Slowman wrote:
lots more to write about this but my first shot is
up on the home page.
we oughta get in front of this and start deciding on the rules. for example:
1. can you draft off somebody not in your "race"?
2. should you be able to have any clip ons at all?
3. how deep should wheels be allowed to be?
4. are you obliged to retire if you're lapped?
5. should RDs be only allowed to have so many laps per race?
6. should there be any prerequisites to entering?
7. can you ride an MTB bike?
8. should we shit-can 1.3.073 entirely for draft legal?
plus other stuff i haven't yet considered, but that a number of you will.
Bringing the original discussion points back up. I don't want to touch 2, 3, 7, or 8 for now, but I think the others still bear a little thinking about. My perspective is just about how this is going to affect sprint distance.
6: I don't think there's really enough demand for DL racing in most areas to support a category system like USAC does for road races. For the most part, I'd be okay with requiring people to sit through some kind of rules briefing/skills clinic type of event the day before (say, at packet pickup) unless they can prove they've already competed in a DL event. Once you start talking about elite/junior elite/development style races, that starts to become a whole other problem, and some kind of experience or category system might be the way to go.
5: This seems like it depends a lot on the number of laps. For a single loop race, all you would need to do is start the fastest wave first, and give enough space between waves to minimize the likelihood of passing. For two loops, space the start so that the next wave starts about when the wave ahead is starting their second lap. I think that would minimize Past three loops, I think you need to start thinking pretty hard about a lap-out rule.
4: Again, this depends a lot on how the laps are set up. For very short bike loops, where the leaders of one wave lapping the trailers from the same wave, I don't think there's a good way around it. For longer loops, it might not matter. Once you start talking about having multiple waves on the course at once, this really becomes the same problem as #1. If you can enforce #1 easily and have some kind of right-of-way or blocking rule to require yielding to packs from other waves passing you, I don't think you need it. If you can't do that and #1 is important to you, I think you don't have much choice except to have the lap-out rule.
1: You know, I think this might be easier than it sounded like at first, at least for smaller races. Why not just use colored race numbers on the bikes? So long as the waves stay mostly separated, I would think the numbers would be adequate to differentiate and prevent this. If you had 4 or 5 waves, you might be able to get by with having draft marshals checking for drafting. They could give a drafting penalty if you're drafting someone not in your wave (red can draft red, green and draft green, red cannot draft green and vice versa).
Closed courses seem like they're the other big bone of contention, but most of the sprint races I do already have that, and have multiple loops. Of course there's tons of caveats to that. I live and race in urban Southern California, where getting permission for a longer course appears to be very difficult for most RDs. A good chunk of my racing experience is the local collegiate conference series, where most have 3 to 4 closed course bike loops for a 20kish ride (UCLA, UC Irvine, UCSD Tritonman, CSULB, and Stanford). And of course, none of them have been draft legal. On the other hand, I've also done a few USAC sanctioned road races on open roads in semi-rural areas, and there were never any problems even with 40+ rider packs.
