Cyclocrossing with your mouth closed seems difficult. Where do you get your air?
Mouth breathers aren’t race winners
Also, I definitely wasn’t winning.
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Raced the same course as Kyle on Sunday (my first race of the year). Decided to give the 45+ 4s a shot since I now qualify. One lap in and somebody (I think in another field) crashed heavily and stopped breathing for a while. The medics got there right away though.
They stopped the race short, but we probably would have only done one more lap anyway. Ended up finishing in the top half, which hasn’t happened in a good while. I actually had a decent start and made most of my progress there. Also unusual. My lack of fitness was apparent on the one long runup though. Felt like garbage.
This Sunday is a flat and pretty non-technical course with one climb. Looks like it will be dry too. Bleh.
Finished 24th of 71 in geezer cat 4 yesterday. Might be time to bring the geared craws bike out of retirement.
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HY dude!
More like “might be time to stop riding with the geezers” though. Hit that cat 4 early race with me and then recover for the SS later in the day.
I can’t make the trip but would absolutely recommend.
Plus, can someone give LTF a handup? I owe him like 3 at this point.
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Right now I think I’m going to do old man in MFG and SS in CXR, but it hardly matters for standings or whatever.
We need a team competition. Where you only get the points from your top finisher in each race. GA had that and it really pushed teams to be inclusive because you killed it if you had someone in Juniors and all the women’s races and the men’s masters. Instead of just a bunch of SS riders or elites.
So, first raced we hosted went off without any major glitches. Being our first time, there were a few issues that we have identified and are going to fix.
-We are/were working with another promoter out of St. George and we ran the races based off her model. I think we need to change her model, though. Her event time is essentially from 9am to 2pm and has our typical non-usac categories, M&W A, B, & C, SS, and juniors/youth. She runs quite a few of them together and has HUGE gaps between races. I’m talking there was almost 45min between one set of races. As a racer of her events, I never really had a reason to notice it because there was just a single race between ss and As, but as a race director, I saw it as wasted time or the opportunity to let certain categories have their own event times (her times run Men’s and Women’s C in one race, SS and Women’s A/B in another, and Men’s A/B). We also had the park for the event until 4, not including tear-down time. We could have totally utilized our time allotment better and given people a better experience.
-We paid for her to come down and she did not bring her timing clock or lap cards. That really ticked me off. We had a DJ and the microphone for announcing was connected to this PA system, so getting timing info during the race was a hassle. I ended up pretty much announcing all the races, minus ss and the times I needed to change or get ready to race. I actually had a lot of fun, but it was difficult without a rider list in front of you for each field.
-We paid her two nights of airbnb for her to come down and she left right after the race, having us waste $100.
-She brought down a tablet for registration, but it didn’t have a POS or square app installed, so we had to use my phone the entire time and I didn’t have the chance to take many photos.
My idea is to not use her anymore in the future. We can still partner up with her for the series (and to get on her insurance?), but the few items we need to buy (timing clock, lap cards, another ez-up, few tables for reg/timing) will cost us what we spent to get her down here with lodging/gas/etc. In my opinion, she didn’t bring much to the table and using her website for registration helps her more than it does us. Without people from Las Vegas, her events would cease to exist, so I think she needs to focus on building a cx community out there and we all come together under the banner of a series next season.
As for my race, I got off the front with one of my teammates after the holeshot. We were changing positions pretty regularly and I knew where he could gain time and he knew where I would. Then I burped my tire on a remount and ran 1/2 a lap (.6 miles) back to the pit/start, got it inflated, and proceeded to start to claw back places. 1.5 laps later, I hit the ramp (yeah, we had a ramp option w/4’ gap instead of barriers), decided to get a little stylish, and burped it again. Rand 3/4 of a lap to the finish and called it. I could have gotten my way back into top 5, I think. Oh well. I’m working on getting a set of tubulars built up for it.
The course was really, really good. Like, surprisingly good. We have had practices there for years, but putting up stakes and tape made it a different beast. Our local Belgian former EuroPro said that it was legit.
The community support we got was top notch. I wish we could have had more racers (we had right around 65 individual registrations), but we had people from California, Arizona, and one from the east coast that was in town for work and happened to find out about our race. We got a few roadies and mountain riders and a lot of riders stopping by to spectate. I think we can only grow.
Most of all, WE MADE LIKE $200 after permits, supplies, paying the other promoter, etc. Main objective was to break even, so we achieved that.
i am so into that gap
my favorite local race ever (ice weasels) had the Bad Idea Jump which was a legit gap jump that sent you about 5ft into the air
i was too scared to hit that
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I am into that ramp.
It sucks that you try to work with someone to grow the sport and they don’t pay off in the long run. Or maybe it paid off just enough, that it was a worthwhile safety net for your first race, but now that you’ve done it once, you can take the reigns from there?
Our cycling assoc (WCA) recently opened up commentary for scheduling because one guy complained that the fields weren’t big enough compared to Chicago. He wanted to compact more fields to get more competition within races, which is a legit strategy.
The WCA hey explained their reasoning for how things are planned and pointed out that Wisconsin has more participation per population compared to the Chicagoland area, which is an interesting point of reference.
I can see merging races into bigger fields, but I have no idea why you’d plan 45 minute gaps between races.
My big complaint for our area is that youth races are the first two races of the day, which forces traveling kids to have to get up super early to prepare.
Here’s her schedule for all of her races (and the one we threw on Saturday.
