Finish Line Safety

Alright people, another discussion topic: Taking your hands off the bars in sprints. Not acceptable. For example, this is what you should not do:

(photo by ?)

Even if you don't care about those around you, I do not need to receive multiple emails every Monday from Mark Abramson, trying to regulate ECCC finish line safety from the West Coast via finish line photos. I get enough conference email. Chebot, Gurcsik, Whiteman, you're all on notice...

Consequences

Surprisingly, the majority of officials have never been competitive cyclists. Many don't even ride recreationally. Most got their start because friends or family were or are racers, and they got hooked on the pageantry of cycling, race day logistics puzzles, days in the sun amidst the most beautiful sport.

A key tenant I've been pushing over the last few years is that more racers need to become officials. There are many reasons for this, but one notion is that experienced racers are better equipped to evaluate safety factors. That's not to say by any means that racing experience is necessary to do so or be a good official, but it seems reasonable, modulus some overly gung-ho racers. Without that race experience it's often hard to gauge what racers need and what will work---how far out do they need to know a corner is controlled, how desperately will they avoid that gravel, can they see those lap cards, etc.


But, there are things I've learned that racing experience simply does not provide, and in fact may gloss over. In particular, racers don't generally think about external events and actors. Racers focus on the things they will encounter during their race: Potholes, bumps, sharp corners. They very rarely think about all the things they hopefully never encounter during a race---pedestrians and vehicles being the most troubling---precisely because so many people are working to ensure they don't encounter them.

Any racer can take a quick lap and settle on a corner to worry about that they can't pedal through or take at full speed. Only sharp observers think about mitigating external events, e.g. that doing lap after lap downhill through a blind double s-curve in a heavily trafficked area without total course control would be inviting that sort of external event to happen. Tough corners are problematic; someone may crash, someone may get hurt. That's the nature of the sport. External events are frequently fatal---for the racers if it's a vehicle, for the pedestrians if it's not. That's something to be avoided at all costs.

Unfortunately, those risks are significantly harder to recognize and judge. They're much less obvious than basic course "features" and the probabilities frequently pretty low. As a promoter, official, director, these are always the hardest decisions. No race can cover every possible contingency and no event can put out more than a finite number of marshals, each with only a very finite ability to control the world around them. Every time a road course crosses an unwatched driveway or tiny side street, every time a crit is held somewhere not in the middle of nowhere, we're all taking risks with gravely serious possibilities. Balancing course tradeoffs, evaluating probabilities versus outcomes, all of that is gut wrenching and definitely the deepest, darkest part of race promotion and officiating.

Introduction to the Future

Opening up the 2009 ECCC road season, the Rutgers/Princeton weekend was a huge success all around. Massive turnout, good courses, solid organization, weather more fantastic than anyone has a right to ask for this time of year.

There were two brief, exemplar moments though where it really shined: The first was when we started the Men's Intro field, and 45 riders and 25+ coaches stepped out onto course. We knew the numbers were high from the time trial and congregating everyone a few minutes early, but that put it all into perspective. Mayhem and bedlam unprecedented reigned for just a few seconds as we tried to straighten out the huge mass of riders and coaches. It was beautiful, and I was actually speechless for a few moments as I simultaneously enjoyed the sight and desperately tried to figure out how to organize the whole affair.

The second moment was twenty five minutes later when we called up the Women's Intro field, and the exact same thing happened---40 riders, 25+ coaches, anarchy and disorder. Amazing. To put that in some perspective, that's more ladies in the Intro race than many races---collegiate or otherwise---have in total. Mere icing on an already delicious cake then to start Women's B and have another 50 (!!!) racers show up.


I think the Intro category has become such an integral part of the scene so quickly that it's worth noting the struggle it took to get off the ground. This is only our third season of Intro Category racing, with a single trial event the year before in the 2006 Beanpot. At the conference meeting in the fall of '06, the motion to mandate Intro categories was a knock down, drag down fight matched only by the push to equalize men's and women's points a few year's before---another disruptive, contentious change quickly shown to be the right direction. The debate wandered around and around in circles for an excessively long time, with firmly entrenched camps on both sides. Clocks were pushing 6 or 7 PM by the time that meeting ended.

Major arguments against the category were and are simple:

• Racing is supposed to be hard!
• We don't have time for this in the schedule.
• Teams already do this on their group rides

The first is so insipid, so shortsighted that I won't even go into it.

The second is easy: We are the ECCC. If it's worth doing, we make it happen.

The third is more interesting. The three counter arguments turned out to be perfectly true:

• Many riders are still looking for an easy ramp-up into racing, no matter how good the support and guidance from their team.
• The bulk of the teams out there are pretty small, and many are in areas without well developed cycling scenes. New riders on moderately sized and big teams or in development oriented, cycling-happy areas (hooray for Philadelphia!) may get that kind of support. But most teams aren't big and aren't in those areas. A quick look through the member database makes clear that the majority of ECCC teams have just a few riders. New racers on those teams are often on their own, and many new teams are made up entirely of new racers with no one to show them the ropes.
• Judging from what we see out on the road, most teams aren't actually doing this kind of development, or not hitting all their riders. New racers are frequently intimidated at coming out with older racers, even with those willing to give them guidance and lead clinic-oriented rides, or just aren't ingrained enough in the team to avail themselves of the opportunity. Even teams that do an excellent job with their new members still have riders showing up in the Intro races that are definitely getting something out of the experience.

