Bikes and Code

My best season so far.

To Summarize:

• 1st Spring Series Murchie Road Race (C)
• 1st Devo Stage Race Criterium (C)
• 2nd Devo Stage Race Overall (C)
• 1st Random Coastal Thursday Nighter (B)
• 4th Random Coastal Thursday Nighter (A/B)
• Couple of other Top 5 (B)
• Several Primes (B)
• Upgrade to Category 3

Outside of the palmares though, there are some important observations I can make about how this season turned out.

I am a sprinter

This was known, I think. I did not properly appreciate it though. The powertap says I’m pushing 17.5 W/Kg for 5 seconds, 15.8 W/Kg at 10 seconds and about 11.4 W/Kg at 20 seconds. It falls off pretty hard from there, but it appears that that is enough of a jump to get a gap on the vast majority of Cat 3/4 racers around here.

Of note though, I need to be somewhat rested. If the pace ramps up, I can jump at the end, but if the race has a regular sustained high power section, my legs will be cooked long before the end. The Tour de White Rock and the WTNC out at UBC are examples of circuits that I have no real hope of ever sprinting at.

I can read races

This made me happy. I’ve kind of been a slow developer at this sport, which roughly translates into that I raced a lot before I ever saw the front end of a bike race. But now that I’m confident enough to get up there, I’ve been fairly decent at picking important breaks and when to make decisive moves.

My win in the Murchie Road Race came after watching a bunch of breaks come back due to the attacker sitting up, not the field speeding up. It was wet and cold and the field was sad and miserable. I attacked as a cross headwind turned to a cross tailwind then spent 20 minutes alone at the race average speed and didn’t get caught.

In two different races I correctly picked very serious and dangerous breaks and got into them. The first, the Devo Stage Race road race, I hung with the break until a couple of km to go, but stayed away. The second, in Delta, I burned far too many matches in my 1 lap chase to bridge across the 10-12 second gap and got dropped from the break after 4-5 more laps. That break wasn’t caught until 3 to go. Arguably, if I hadn’t been weak or was able to help longer, it might have stayed away.

Lots of times I attacked at the wrong time, followed the wrong wheel or just plain didn’t have the legs, but I felt that my ability to read the races has gotten to the point that I can call it a strength.

I’m not terrible at Time Trials

I’m not great at them either though. Ottawa’s regular TT series taught me how to ride a time trial, so despite not having a huge threshold or anything, I know how to suffer. I placed in the top third of the two TT’s I raced this year, both in stage races.

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.

Armstrong Road is a short road of about 3km in North Langley. About half of that is smooth, good pavement, the other half is rough and bumpy. Over the first 2km or so, it raises 80m in 3 stairstep pitches. 12%, 10% and the last, on the bumpy pavement is something like 8%. This feature utterly dominates the Armstrong Road Spring Series race.

Not being someone who handles sustained climbs very well, I expected this race to be over fairly quickly. The last truly hilly races I had done, admittedly a couple of years ago, the Ottawa Grand Prix in Gatineau Park generally ended up with me being shot off the back on the first major ascent. I saw no reason why this race would be any different.

The race starts at the top of the course. A straight downhill gets the speeds up nice and  high. A sharp right hand bend into a further downhill. This next stretch is great fun as the road lazily winds down the hill. Bottom of the hill is a hard right, then onto the flats for a couple of kilometers for a few turns. After River Road, you take a turn to the right and head up the hill. The first pitch is the steepest and it tops out with a long false flat. Then it kicks up again. The second false flat is short and is noted by the road surface going from great to horrible. One more climb and then the finish line.

I started out at the front intending to remain in the top ten or so places as long as possible. Going into a climb at the front means you do get a bit of a chance to drift back and use a touch less energy. I hit the hill in about 8th place and to my surprise stayed there. A couple of attacks went off and various people ramped up the pace to bring them back but nothing doing.

I could have been done after that first climb. My heart rate was in to the mid 180’s for most of it, which is well into the not sustainable level for me. If the remainder of the climbs were this fast, it was just a matter of time.

A couple of laps later, a couple of guys rode a fairly serious tempo up the hill. I basically hung on for all I was worth to a chase group and we all came in contact again on the final uphill before the finish line. I was sitting in about 10th place, looked behind me and saw nobody. Great, I was in a break on a climber’s course. This was going to end well.

Due, I think, to some poor rotations and some serious effort on the part of the remainder of the race, the pack made contact again about 5km later at the base of the climb again. I made it to the top in the main pack again, but at this point, 4/7 climbs through the race, I could tell that I was getting into trouble.

I was shelled on the second pitch of lap 5. The lights went out and I lost 50m in probably a minute. What remained of the pack slowed over on the bumpy roads, and I closed most of the gap, but I never actually got back on. I very, very seriously debated climbing off the bike there, but decided I’d at least ride to the corner where I parked, which was about 800m past the finish line and flat/downhill.

“Well, I only have to go up that hill two more times, there are some other dropped guys ahead of me to maybe ride with and I can totally bomb down this descent with guys flagging me through corners. Yeah. I’m going to finish this race.”

So I did. Rode hard on the flats, survived up the hill and bombed the descent. It was awesome.

Placed probably around 20th, based on the size of the peloton that went up the road. 40 starters so that’s pretty good. Considering I spent some time in a break and was riding at the front until said lights went out, I’m pretty happy with the whole thing.