Bikes and Code

Cycling BC recently published the rules regarding how a rider moves up through the categories. This page covers the high points: http://www.cyclingbc.net/road/road-participant-information. The most important change is that local and regional races will now award upgrade points. These changes, if they stand, will drastically shuffle the numbers of riders in the categories and will quickly lead to a very large category 2

At the start of the 2010 cycling season, category 5 was eliminated. Category 5 had been a true entry level category and 4 had some at least mildly seasoned racers. At the start of 2010, these two were merged giving the category a fairly wide breadth of abilities.

In 2010, the various race series, such as Escape Velocity‘s Tuesday night criteriums and Team Coastal‘s Thursday Challenge, did not count for upgrade points. This meant that there really were only about a dozen races that counted for upgrade points. Very few riders rode that many of the larger events.

Several of those races had category 3/4 combined fields. Tour de White Rock, Steveston Sockeye Spin and the Tour de Delta are three criteriums that come to mind. You were given upgrade points in a 3/4 race based on your position in your category, so if you finished 10th in the race, but were the highest category 4 finisher, you would get 8 points.

In theory, this all works out well. Unfortunately, in practice, there were a few problems.

First and foremost, there simply weren’t many upgrade points available. Category 3 and 4 each had about ten people upgrade by the end of the 2010 season. Approximately 60 category 3 riders and about 70 category 4 riders earned points in 2010. (2010 upgrade information) This might be by design. You do not want to push riders up a category until they are truly ready. However, if there are not enough points available you end up with a mushroom cloud situation where there are a large number of people near the top of the category who can earn points at any given race but since the spread is wide, none of them get enough to upgrade.

This makes for good, fun racing.

The failure in the system was that in 2010 many new, inexperienced racers entered their first ‘big’ bike race in the category 3/4 field where a hard fought battle among riders nearly in the 2′s was fought. The fitness and experience gap between a relatively new racer and a rider who was on the verge of category 2 in the old system is enormous.

This makes for a terrible and often expensive experience for your new, enthusiastic racer.

So the situation is, with category 4 being the entry level category, we shouldn’t be having them race with riders who are effectively strong enough to race at a national level. Thus, to improve the situation for the new racers, the strongest category 3 riders need to be moved up to category 2.

As it stands now, 2011 will have three times the number of available upgrade points as 2010. Upgrades are immediate so a number of riders will be upgraded by the time the Escape Velocity Spring Series is over. By the time the race heavy month of May is over, theoretically 30 riders could be upgraded. In practice, this number will be somewhat smaller, but we’re still talking about twice as many upgrades in half of the 2011 season as there was in the entire 2010 season.

Unfortunately, with the sheer number of weekly races available, I doubt this is sustainable. 40 new riders into the category 1/2 races this year might be fine once. It’s doubtful that BC can supply enough strong new cyclists to upgrade that many into the top ranks of the sport every year.

There are two ways this could play out.

2011 runs as is documented. Many 3′s move up to category 2. Many 4′s are properly slotted into category 3 with some going right on through to 2 (you know who you are). In 2012, the rules are changed such that local weekly races count for half points or something like that, slowing the upgrade flood.

An alternate method, and the way I’d personally do it is to closely monitor the upgrades. Once the upper eschelon of category 3 riders has moved up to category 2, slow the tide and count local weekly races for half points or cap them at the ‘races with 5-10 racers’ level, regardless of the total number. (3,2,1 points for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place respectively)

That has the effect of quickly moving up the strongest riders in the various groups as well as still providing a reward for coming out and racing hard during the week without making a Tuesday night race as important to a rider’s development as a 100km road race.

The one variable I don’t know is how many people get out of the sport or go on to only race in the masters categories. Those numbers would have some effect on the outcomes here.

Either way, it will be interesting to see what actually happens.

I wrote this last summer sometime and never posted it. Oops. Well, better out there than not. Not much to add, other than I ended up taking 3 primes over the various races. I can happily say that I took every prime that I seriously contested. That’s mostly due to me just picking my battles well I think.

