Tomorrow the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation’s Cap2Cap ride will go off for the 11th straight year. For the previous 10 the event had two start/finish lines: one in Williamsburg and one in Richmond at Rocketts Landing.

This year VCTF Executive Director Beth Weisbrod told me, they decided to consolidate the event at a single location at the Charles City County Courthouse– “which was a bit of a risk,” she said. “But we hope it will up the party factor, to have one big party as opposed to two smaller ones.”

The Virginia Capital Trail where it crosses Parrish Hill Creek: Credit: VDOT

Weisbrod said they should hit their goal of 2,000 or so participants riding one of four distances: 100, 60, 25 and 15 miles. Not quite the 2015 record of 2,400 riders but not bad at all considering the trail itself has been open since October 2015.

Now that the Jamestown-to-Richmond trail is complete, Weisbrod said that the mission of the VCTF has morphed from one of overseeing promotion of the trail to “promotion, enhancement and continued development…and let’s throw some maintenance in there, cause we’re doing some of that, too.”

No longer just a cheerleader for the trail’s completion, the VCTF now works to provide amenities like  bike racks, bike fix-it stations, benches, and rain shelters, Weisbrod said. All of those — 35 “non-sign amenities” — are currently in the works for different sections of the 55-mile trail and should in by late summer.

The group also has installed 9 trail counters in different locations along the path, which will help with resource allocation once they have a long period of reliable data.

“These numbers are absolute gold. The more trends we can discern, the more valuable they’ll become,” she said.

If you live in Richmond and you haven’t checked out the Virginia Capital Trail yet, head down to the Richmond trailhead at Great Shiplock Park (at the intersection of Pear and Dock Streets) with a bike and head west. Jamestown is just about 55 miles away…