First up, this is cycling, not football - no tackling required, thank goodness. In fact I've "tackled" this subject a few times, including right here. Crits are short, sharp races run at higher speeds than road races, usually with more corners and fewer hills, around a short course. The skill and fitness levels are high but endurance is less than a longer road race.
The essentials go a bit like this:
1. For a criterium you need a road bike. One with curvy 'dropped' handlebars and a pair of brakes will do - yes, you need to use the back brake too!
2. You need a bike with 2 lightish but stiff wheels, as flexy wheels in tight corners are not good as they feel soft and squishy and put you off
3. The bike itself could be around 8 or 9 kg in weight but extra kilos on the bike are not that much of a problem as crits are usually pretty flat. Light wheels will assist your acceleration more than a light bike. In any case you shouldn't stress about the bike. Your fitness will matter more
4. Having said that, the bike should be well maintained and unlikely to break under load!
5. Remove extraneous objects before the race - like streamers, plastic gear guards, bells, toolkits, books, magazines - and keep 'em for later
6. Pump up the tyres. 100psi sounds good but whatever you see written on the tyre will be a better guide. A harder tyre is a faster tyre, within limits (don't over-inflate as that may be dangerous, especially if the tyre blows off the rim!)
7. Join a bike club and get a racing licence. In Australia it's around $200 a year but varies with each club and your age. You get 3rd party insurance with that and a cool licence to prove you are a racer. Consider private health insurance as falling off at speed may be costly
8. Crits go round and round so you'll pass the pits several times. If you puncture (or have a 'mechanical') you will be allowed 'a lap out' but unless you are fabulously prepared and have a buddy following you with spare wheels it's unlikely you'll be able to take advantage of that in your early races. You can often leave spares at the start line anyway, just let someone know to watch 'em, in case they 'walk'. You won't get a lap out if you have reached the final lap, btw, you'll have to just watch - obey the race judge (the 'commissaire') in any case
9. Assuming you have followed my earlier advice and have trained at least enough to have sufficient endurance for the event in question, arrive at the racing venue with plenty of time in hand (30mins minimum, preferably an hour)
10. If you haven't already done so, get your licence from the club secretary. If you haven't paid, pay now.
11. If you have your licence, look for the entry desk. It could be under a marquee. It could be in a club house. There may be a queue of fit looking lycra-wearers to guide you. Queue up and pay your entry fee (could be $10 or so, more for open races). You will be graded, probably in a low grade at first. They will give you a race number (cool!) and may hold your licence untill you return said number after the race. Race numbers are often colour coded to show grade
12. Put your number on (usually pinned low on your jersey and slightly to the side where the judges sit (it pays to check out local custom here).
13. Pay attention to what's happening as races are often organised in unusual orders. Like A grade (fast guys) first, then B grade, then C and D combined, or totally in reverse. Local customs apply - don't miss your start!
14. If it's OK to do so, roll around and warm up on the course. Don't start cold in any case!
15. Don't miss the start!
16. Don't get in the way of faster grades, especially when you've finished
17. Hand your number back afterwards
18. Learn from your experience!
Showing posts with label crits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crits. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, January 18, 2008
ibike crit overview - with pics
Yeah, ok, it's D-grade but every race is as hard as you make it, or as hard as that guy who should go up a grade makes it, anyway. So here are some pics to show you what the new ibike2 software is like... Straight below is an overview of the new data display. You get a detailed data summary on the top left, now including some aero values you can plug into other software for comparison, or to take away and tweak. 
You also get a useful tool for analysing the data, setting barometric pressure and adjusting your 'coast-down' values post-ride. So you can load old rides and update the ibike values, for example, if you have adjusted 'em. It gives you more control over the results. The blue area is the crit last week. The rest is pre-race warmup and post-race cool-down. Top-most graph is power in Watts. Next is speed, then elevation and last of all slope. You can see from elevation that there's a hill each lap... and you can move the cursor to any point and get power, speed and elevation data at that point.
And this is the power peak in close up. Along the bottom of the display you see the data on the cursor: 752W, 35.9kmh, 3.8% slope. If you run those numbers through your calculator (plus weight, temp, barometer, elevation, headwind, all available from the ibike) you'll verify that's pretty darn close. The only real problem is when you hit the 'go' button too hard on a climb and lift the front wheel. You can easily turn 3.8 degrees into 4.5, or more, and get a huge - and inaccurate - power reading. But you can fix that any number of ways, too. Especially if you ride the same hill a few times and know the slope doesn't exceed 4.5%, for example.
Last for today - this is a closeup on the velocity peak. Speed maxed out in the sprint at a lowly 49.1km/h, best so far being over 55kmh, but it was into a headwind this time, and I managed to pick the wrong wheel to follow, too. So I ended up in front too early. Still, you can see the power peak on the hill just prior to the downhill sprint - basically where the last attack went. We continued at good speed until the 90 degree left turn but power is down because I'm on a wheel and we are dropping elevation. Someone starts the sprint, I chase, catch and get marooned. Ooops. You can see the sprint power is 529W and the wind has increased markedly after the left-turn.