9: 00 AM COURSE OPENS FOR PRACTICE,
- 9:30 am Mens & Womens C, Women SS -35 min
- 10:30 am Men SS, Womens A, B -45 min
- 11:30 am Kiddie Cross 2-4 ( 2-3 laps) & 4-7 year- 10 min ( Separate Course)
- 11:55 am Jr Race 11-14 / 15-17 / Rookie -30 min (full course)
- 12:35 pm Mens B, Mens A – 60 Min
- 1:35 pm Youth Cross 7-10 -20 min (short course)
Between race 1&2, there is 25 minutes.
Race 3 doesn’t really count because it’s on a completely different course and is mainly kids on striders (we had ONE kid do this for about 20 secs, then fell over and he was over it.)
So, between race 2&4, there is a 40 min gap.
Between 4&5, 10 min
Between 5&6, no gap, but there are course modifications that are needed, which sucked because we didn’t prepare for this and the parts we cut out were nowhere near connected.
That puts her done by 2pm. Great for her, but we had paid until 4pm, with tear-down till 6pm.
MY schedule that I will be using for these next season:
8-8:30 OPEN COURSE
8:30-9 Men’s C
9:15-9:45 Women’s C, Women’s SS
10-10:30 Juniors 11-14, 15-18
10:30-11 OPEN COURSE
11-11:45 Men’s SS
12-12:45 Women’s A/B
1-2 Men’s A/B
2:15 Youth 7-10 (2 laps)
Our park rental is/was from 8am to 4pm. So, we can either push forward an hour or start at 8am. Either way, next year, with this schedule, we can cut an hour off our rental, all while giving people separate categories.
I get combining categories to save time/money, but as far as combining categories to get more competition, I would think that it would hinder competition withing classes. Leader of one class gets stuck behind the tail end of a different class? We have always had the problem of the men ss lapping the women’s B, if not As. It’s not fair to the Women’s B or A riders that they have to slow down and essentially stop racing to let people by. They really shouldn’t have to. But then if you combine men ss and a/b, you lose the ability to race twice. Same with women’s ss and a/b. In AZ this year they are running men’s ss and men’s 123 at the same time, and I’m bummed I have to choose which field I am actually competing in.
It’s all really delicate and I’m talking with my team today.
I may be hopping* a babby barrier in this picture. There were three and the area after them was really chewed up making it more efficient to not have to remount. It was ugly, but I made it every time.
*Awkwardly getting over one wheel at a time.
Nice babby hop! It’s always fun to push your limits, especially when it turns out to be faster.
You have a much narrower schedule than we do. You have Mens ABC, while we have 5 categories spread across 4 different age flavors (Cats 1-5 in open, 35+, 45+, and 55+). One debate is how many “ladder rungs” you need to keep people happy and competitive; if you space them too far apart, people won’t reach for more competitive categories.
Another is how important the competition is at the lower levels, anyways? Do you really need 20 podium spots for Cat 5-3 in all age groups or can you sacrifice some ego fluffing to combine fields for more exciting competition?
Maybe, or maybe not, but our participation-per-population rate may suggest we’re doing okay.
Having lapped and been lapped a few times in my life I don’t think it’s a big deal to “stop competing” briefly to let leaders pass. As a leader, it’s part of the race to navigate passing, and calling out “Leader” helps expedite things. At the back you’re already losing, so…
I realize there are slightly more complex implications when men are passing women, so definitely worth thinking about.
This is my main concern, really. As passing Bs there’s no issue. But SS men being mixed with women’s B and then men’s/women’s C is where I think the problem lies.
We double up 15-18yo boys in the Cat 5 men’s race, which makes sense, because they’ll compete in that group once they get in there.
But then we race boys 9-14, girls 9-14, and girls 15-18 with masters women 1-5, which makes me uncomfortable, and I’ve heard women complain about this, too. Why are Cat 1 women racing in a field with a bunch of children? It mostly has to do with the timing of the youth races, which, again, I also have a problem with.
I talked to someone from (I think) Indianapolis and they have a huge youth development squad. 80 kids where we have, like 10 if we’re lucky. They race the fast folks in the morning, then essentially have “family time” for kids and Cat 5-ers at the end of the day. This makes a lot of sense to me, but our schedule is reversed.
Since we’re really just getting things started off here, all our fields are small and we’re working to build that up. Combining them for the sake of larger fields makes some sense, but at the same time, I feel it can be a deterrent for some racers. We want to give everyone a chance to race against those of the same level. No matter what, you’re gonna get that strong person in every field that has never done a cross race and blow everyone out of the water. Then, next race you have them move up. In USAC, you gotta move through the categories, but since our classes are essentially self-selective, outside of juniors and ss, we can feed the other categories pretty quickly. We need to get more juniors and beginners.
We were totally wiped out by the end of the day, and that was with the race time being 6 hours. I think this was mainly due to us scrambling to setup the course, infield, tents, registrations, etc. We were all jumping from one task to the other and back to the first. We have since reealized what we need to do to streamline setup:
-6 people on the course, split into groups of 2. each take 1/3 of the course. Lay stakes and tape. Then setup barriers/obstacles after.
-4 people for infield setting up registration, timing, pit/mechanics tent, generators/power supply to everything, signage, kiddie course, etc.
When we get this down, then we will not feel the additional hour of events of the expanded schedule. I think?
Good on ya for diving in to putting on a race. There are tons of ways to do it and nothing is perfect.
In terms of the daily schedule, I’ve raced in 3 different state series and there’s just no one good way to do things. I tend to think that the only sane thing to do is just keep changing it every year so at least some segment of the population is happy some of the time.