gbot

Our local cycling organizational body just made some changes for the 2011 season that will impact how difficult it is to upgrade from cats 3 and 4.

Previously, upgrade points weren't available for 'club' or 'local' races. Problem was, about 80% of the races in the area were designated as 'club' or 'local'. Including the 2 big weeknight crit series, which are the main focus for a large portion of the racers in the area.

End result was that in order to upgrade from 4 to 3, you had to show up and do well at the big 'marquee' events. However, about half of these had mixed 3/4 fields so the people at the front of the field would invariably be the strongest 3's. Not great for a newly minted 4 looking to learn how to win races.

It looks like the powers that be took a look at how few people were getting upgrades and decided to do something about it. So for 2011 upgrade points are available for basically ALL races for 3's and 4's (but not 1's and 2's). Including the spring tuneup series, and the weeknight crits.

It's good for me. Last year (my first full year of racing) I found the big marquee crits pretty intimidating. And it seems to make sense on a basic level - racing is racing, so points should be available. More opportunities to get points doesn't make it any easier to win races and should theoretically raise the level of competition at the club/local races.

Is this typical for other areas? How many opportunities for points are there? Does a change like this sound like a good idea, or a bad one?

waterrockets 

What's your "local cycling organizational body?" USA Cycling has clear guidelines for earning points, with no differentiation based on location or what club is putting it on. If it's a USAC race, and the field limit is met, and distance is met, points are available. Period. Around here, if a road race is short, they'll usually even let you apply crit points to it.

I upgraded 3->2 with results from one road race, one major weekend crit, and a couple weekly Thursday night crits. How easy it is to get points depends on how well you race, not where you race.

gbot

It's Cycling British Columbia. They basically operate under UCI rules (although I'm not 100% clear on how much autonomy they have). Things are a bit unique here (I assume) because the bike racing 'scene' is relatively small and has been struggling a bit in recent years with races going under and poor participation.

One other change they made last year is that they basically did away with cat 5 and replaced it with a 'Novice' category. Instead of the 10 race starts one would normally need to get to cat 4, only 5 were required, and clinics counted towards that number. So cat 4 became the de facto beginner category although everyone was expected to have at least *some* experience.

jrennie

I'm driving 15 hours out of my district looking for upgrade points

Brian Ratliff

In OBRA land, every race counts for something, but it's stipulated that at least some of your upgrade points have to come from marquee events; you can't just mine the weekly crit series and upgrade. Also, races that have a combined 3/4 field, there is usually a combined 1/2/3 field as well; the stronger cat 3's who are looking for upgrade points race the 1/2/3 race while the weaker 3's and the 4's looking to upgrade race the 3/4 field. Cat 3's can't gain upgrade points unless the majority of the field are cat 3's. There is only one race series in the Portland area that regularly uses this arrangement (the weekly PIR race), and the 1/2/3's are on the course at the same time as the 3/4's, so racing in both fields is impossible.

Smallguy

I'm in Nova Scotia and as far as I know we do follow UCI rules... but our races are ability based Cats A-D and F for women currently... A's are the fastest Guys and GIRLS and it trickles down with D being the novice category for both Guys and girls. We have a few guys in the A pack who have raced or are racing for Canadian teams like Garneu and H& R Block

last year I raced D... I"ll race C this year but if I wanted to no one would tell me I can't move to B and get shelled every race hard or even A.... I could be asked to switch cats after a race but nothing stops me from trying

edbikebabe

Alberta has upgrade points for races on the ABA calendar. Weeknight & early spring season races don't count. For men - you have to upgrade out of Cat 5, no freebie upgrades for entering enough races. Due to the small numbers of women, we race A/B. We all race together but get scored separately.

Hida Yanra

it isn't super easy around here, but the system is set up to be self-leveling for each region.
in regions where the fields are really strong, points are harder to get.

for availability of opportunities, the two weekday series here don't count for points - so there aren't as many points to go around - but it seems to work out well enough.

mattm

In WSBA it's pretty straight-forward, as long as its a USAC race then and field/distance limits are met then there are points to be had.

Our weekday races don't have a permit (or officials, or good finish-line cams), so it makes sense they don't count. And they used to count for 5->4 but not anymore. However there are $10 primes and bragging rights up for grabs, so it's still a lot of fun to show up.

The one thing that sucks around here is that OBRA is all special and WSBA/USAC won't count points from there... that's a long drive for bragging rights & gift certificates.

caloso

What about upgrading on top 10's? Is that an option in BC?

gbot

It doesn't look like it's mentioned specifically on the Cycling BC website but it does say you can apply for an early upgrade.

Points also go 7 deep for races with 25+ starters.

graphs

Here in Ontario, upgrade points are only given to the top 5 places in a given race. Also, points are only valid for the calendar year in which they were accumulated. And I believe in the 1's and 2's you need to get a certain number of points per year just to stay in that category.

Not sure how this stacks up against other regions.

bannedinbc

There is no upgrading on top 10's in BC. I don't really think it would be realistic, because the largest fields we ever have are maaaybe 50 at the very most but usually smaller.

Last year points went 10 deep with one pt for 6th through 10th, but before last year it was only 5 deep. Last year they would separate the results of a 3/4 race into categories, so it was a bit ridiculous because like half the field would get an upgrade point sometimes. So it seems like they are trying to make it a bit harder to upgrade by cutting down on giving someone a point for 19th place or whatnot.

But on the other hand, they are giving a vastly greater amount of races upgrade points. The thing about racing in BC, is that there are so few racers, that even when spring series and the tuesday/thursday nighters didn't have points, I would guess that it wasn't any harder to upgrade here than somewhere that has more races, but more racers as well.

