.  More on other issues touched on in this growing thread later.

Report and photos on the race so far, from Eszter:

https://bikepacking.com/plog/2021-arizona-trail-race-report/

Everyone is off and racing!  I am very happy to have been a small part of it and to see the AZTR continue to thrive.  Super grateful to John Schilling for taking the helms and keeping the race going.

Clear blue skies, warm temps and challenging trail conditions await our riders.  

I have always considered the AZTR to be an experiment of the grandest kind.  You never know what will happen and for everyone, even the seasoned vets, nothing is guaranteed.  New limits will be explored and tested, for sure.

The autumn start continues the tradition of that experiment and I'm excited to see how it turns out for everyone.

It was also very, very good to see many old friends, AZT vets, and to meet a few folks I've only seen as dots in other events.  

Best of luck to everyone!  Long live the AZTR.

I was hoping to hear why they took the old route to Patagonia rather than the new section.

There's a 2 mile stretch of private land that we've been asked not to ride in the dark on.  They were running out of time to get that done so they went around it instead.  John gave them the go ahead on that route since it's slower and longer.

From Miron, who blazed pretty quick to Colossal Cave before scratching:

"While I was expecting the trail be overgrown definitely didn?t foresee how extreme it was! Legs are completely destroyed. If your able to pass that along to folks starting tomorrow that long layers are pretty key if you don?t want bloody and destroyed legs and arms. "

I'm at Parker and have all rental trackers with me.

The grass is sure taller than I've ever seen it.  The trail is seeing traffic though.

Miron started at 3am this morning and is FLYING so far.  7 hours in and he's already partway up Hog Canyon.  That's a solid split time for the Canelos considering the Sunnyside figure 8 adds 1.5 hours. 

Perhaps things are not as slow as feared.

He's shooting for 48 hours.