March 20th - Caleb Pike

[RyanC]

Well, as fun as that was, I admit the proposed Cat 3/4 race ended up being a $10 TS club ride. I enjoyed the effort but really didn't feel like I was part of the VCL race in any way. You know how the race caravan precedes and follows the grand tours? Yeah, like that.

The four of us, Josh, Peter, Me, and Young Dylan (whose revised nickname I proffer should be "JC" as "flounder" just isn't cool enough) rolled out with two other riders, a Rider's Cycle fellow whose name I missed, and a female I didn't talk with. We jettisoned both by the 2/3 mark of the race and almost lost Peter in the process owing to a Look pedal malfunction as we jumped to drop the RC rider on the hill. Maybe you would like some new 2011 carbon Dura Ace pedals instead, Peter? In the end, of course, we all crossed the line in solidarity, I solidly photo finishing along side Josh for third , while Peter and Dylan were 1 - 2.

Next up: Possibly one of two punchy EV races: Saturday's Bradner course, which I rode Two years ago in relatively nice weather but still failed to finish, and Sunday's Aldergrove Lake Park course, which remains burned into my psyche as one of the more painful, 'Begian' experiences of my adult life. The latter course does not have the long hill of Saturday's race but rather a 400m kick in the pants that tries to take away your will to live after 10 repeats. Both courses are very selective and their sprints immediately follow the crest of their hills.

I am leaning toward going over Sunday morning again. It would be great to go over as a team. I suspect a week of eas(ier) riding for me is in order if I am going to make any serious bid to hang in for the finish in that race.

Peace,
R

[Josh.E]

The 3/4 race ended up being pretty lame, with only 7 people signing up, 5 of which were tripleshotters. I heard a rumour that they are going to move cat3's to race A, and cat 4's to race B for future points races, just like we are going to do in our club's VCL races, a much better idea IMO.

Not much worth mentioning about the race itself. Like Ryan was saying we ended up 4 up and Ryan and I had a sweet 25km/h bike toss for the 3rd place spot. I haven't heard the results of that yet.

One moment of teamwork stands out for me during the race. We had the one other Rider's Cycle guy hanging in, Dylan had gone of the front for quite a while, and Ryan and I were taking turns pace setting, while Peter sat waiting for his chance to go off the front next. We were trying to figure out a way to drop the riders guy (poor guy, riding 4 on 1), and get the 4 of us off together. Ryan and I had been doing all the work, and we hadn't been making the Riders guy work at all. Ryan came beside me at one point and said "he's done". I dropped back to Peter on the bottom stretch and told him I thought our best bet was to get Peter to try to bridge up to Dylan, and see if the Riders guy tried to go with him. Peter dropped back a bit, got up a head of steam and went flying off the front. The Riders guy didn't react at first, and then started trying to chase along the back stretch toward the finish line.
Ryan came around at the bottom of the climb and punched it, telling me we had a gap on him, so both of us went hard up the hill. Worked like a charm, except Peter unclipped inadvertently while going up the hill, and lost all his momentum.
Ryan and I got back up to Dylan, and the 3 of us were away. We came around the bottom stretch, and I couldn't see any sign of Peter. We got around the far corner, and were coming down the back stretch when I thought I heard a scream. It was a scream of pure desperation that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I took another look back, and saw Peter about 50 yards back, about halfway between us and the rider guy. He had managed to get it back together and was chasing hard with a gap on the riders guy. We sat up and waited for him to get back on, before starting a rotating TT for the remaining 8 or 9 laps.
The A race pack passed us right around then, and we spent the rest of the time following about 25 yards off the back of them. Didn't look like that was a very fast race at all this week either. I wish I had done A instead.
Oh, well. We got to ride Peter in for some points, and he's almost a cat 3 now, which is where he belongs.

[sylvan]

Oh, well. We got to ride Peter in for some points, and he's almost a cat 3 now, which is where he belongs.

Time to seal the deal next weekend on the mainland, maybe?

[John D]

>Time to seal the deal next weekend on the mainland, maybe?

Can't guarantee providing Peter with anything beyond moral support, but I'm planning on going over for next week's Escape Velocity races...well, at least the Sunday race.

Are any of the other faster TS "A/B" riders interested? Stephan? Mark and Brian? Norm?? Alan??? Even just 3-4 of us working as team would likely dominate their Sunday "C" race.

