Ride London 100

The official photos (marathon-photos) are wildly expensive, is there
another similar service that is more reasonably priced? Seems an odd
business model to price out regular cyclists...

If its anything like the VLM, they'll email you a couple of times a week with slowly more desperate attempts (i.e. better discounts) to get you to part with some of your money. So wait as long as you can

Really? Regular MAMILs are loaded. Just look at the bling out there.

I dunno, maybe it was just my start wave but I mostly saw older men with £1500+ bikes and carbon wheels a-plenty and a lot of rapha/assos steering these bikes around. Given that they stuck in 50+ vitamin tablets in the goodie bag I think marathon-photos are probably pricing their pics right square in the MAMIL buying bracket.

^^ beat me to it and much more succinctly :(

Just out of interest how much are they asking for a photo?

£36 for the basic package, don't seem to be able to get them individually.

Ok, no-one in my club is interested in paying that much and I saw a lot of other club riders. Can't imagine people who ride regularly are interested in paying so much for photos of themselves in the rain and I also can't imagine a more casual cyclist forking out the cost of the entry fee all over again for them either.

You get a lot of photographs, taken by people who sat out in the driving rain for ~8 hours.

I imagine that they would like to get paid for that, it can't have been a barrel of laughs.

11 of me so far, happy to pay for them* but I can't help but feel a more reasonable price would net them more money overall.

*not at ~£3 a photo, however.

Why would you even want something like that?

yes odd that they are not priced per photo there's only 3 of me so far, so that would be over £10 per photo!

^^ This.

Sportive Photos has been tweeting pics for every rider he can identify is associated with a club or charity with a Twitter account to drum up business.

I could be wrong but I seem to remember them being quite a lot cheaper (same company last year) but yeah, felt really sorry for photographers in the rain for hours. one of them looked spectacularly pissed off. for a lot of people doing it, it's either such an occasional thing that £36 doesn't seem like that big a deal, or they spend a lot on their recreational pursuits anyway. loads of people getting the train in, staying in hotels etc. it doesn't happen every weekend.

To be fair, think of all the admin involved in sorting out at least ~20k photos.

Bit late now but next year why not organise a few friends into key positions on the route to wait for you and take pictures as you pass. You may need to pay them for travel and time and they might miss you in one or two spots as you pass in a bunch but it would certainly save having to pay a professional 33 to do the job for you.

Haha

You must have very accommodating friends.

Or I could share the cost with 20,000 other people - we could even hire a few professionals! Should work out fairly reasonably for everyone... Oh wait.

I believe you have now successfully spotted cliveo's sarcasm.

If I were a mamil, maybe I'd be more blasé about it too.

Wouldn't start beating off over the official times when anyone who started after 7:30 probably did a fair bit of walking-pootling..

Know of fast riders who got unlucky with their start times because some knob in their club estimated a finish time of 7 hours.

Great write ups @Bundo @hoefla @Eagle_Glenn, enjoyed reading

I second that, |³|MA3K.
My first and last hours were okay (I started at 7.25) but the ones in-between were horrendous - people crashing, skidding, and a constant parade of people dealing with punctures. When the heavens opened, just past Hampton, I was soaked to the skin within 5 minutes. I lost all feeling in my thumbs and toes soon after, and my average speed plummeted from around 20 mph to somewhere around 16. Every depression in the road became a ford, torrents of water ran down every incline. On top of the surface water, I had hard rain hitting me in the face for about 3 hours solid.

The most galling thing about it was I had the legs but was too paranoid about my body expending energy in keeping me warm to take full advantage of the fact.

The only compensation was that I felt I handled my bike well, not sliding or skidding once. And, mercifully, when I punctured I did so where cover was available.

Old togs using a dated model of business. If they added £5 to the ticket price, then let people have the photos for free, it's work out better for everyone.