RudeSiggy

Here in the mid-atlantic MABRA region, if you're a Cat 4 or Cat 5, registering for races is a B*TCH. You've gotta refresh your browser and sign up in the first 5 minutes, or you're S-O-L.

One of my teammates said they saw total registration for one of the two races that opened tonight was 297 in the first 5 minutes. Nuts, eh?

How's your area? Do you guys in other parts of the country have to race online to get into races?

Here's my blog about it :-P - https://sigberto.blogspot.com/2009/03...-ruins-my.html

dmb2786

just registered for syn-fit crit. so far i'm 1-3 at pre-registering for races. I'm starting to hate bike racing.

RudeSiggy

^^ Yep I just jumped in there too. Still open, apparently.


Oh, and one of my gripes tonight was that the organizers (for the Carl Dolan Memorial race) limited the 4/5 field into two different categories on bikereg and only had 15 slots for Cat 4s. What crap is that?

Maybe it's just me. Luckily, they had a 3/4 race as well, but no doubling-up that day.

bdcheung

@rudesiggy - i feel your pain

bdcheung

I can't believe Dolan only has 15 cat 4's...

RudeSiggy

^^ your team has their sh*t together. I'm kinda surprised the 4s haven't sold out yet.

bdcheung

Syn-Fit and Reston will be great races with tons of fields!

MDcatV

that's goofy what dc velo did for dolan. I'm also shocked that race is $30, to ride in a 2.1 mile uninteresting circle at an industrial park. dc velo always puts on a top notch event, but geez.

if syn-fit is closed, there's the soyoco race up on york that day, it will NOT end in a field sprint, that one's a ballbuster. if my wife hadnt already made evening plans for us, I'd be driving up there over the local criterium, heck, I still might.

as I see it, the problem is that many promoters run jr and multiple womens fields that have all of 12 racers in them at the expense of additional cat 4 and cat 5 fields. I guess its good for promoting the sport and all, but is frustrating when one is a 4 trying to find a race. it always slows down around July, then reg. is wide open.

bdcheung

@MDcatV - It's 100% about promoting the sport.

umd

Cat 5 fills up pretty fast, you almost always have to be pre-reged. Cat 4 usually fills up before the races and especially the more popular races are full by race day. The really big races fill up almost immediately. Cat 3 almost never fills up before race day, and it seems very few people pre-reg for P/1/2 races but the fields still end up being huge.

RudeSiggy

BD & MD - yeah, it's about promoting the sport but without the Cat 4 and 5 fields, no clubs would be able to fund any races whatsoever... at least not without heavy sponsors.

And yeah, we can "promote" the sport by having near-empty fields forever and ever, but if we're still screwing over a bunch of Cat 4s and Cat 5s by not letting all of them race, that doesn't help the cause. Newer races especially won't know that they need to RUSH to get into races. We have a good rule about capping 5s at 50 racers. Why not field two races? Why not divide it by age (masters / not)?

We can get creative about it... for example, I think one of the best ideas I've seen happen more in our area recently is 35+ 4/5 races.

bitterken

Coming from NEBRA, where even us 4's can do a "day off" registration for just about any race, it is a pain in the butt in MABRA-land having to wait by the computer like I was trying to buy Pixies tickets. But I'm getting used to it. I was planning to do 4 races that weekend (2 per day) but I'm more then happy with getting into 3 of them. Honestly, I don't even know if I would have enjoyed the 4/5 race at Dolan given what I've seen a Trade Zone.

umd

The first [road] race of the season here was so popular they ended up running 3 full cat 5 fields. Many races have 2 cat 5 fields. Sometimes there are 2 cat 4 fields but since they are often 100+ it isn't always necessary.

bitterken

Battenkill does this too. I guess it's easier to run multiple races on a RR course with staggered starts, but it just gets messy with crits/short circuit races.

nitropowered

Have someone on your team be the designated registration guy.

Make a manager account on Bikereg and register your whole team at once. Though there is the chance on getting stiffed on getting paid back if he/she decides not to go to the race.

bdcheung

It's also expensive to get police and road closures for a full day - i don't think permits are as easy to come by here in MABRA as they are in CA, but that's just an assumption.

umd

We don't usually end up doing full closures... which sometimes ends up leading to cluster****s...

BigSean

4's, 5's and Masters races fill weeks before the races is some cases. Its a very rare case to be able to sign up on race day. But its not really a race to sign up either, so long as ya reg in the first week its open. Road races here have so many catagory's it is usually not a problem. The flatter road races being the exception.

RudeSiggy

Aside from crits, I can only think of two races (one new) that have/will have full rolling enclosure.

But here around DC, we're very crit-heavy. There are road races, but they're all out in the boonies and most of them have been around for a while.

I think the upcoming Lost River Classic RR will be a breath of fresh air, even though its out in the boonies too.

acorn_user

Hey siggy.... not enough races, and everyone wants to race in March. It's funny that things will die down over the course of the summer. I guess people give up on it. Anyway, the Mabra madness messed us up for Jeff Cup, and we don't really have that many people registered for what used to be our own race. Bah!

You reckon a late season RR would work? Somewhere between Charlottesville and Richmond....

RudeSiggy

yeah acorn, i know things lag down but it's amazing this many people want to race NOW and not when they're actually in good shape, and when there will be better weather. but then again, we're registering a month or two early for races in april and may...

NomadVW 

At least they're registering at a decent hour of the day now here in MABRA. Last year some opened at midnight or 7-8am.

But since Syn-Fit is still open Cat4 and higher.

Re: Carl Dolan 4/5 small 4 field. I like they limited the Cat 4's in the 4/5. It guarantees a full field of 5's get to race - and that's cool. I think it's interesting that some of the 4's for the 4/5 would rather be wait listed on a 4/5 race than register and get to race in the 3/4.

I'm just loving that I get back to back days of doubling up. Training is beautiful!

Lithuania

ive already wasted money on two races I am not going to be able to do because I had to register immediately and hope it worked out when the race came around.

even though these mabra races fill up immediately you can almost always get in if you show up day of and get on the waitlist.

skipmcne

I don't get Combining 4/5 fields. It's not like the 5's aren't going to show up just to get dropped. Running two 5 fields (one 35+) Just makes so much sense (to my feeble brain) in terms of registration dollars.

I'm starting to think we are course-limited here. If you had longer circuits (longer than the 2 mile industrial-park circle). or a longer season? would things work better? More RR's ?

skipmcne

Dolan's got an On-line waitlist for the 4/5's that... wait let me check. Yup full up for the 4's.