H
John

[steve]

I raced B with Alan, Dave, Jen and Mat. About 20 riders, 16 laps and 45km in length according to my Garmin. Not particularly fast, especially the first few laps: average speed was 32.4 km/h compared with 37 km/h for one of the caleb races last year.

First few laps started out cautiously, no one seemed to want to work too hard except for Alan. He jumped off the front a number of times but always seemed to get reeled in; I think he was looking for some individual photo ops with Duane. I tried getting to the front a couple of times while Alan and Dave were off the front with a couple of riders and slowing the pace a little in an attempt to establish a break but it never panned out. Alan and Dave did get about a 20 m gap at the midway point right at the big hill, I thought this was our opportunity to establish a TSC three man break. Even if we got caught, it would lay the hurt down on a lot of the other riders. I quickly bridged and was about to get us going but Dave flatted just as I reached them.

I felt good with about three laps to go and figured that based on our pace we hadn't dropped anyone. Looked around and the original 20 had been whittled down to 12. Pace started to pick up on the final lap on the straight away and I moved my way up to the front 5 riders. One of the stronger IRC guys jumped off the front and took a younger guy with him. I hesitated for a second or two thinking I should save some energy and a gap formed with no one taking the initiative. Mistake. I ended up trying to catch them but got stuck out in the wind and working hard. Looked over my shoulder and saw Simon from O2 on my wheel and Alan in behind him, but we had put a gap in on the rest of the pack. I told Simon he was going to have to give me a CyclesWest discount for the lead out and kept working. Alan went by me just before the final quick descent and Simon tagged on; we'll have to get $20 from Simon for his TSC dues after two lead outs. I was a little too spent to jump on and put my head down and dug in. Ended up passing Alan on the final hill but wasn't able to catch Simon. Finished fifth and was happy with the result.

Alan and I sprint like tortoises, I think a faster paced race would have suited us better. If Dave hadn't flatted we could have potentially gotten away. Would have been even better if we had more TSC riders out, I know a number of you came out and watched. With a few more guys I think we could have really dominated as a team and made a successful break.

Latoria next Sunday for those of you who don't want to make the trip to Vancouver.

Steve

PS thanks to Mike Lawless for keeping my kids in line.

[Duane]

results up - sorry I wasn't there

http://duanebc.com/raceresults2011/VCL2011results.html

[Stéphane Tran]

some pics from today:

[Alan]

Steve's excellent race report really captured most of it. From my perspective I couldn't believe how easy it seemed (especially compared to a typical Friday morning ass-hauling where the A+ riders usually drop me like a bad smell going round Beacon Hill). My big problem was I kept my nose in the wind way too much, especially on the downhill where everyone seemed to stop pedalling and I was saying to myself: What the #*%&#$. Next time, and there will be a next time, I hope that a bunch of us TSC guys will form a quick pace line and put the hurt on the rest of the team. We coulda put some real distance between us and the rest if we were organized. I was especially tempted to organize something seeing that Big Ring John joined us for a while, but he was constrained by the race rules and couldn't have played with us. The big lesson I learned was to bring some food for the ride home, and it is a long bonk-inducing, and chilly ride home. I told my wife I'd be home around noon. It was closer to 2pm once you factored in a coffee and some eats. All round an excellent time.

[Stéphane Tran]

One more:

[Josh.E]

good pics Stéphane

I'm really loving finally seeing all the race kits together on the road.

[JohnT]

Not really a race for me, but very good to get out and push it for 19 laps. Like Peter I unclipped, but on the steep part of the hill on lap two. Our race had five Triple Shot riders and two others, one was a women, so not really in our race. To call the team back just so we could really dominant the poor guy from Rider's Cycles seemed a little too much. So there I was watching the Cat 3+4 guys ride away after 1.5 of 19 laps. I rode for many laps alone. That's was satisfying - staying away from the B race. Eventually they caught me, but as the others have mentioned, they were pretty darn slow. I say so, not to be a ierk, but to explain why I didn't just let them by. When passed by a different race, you are supposed to 'go neutral', but there was no way to keep riding and not stay with them. Things did pick up, and I have to say it was a bit frustrating not to be able to go for it. I know some of us could have broken out of that pack. Anyway, it felt really good to 'race' again. The lone Rider's Cycles guy was scored behind me, adding insult to injury. I like the sounds of the Cat 3 = A Cat 4 = B plan.

John

[RyanC]

John T - sorry for neglecting to mention your name. I saw you at the start but thought you elected to ride B.

Stéphane, thank you for the great pics. The new TS kit looks pretty slick in a group.

