As travel restrictions ease, especially to those who are now fully vaccinated against coronavirus, the 24-hour BOSS Ironman Motorcycle Challenge (IMC) might be coming back next year, in March, to be exact.
This was told to MotoPinas.com by non-other than the BMW Owners Society of Saferiders (BOSS) president, Tey Usis. BOSS is the club that organizes and oversees the annual endurance motorcycle riding event.
In September last year, BOSS contemplated pushing through with the IMC with a different format than previous challenges. Unfortunately, restrictions as well as different and often conflicting local government unit (LGU) travel policies made it almost impossible to proceed with the IMC early this year.
No checkpoints
BOSS Ironman Motorcycle Challenge checkpoint at Elysian Sands, Dipaculao, Aurora
A few of the details (that are being considered) were revealed to MotoPinas.com by BOSS, should the event pushes through next year.
One of them, according to Usis, is that there will be no more checkpoints along the way. Instead, participants should gas up only at select gas stations found along the route, and keep their machine-printed receipts for validation at the finish.
This way, the usual crowding in designated checkpoints will be minimized or eliminated. Also, since the machine-generated gas receipts will have the actual time of visit, it will be easy for the organizers to disqualify a participant if he or she is found to be overspeeding.
For example, if it only took a participant 2 hours from his or her last gas stop at Petron Laoag to the next gas stop in Petron Tuguegarao, with a distance of 293 kilometers, this only means that the participant was averaging at least 146.5 kilometers per hour on national roads. That’s an automatic disqualification because of overspeeding.
Early take off
BOSS Tey also added that they are thinking of sending off the participants as early as 8 PM with a one-hour gap in between each group. For example, the first 50 riders will be flagged off at exactly 8 PM, then the next 50 riders will be flagged off an hour later, and so on.
This way, the participants will be spread out far across the 1,200-kilometer route. Now, depending on the total number of participants, there’s a possibility that the flag-off could be earlier, even in the afternoon.
Fingers crossed
Again, considering how our government handles COVID-19 and its policy standing or changing on a bi-weekly basis, BOSS maintains that the 2022 IMC is still tentative, but is optimistic that they could finally proceed with the event this time around.
The BOSS Ironman Motorcycle Challenge (IMC) is an annual endurance event in the motorcycle community. As the name implies, it is a test of a rider’s skill and endurance to finish all of the 1,200 kilometers of the Northern Luzon Loop within 24 hours. However, riders are still required to observe local and national traffic laws.
The event has spun off satellite versions in the Visayas (BOSS IMC Visayas) and in Mindanao (BOSS IMC Mindanao).