True, it doesn't tell you anything that you couldn't have worked out anyway, but it puts it right in your face -up in lights. 3 races documented so far and I know how critical that hill is - it's where most attacks start, especially on the last lap. I can see exactly what power I need to generate to match those attacks, and I can see how important it is to stay calm, hang onto a wheel and don't go too early in the sprint, especially if it's windy! And I can take this data away, find a similar hill and practice putting out 700W+ intervals. I could tailor a 'crit simulation' session around this data and see what works. I may find that those steep, medium-power intervals don't help me in crits and that I need to do more snappy, higher power efforts over shorter distances. And so on.
You can do it by feel, or you can buy a power meter and 'prove' your theories. It's up to you.
You also get a useful tool for analysing the data, setting barometric pressure and adjusting your 'coast-down' values post-ride. So you can load old rides and update the ibike values, for example, if you have adjusted 'em. It gives you more control over the results. The blue area is the crit last week. The rest is pre-race warmup and post-race cool-down. Top-most graph is power in Watts. Next is speed, then elevation and last of all slope. You can see from elevation that there's a hill each lap... and you can move the cursor to any point and get power, speed and elevation data at that point.
And this is the power peak in close up. Along the bottom of the display you see the data on the cursor: 752W, 35.9kmh, 3.8% slope. If you run those numbers through your calculator (plus weight, temp, barometer, elevation, headwind, all available from the ibike) you'll verify that's pretty darn close. The only real problem is when you hit the 'go' button too hard on a climb and lift the front wheel. You can easily turn 3.8 degrees into 4.5, or more, and get a huge - and inaccurate - power reading. But you can fix that any number of ways, too. Especially if you ride the same hill a few times and know the slope doesn't exceed 4.5%, for example.
Last for today - this is a closeup on the velocity peak. Speed maxed out in the sprint at a lowly 49.1km/h, best so far being over 55kmh, but it was into a headwind this time, and I managed to pick the wrong wheel to follow, too. So I ended up in front too early. Still, you can see the power peak on the hill just prior to the downhill sprint - basically where the last attack went. We continued at good speed until the 90 degree left turn but power is down because I'm on a wheel and we are dropping elevation. Someone starts the sprint, I chase, catch and get marooned. Ooops. You can see the sprint power is 529W and the wind has increased markedly after the left-turn.True, it doesn't tell you anything that you couldn't have worked out anyway, but it puts it right in your face -up in lights. 3 races documented so far and I know how critical that hill is - it's where most attacks start, especially on the last lap. I can see exactly what power I need to generate to match those attacks, and I can see how important it is to stay calm, hang onto a wheel and don't go too early in the sprint, especially if it's windy! And I can take this data away, find a similar hill and practice putting out 700W+ intervals. I could tailor a 'crit simulation' session around this data and see what works. I may find that those steep, medium-power intervals don't help me in crits and that I need to do more snappy, higher power efforts over shorter distances. And so on.
You can do it by feel, or you can buy a power meter and 'prove' your theories. It's up to you.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Yeah OK, another win
I managed to win the local crit again - yes folks, D-grade. Well I had to work at it! I had to avoid falling (one rider down as a faster grade caught us on a corner - nasty!) and I had to watch for breaks (just one semi-serious attempt, easily caught). And I had to patiently wait for the impetuous youngster to start the sprint.
More importantly it gave me more race data. So I can confirm that last week's 1400W burst was indeed an error on the ibike's part, as expected. I'll show you the data later but every lap we went over a small hill, and each lap the hill got steeper. Or so the ibike thought. When 'corrected' it's still a 900W effort (bridging a last-lap gap). This week's data is much more consistent and the peak power a more miserly 800W. I was careful not to expend too much energy in short bursts, rather I anticipated accelerations and smoothly bridged. Each lap the hill registered between 300 and 5ooW effort and 42% of the race was above 200W. If you trust the ibike, of course!
It's a slightly downhill sprint so although I briefly hit 55kmh the power was just on 600W.
I have upgraded to ibike firware v1.16. I always reset after a ride and do a re-tilt when changing bikes. I have a battery of coast-down data to tap into a well. It's not perfect, it certainly goes awry when the barometer is moving around, and if you lift the bars or otherwise drastically alter your weight distribution during a ride then it can generate some flaky figures... but it works well enough to be a great tool for the data junkie on a budget.
More importantly it gave me more race data. So I can confirm that last week's 1400W burst was indeed an error on the ibike's part, as expected. I'll show you the data later but every lap we went over a small hill, and each lap the hill got steeper. Or so the ibike thought. When 'corrected' it's still a 900W effort (bridging a last-lap gap). This week's data is much more consistent and the peak power a more miserly 800W. I was careful not to expend too much energy in short bursts, rather I anticipated accelerations and smoothly bridged. Each lap the hill registered between 300 and 5ooW effort and 42% of the race was above 200W. If you trust the ibike, of course!