Another thing to consider is that tuesday and thursday nighters, and Spring Series races are nowhere near as hard as the "real" races. Perhaps because the best guys from one cat will often cat up for the weeknight races; and spring series is self seeding. Maybe with points, these races will be raced harder though.

I think if they do force people to upgrade from points earned at these races, the cat 2s will soon be inundated with people who reaaaaally aren't ready to be there. From my experience it is not nearly difficult enough to win or top 3 a tuesday nighter in cat 3 to justify moving to cat 2. ( i think i would already be a cat 2 if this was applied last year). These are the races where the cat 4's should be able to "learn to win" even if they can't at Race the Ridge or Yaletown.

One last thing to take into account is that the "club/local" races are that for a reason. we don't use a camera or a timing system etc. at spring series or the weeknight crits, its just a few people with a pencil and a scrap of paper picking numbers.

esammuli

Pretty much what I did last year. From San Diego I drove to Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tucson, Chico and Bend. That doesn't include all of the local races that are 1-3 hours away.

Jancouver

Thats what I'm calling a dedication! Thats why you are Cat 1 and I'm Cat 6

PS Good luck with the Blvd & Red Trolley!

rbart4506

That sounds about right...Not that it matters for me at this point...I'm just content to show up and haul my ass around the course

graphs

I don't know man, you train pretty hard! No reason why you couldn't move up a little.

caloso

Hell, I won't even drive to Chico....

rbart4506

Well I hope that's the case next season....This past one was a wake up call (first year)...I was OTB a lot!

FormerBMX'er

Pretty difficult here in the North East. There are quite few guys who race Mountain Bike Nationals, but won't upgrade out the 4's on the road. Between sandbangers and large fields, it's really difficult to upgrade on points.

Last year I was taken out of race where I thought I could do well. I was riding in the top 10 places or so only to have someone in the top 3 cause a crash.

Our Regional Director will grant upgrades to those who choose to race Masters with pack finishes. So far I have 2 upgrade points in the bag, but racing Masters might be the best way out.

bikesandcode

I actually wrote a rambling post about the topic a week or two ago and came to many of the same conclusions about how this year there might be 'too many' points available. Summary of my thoughts are: It is needed this year but it's not sustainable given the number of riders and available points.

I strongly suspect that Cycling BC wants to stop the practice you mentioned of guys riding up a cat at the weeknight races. With the small number of points available last year* you'd have cat 4 guys racing exclusively during the week with the 3's on Tuesday or Thursday, then, when a very rare Cat 4 only race would come up, these guys would stomp all over the 'real' Cat 4's.

Then, since there weren't enough points, the 4's who consistently race with 3's never upgrade to be a real 3. This is not a good situation for new racers. Worse, some 3's would race with the 1-2s. So in a Cat 3-4 race, you had relative novices in their first 'big' race with guys who have been regularly racing with 1's and 2's. That's not fair to anyone.

So basically I think the large number of points that they are giving out this year at the club races is to give Cycling BC an official way to get rid of sandbaggers. Yes, lots of people will upgrade, but there are a lot of people that should be upgraded.

*Blog post - References buried in there, but there were 10 people who upgraded from 4->3 and 10 from 3->2 last year in BC. That's it.

gbot

We chatted via twitter briefly this week - it was your blog post that got me thinking about this.

There are definitely some interesting ramifications to the change. One thing I'd like to know is if they consulted EV and Team Coastal and asked if they were willing to shoulder the additional burden of keeping track of finishers 7 deep in every race.

Both the Spring Series and Thursday Nighters used an 'A B C' format, which it seems like they'll have to drop if they're really trying to address the situation you talk about here. I raced the B's most of the season on Thursdays last year because that's how I could race with the rest of my team (CVC), and the C's weren't consistently a big enough field to make for really interesting racing.

Would this change mean that both series would need to adopt a strict 'race with your category' format? Or would that not really matter? Either way it seems like a bit more effort for administration. As well as the edict on the website that says the race organizers must submit 'correctly formatted results' within 48hrs of the race. I can see pressure from both racers and Cycling BC to make sure the organizers do this. Maybe they were consulted and agreed to it, I don't know.

I almost think the way to go about things would be to make this change AND reintroduce cat 5, with the 10 race starts requirement.

It's definitely going to be interesting to see how things play out.

rkwaki

I was wondering if it was still like this back home. Unlike here in the US where you can stay a 1 permanently in Canada once you get there you have to continually earn that Cat 1 license or get downgraded. Furthermore when I was a 1 back there I could never be downgraded past a 2 regardless of situation (this is what I was told). Not sure if this is still the case but back in the 1990's there were not anywhere near as many 1's (per capita) that there is here in the US.
Another rule which I believe is better is when you had enough points you were upgraded right away - you couldn't wait it out or wait until the next season. I went from a 4 (there were no 5s) to a 1 my frst year racing (actually in about 2 months) so the learning curve was quite steep as I was young, dumb and full of @@# - the only thing I knew was to attack - that worked in lower cats so it must work in higher cats I thought
I think upgrading in Canada is more difficult than upgrading in the US as they seem more stringent on rules and earning your way there and then working to stay there.

graphs

It seems like it's a little tougher anyway. And, with there not being any cat 5 (nor the 10 start upgrade to 4), you have to ride with the n00bs until you can get enough points in a single year to upgrade. Though I guess that makes a more defined separation in the abilities, if you are in the 3's than you have had to place top 5 in at least three races, likely more.

waterrockets 

I think I just got 10 points this weekend

It was similar here in the 1990s. From my recollection: There were only 200 Cat 1s, and maybe 1/3 of them were on the US National Team (A or B teams), holding off on going pro until the next Summer Olympic Games. The 1s had to get points in certain races to maintain a top 200 ranking among elite riders. If you fell out of the top 200, you were downgraded to Cat 2.