I did a little math and came up with the following lap time averages. Please feel free to check my figures. It is interesting to compare our perceptions of the race with the actual gaps between our groups' respective pace. Allowing for the big difference between the size of the three groups, I am still a little surprised by the results. 3/4 wasn't a heck of a lot faster on average than B, whereas A was more than 20' faster than either group. Ouch. If you check Duane's results, you also see the carnage that may be attributable to A's pace; lotsa DNFs.

4' 13" A

4' 52.5" B

4' 36.5" 3/4

R

[Josh.E]

not surprising. we were going pretty soft.

The A pack wasn't going much faster than us. They got to finish a lap down as they were caught and lapped by the A break. They averaged something like 4:26 a lap.

Like Steve was saying, it was slow all around. 32.5km/h for the B's vs 37km/h last year in the summer for a B race.
There were some A races last year where the pack average was over 40km/h.

[M.LeBlanc]

That was a great experience and a definite eye opener for me, albeit was my 1st race. I felt great with about 6 to go but had to fight the wind too much solo for the next couple laps and drained my tank. Not happy to be a DNF but at least it gives me the goal to finish the next one. Also shows I need train a lot harder. Great job by all TSC!

Matt

[sylvan]

I like the sounds of the Cat 3 = A Cat 4 = B plan.

Sounds good. I'm racing 'B' at Latoria.

[JohnT]

It shouldn't be too hard to keep track of Citizen vs UCI licenses - if you have the latter, and you score a top ten (considering the entire B field), you start accumulating points toward your eventual exit from B.

If I remember correctly, in mountain biking, a citizen's license was only good for three races. More than that and you required a UCI license (at least that was true 12 years ago). The VCL could do something similar - maybe in your second year a UCI license is required. If you're good, you can't avoid points in year 2 and eventual upgrade and if you're not, you still have to show a higher level of support for the bike racing community with the purchase of a real license.

This assumes that the VCL A-B differences reflect the Cat 3 - Cat 4 abilities elsewhere. Anyone care to comment on that? No doubt we get some strong (e.g., Cat 2 and maybe occasional Cat 1) racers from time to time, but that wouldn't hurt. In fact, it helps. Win a few A races and you get another upgrade to Cat 2. Maybe that's where there could be a little trouble - some premature cat2 amplification.

JT

[Josh.E]

VCL A is mainly cat 3, with some cat 1/2 riders usually showing up. I find it pretty similar, although maybe not quite as competitive as cat 3 races on the mainland. That totally depends on which mainland race you do though.
Still, if you are able to score enough points in VCL A to get to cat 2, you've done it against other cat 1/2/3's, so it's just as valid as anywhere else.

[Quentin]

It shouldn't be too hard to keep track of Citizen vs UCI licenses - if you have the latter, and you score a top ten (considering the entire B field), you start accumulating points toward your eventual exit from B.

The TriBC race series is scored exactly this way and works quite well.

If I remember correctly, in mountain biking, a citizen's license was only good for three races. More than that and you required a UCI license (at least that was true 12 years ago). The VCL could do something similar - maybe in your second year a UCI license is required.

I think the biggest problem is the difference between the cost for the citizen license and the cost for the UCI license. I think the UCI license is cost prohibitive for people that want to race recreationally. Lower the cost of the UCI license and you wouldn't need the citizen license any more and people could race and be upgraded as they improve.

Why is the UCI license so expensive?

[steve]

Maybe the race wasn't that slow - I looked at the numbers again and didn't realize that I left my Garmin on after the race and circled around a little with the bike. Turns out our average speed was closer to 34.5 km/h. Based on time and number of laps, cat 3/4 was 35.5 while A was 40 km/h on the button. Maybe all that winter training has paid off.

Look forward to next week, we should actually have a game plan for who we are looking to take it going into the race (Peter or Flounder would seem to be good candidates as they should become Cat 3 ASAP - edit it that, no upgrade points next week) rather than trying to figure out what to do on the fly.

Steve

[RyanC]

...I think the UCI license is cost prohibitive for people that want to race recreationally...
Why is the UCI license so expensive?

One word: Insurance. It feels odd to say that I have been racing long enought to say the cost of the UCI racing license has remained about the same (for at least the past 10 -15 years). The Citizen license was actually introduced as a way to allow rec riders to enjoy a taste of competition while still being covered by a bare minimum of liability insurance. The downside of the Citizen's license is that you cannot upgrade, race your age category, or race outside of the issuing province.

Ryan