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Primes are a part of racing that I haven’t been overly interested in as of yet. Recovery isn’t really my strong suit and, as a classically pure sprinter, I tend to get one really good effort in a race, then I am cooked.

So I’m out at the Thursday nighter. My plan for the evening was to ride at the front, lifting the pace when appropriate and perhaps get into some breaks. After four laps of this, the first prime was  called. I was feeling pretty good, so my major thought was to stick near the front and if I got a clear lane, go for it. The final corner of this course is really wide and that night the front stretch had a really nice tailwind. As we rounded the corner, I was in about third place, to the back and right of the guy currently leading. He was looking solidly back over his *left* shoulder to watch someone else.

And he kept looking that way, for several seconds. I’m a pretty good sprinter and I’ve done enough of these races that I get marked now. “Well, if he’s busy watching some other dude, I’m going to make him pay for it.” I stood up and started sprinting, since he was looking the other way, I quickly got a little gap and once he wasn’t in my slipstream, I pretty much had it with 200m to go to the line. First ever prime!

Took long enough.

Richmond Coastal Challenge, May 27, 2010, C race. Cool and a bit breezy but otherwise a great night for racing. I got there nice and early for the 6:30 start only to find out that the start was, in fact, at 7pm. Ten guys starting, a couple who recognized me as ‘Cannondale guy’ from two weeks ago and mentioned they’d be watching me. That’s cool.

So the race starts, a Devo rider and someone else go off the front almost immediately. A couple of other guys follow, but the two get serious and are off on their own. They take the first prime and are holding a fairly steady gap. The field is not working well together to pull them back, but since they are not really getting further ahead, I’m content to sit at the back and keep an eye on things. A couple of laps later, the gap actually starts to go out a bit again so I work my way into the rotation and when I hit the front accelerate a touch. Two goals: One, bring the race back together. Two, stretch out the legs of everyone a bit.

I got a bit carried away and twenty seconds later had a tiny gap. I eased up, so did the field behind me. In the interest of punishing this kind of behaviour I stood up and crossed the gap, leaving the pack behind. They accelerated and a lap later, as I was coming off the front of the break, the pack rejoined.

A couple of laps later, another prime was called. The Devo rider took it and when he had a gap, continued riding pretty hard. I bridged up to him and when he pulled off, continued onwards. Unfortunately, I think he was blown this time. I eased up a bit but ultimately it all came back together again a half lap later. Four to go.

The next three laps were slow. Really, really slow. My plan was for the last lap heroics so I was content to rest and recover. This was solidified as I had decided that even if I wasn’t going to win, a fast last mile would at least make it a bit safer, so I was going to pull the entire time. The two short breaks had gone well and I felt pretty good. 50m before the start/finish line on the bell lap I sprint as hard as I can. Someone yells something to the effect of “Get on his wheel!” but no one does. I got a few seconds on the field almost immediately and by about halfway through the lap it was clear to me that this might work.

Glances back on the corners showed that the field wasn’t really closing in. 300m to go and I peek and see someone coming across the gap. My brain was totally fried so I took another look to confirm a couple of seconds later. Yep, definitely one dude coming quickly but not fast enough to catch me. Damn, I’m going to win.

Numbers (I need to get a power meter…) : 53km/h to get the gap, up from a ridiculously slow 33km/h or whatever we were going at the time, a pretty decent jump for me. 1:47 for the last lap, which works out to about 43km/h average. Last lap was something like 40 seconds faster than the penultimate and a personal record on the course for me in any situation. New max heart rate of 196.

Realizations: Winning hurts. Granted, a 2 minute max effort is always going to suck, but that was undoubtedly the sharpest pain I’ve ever felt on a bike. I was seriously concerned shortly after the line that I might not be able to stay on the bike. As it was, I did a ‘lift one fist 6 inches above the handle bar’ victory salute, then was too scared to take the hands off again for a solid two minutes.

It was awesome. Taking a week off due to work concerns, but with a mountain bike race this weekend and one or two crits next week, I’m pretty excited.