600 miles for me. Wonder if the Stelio would like a road trip next year? Hmmmmm
As a former event board member and habitual field worker I do have a personal connection to this event. In addition to the event itself, there are lots of nice riding roads (not Blue Ridge Parkway nice, but...) and other places to see & things to do within a couple of hours of the event location. Personally, I'd recommend considering finding a place to stay in Frederick, MD (about 15 miles & i/2 hour to 1 hour away depending on the route(s) taken) as a base of operations & make it a long weekend. Frederick is a nice small town destination in itself, with a pretty compact historic & dynamic downtown area that's fairly lively on the weekends especially.
Other things to do in the area: first & foremost, I'd stay away from downtown Washington DC unless you REALLY want to visit the many monuments, (mostly free) museums & good restaurants there. It's kind of a PITA to get find parking & generally get around in DC & you never know when you'll get caught up in "spontaneous" traffic & demonstrations nonsense in that town. You could take public transportation (mostly Metro subway or bus) from an outlying suburb to the heart of downtown DC to "do" the cluster of museums & tourist destinations there that are within walking distance of each other fairly painlessly.
For history buffs, Gettysburg, Manassas/Bull Run, Harpers Ferry and numerous other national and state parks are within an hour or 2 of the Mt Airy/Frederick areas, along with the above-noted nice roads to get to them. There's even a small but interestingly presented Civil War battlefield at the edge of Frederick itself, as well as an interesting cemetery that has the grave of Francis Scott Key and dozens of Civil War soldiers from both sides, among other notable features.