When the motion to add the category finally came to a vote, it was close. Mark A, myself, and many others had been fighting for the category by tooth and nail over email and in person for days and hours, and in the end vision prevailed by only a few votes. Few better things have ever happened in cycling.

That first season was pretty rough around the edges. A few events stepped it up with full coaching squads, most notably Rutgers, Philly, and the Beanpot, but at an awful lot of races just Mark A and I wound up coaching, with whomever we could harass into coming along, mostly Drexel boys who failed to come up with good excuses. Racer attendance was generally pretty light as well. We were stoked if we got twelve guys and a handful of women. One sad day in awful, freezing, pouring rain, only one Men's Intro rider lined up for the category.


Having so many people participate is then huge vindication of all the effort that went into getting the category off the ground. I am so happy to see so many riders and so many teams---including clubs originally dead set against the idea---make such good use of the category. Even more rewarding is seeing so many people join in to help guide the races. Having so many team coaches break out their bikes, get kitted up, and dispense some hard won wisdom is a great thing. It is also deeply, deeply satisfying to have so many veteran racers ask if they can help out because they think it's a great idea and a fun way for them to contribute back to the conference, emphasis on the latter. Beautiful.


I believe the success of the Intro category has also been a huge development for women's racing. Women's Intro and Women's B fields were both huge this weekend, many of the B racers having been Intro racers last year. There was even a sudden flurry of discussion among the conference about adding a Women's C category. We're not quite there yet, but at long last it's finally on the horizon.

For a wide variety of reasons, many women have a particularly hard time entering the sport. It's even more difficult for them to find experienced racers to ride with and learn from, and with so few categories there are huge imbalances in skill and fitness within each category that make entry even more daunting. No one gets excited about bicycle racing and learns about it quickly when they spend their race riding alone because there isn't really a beginner's category.

The Intro category goes a long way toward addressing that. Ensuring everyone gets some experience riding in a group and learns some skills both improves their enjoyment and gets them up to speed faster---literally, figuratively. This is the same reason why Caitlin and I have taken to hanging in the back of the Women's B field and providing some guidance back there. The faster our newer women racers can pick up skills and the more they enjoy it, the faster field sizes will grow, categories balance out, and women's racing move toward its potential.

Thank you very, very much to everyone that helped work toward that goal this past weekend. We'll see you out there again, every weekend, rain or shine.

The Quiet Before the Storm

Most of you are already on the road and/or getting ready to get up ridiculously early and hit the road for the season opener at Rutgers. I can tell this even without previous experience because my steady stream of incoming cycling email has tapered off. The quiet before the storm.

It's taken a lot to get to this point. For those that are interested, here are the routine conference topics we spend time on day in/day out:

- Race permitting
- Race schedule revisions
- Race course revisions
- Officiating assignments, season ref selection
- Rider upgrades
- Rules and general questions
- Conference meeting plans, coordinating (thx Yale, Bard!)
- Conference & USAC documentation, website updates
- Assisting other conferences as possible

These are all of the non-routine issues we've spent significant time on lately:

- CD oversight of permitting/flyer release process
- CD/LA summit inefficiencies, nationals presence and meetings/workshops
- Race promoter deposits w/ conferences, required USAC infrastructure
- Field limits and collegiate relationship
- Licensing of riders from foreign universities
- Upgrade mileage requirements for Women's B and Men's D racers
- Waivers/liability for Intro coaches
- Categorization verification, student status checking
- Tightening of prime rules for collegiate crits
- CD oversight of season scoring
- CX Nationals category/experience requirements
- Officiating improvement programs
- Waivers, season numbers
- Nationals date selection
- Nationals quality oversight
- MTB team relay format (e.g., new ECCC format)
- MTB Intro clinics (e.g., new ECCC format)
- Points allocation and division policies for triple-split fields
- Pre-registration policies, esp. for large teams
- Pre-season women's racing clinics
- Aero equipment, esp. nats policy (e.g., draconian new ECCC policies)
- DH timing
- Road Intro curriculum, structure, scheduling
- CX season structure
- CX categorization equivalencies
- Track season structure

Clearly not all critical for tomorrow, but MTB season planning basically started three weeks ago. Track and CX better get moving soon as well to keep those seasons on the up-and-up.

So, that's about were we are. Twelve hours to go before we hit the road, about ten hours of work left to do before we go, and a generator to pick up and PA equipment to drop off on the other side of town. Fortunately the weather forecast is magnificent---when push comes to shove it's standing in the sun with the breeze in your hair, collegiate racing all around, that covers all the other times.