It's a slightly downhill sprint so although I briefly hit 55kmh the power was just on 600W.
I have upgraded to ibike firware v1.16. I always reset after a ride and do a re-tilt when changing bikes. I have a battery of coast-down data to tap into a well. It's not perfect, it certainly goes awry when the barometer is moving around, and if you lift the bars or otherwise drastically alter your weight distribution during a ride then it can generate some flaky figures... but it works well enough to be a great tool for the data junkie on a budget.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
the race data, of course
A win is nothing without data, eh?
OK, D-grade crits at the CCCC are short - 30mins plus a lap (another 2km, so about 16-17km). We start with the "D1" kids and drop 'em off after 2 or 3 laps, so we start slow, slow but then speed up. It was 32 degrees Celsius off the tar at 6pm - hot. And the wind was 30kmh from the NE. I was on the Felt F-50.
I dump my ibike data into a spreadsheet, so it comes out like this:
Max power is peak power. With the ibike it's susceptible to lifting wheels, and the combination of pulling up on the bars on an 8% hill during a max effort bridge to the attacker probably distorted the real power... so let's say it was 1,000W anyway, if not 1,400.
The all-up average treats coasting as part of the race, hence Av (all) is just 104W but (Average (>0W) removes all zeroes... which is more 'real'. 151W still sounds low - but we did start slow!!
That's my own normalisation formula, by the way, and definitely a WIP. As a relative measure it gives me a way to judge between efforts. It emphasises the middle over the high-end of the power output range and tries to indicate real effort - all soft-pedalling or coasting is removed and we are looking at just the real "training" load, but I haven't yet perfected a way to recognise effort over time... so short rides are favoured over long ones. I'm working on it.
This breaks-down the power into steps. I can see that 43% of my race was coasting or drafting (0-100W). When training I seek to minimise this figure, to actively eliminate those slack periods, In a race I take full advantage of these "rests".
You can also see that there were only a few 600W+ efforts, and the 300 and 400W steps represent the once-per-lap climbs. Knowing all of this allows me to finetune my training to meet my race needs, although C-grade may well be more "attacking" and both the averages and the peaks will be higher (and more frequent in terms of peaks).
The VAM is useless - not enough hills! But the 50.53kmh peak velocity in the sprint in useful. The 25kmh average is misleading as it covers 20km - warm-up, race and cool-down. The race itself averaged 32kmh (slow, I know, don't rub it in).
OK, D-grade crits at the CCCC are short - 30mins plus a lap (another 2km, so about 16-17km). We start with the "D1" kids and drop 'em off after 2 or 3 laps, so we start slow, slow but then speed up. It was 32 degrees Celsius off the tar at 6pm - hot. And the wind was 30kmh from the NE. I was on the Felt F-50.
I dump my ibike data into a spreadsheet, so it comes out like this:
| MAX power | 1447W |
| MEDIAN | 68.5W |
| AV (all) | 104W |
| AVERAGE (>0W) | 151W |
| TRIMMEAN (10%) | 88W |
| Normalised | 296W |
The all-up average treats coasting as part of the race, hence Av (all) is just 104W but (Average (>0W) removes all zeroes... which is more 'real'. 151W still sounds low - but we did start slow!!
That's my own normalisation formula, by the way, and definitely a WIP. As a relative measure it gives me a way to judge between efforts. It emphasises the middle over the high-end of the power output range and tries to indicate real effort - all soft-pedalling or coasting is removed and we are looking at just the real "training" load, but I haven't yet perfected a way to recognise effort over time... so short rides are favoured over long ones. I'm working on it.
| 600-700W | 0.15% |
| 500-600W | 0.46% |
| 400-500W | 2.49% |
| 300-400W | 7.02% |
| 200-300W | 12.57% |
| 100-200W | 32.88% |
| 0-100W | 43.51% |
You can also see that there were only a few 600W+ efforts, and the 300 and 400W steps represent the once-per-lap climbs. Knowing all of this allows me to finetune my training to meet my race needs, although C-grade may well be more "attacking" and both the averages and the peaks will be higher (and more frequent in terms of peaks).
| 695 | VAM (max)/hr |
| 10.5 | Slope % (max) |
| -0.44 | Slope % (average) |
| 32 | ALTITUDE (max) |
| 50.53 | VELOCITY (max) |
| 25.0 | VELOCITY (average) |
The VAM is useless - not enough hills! But the 50.53kmh peak velocity in the sprint in useful. The 25kmh average is misleading as it covers 20km - warm-up, race and cool-down. The race itself averaged 32kmh (slow, I know, don't rub it in).
Monday, August 13, 2007
Joe Lewis gets gastro, wins 100 Euros
From Cyclingresults.net, an excellent read from Joe Lewis. It's a gripping tale of gastro followed by some smart attacking after the prime to win the race. This is not an Aussie crit.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
2007 Criterium De Bethel
Ahhh, helmet cam... every crit should be neutralised in the middle 8 like this one was...
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