More Team Pursuit Intrigue

Oh yeah baby, it's team pursuit season!  The Cali World Cup is this weekend, which means all sorts of juicy Tissot timing .csv files are hitting the web as we speak.  It's been a while since the days when I pored over my own (hell of slow) pursuit splits, and (for the moment) I'm living vicariously through way faster people.

The US Women's TP in full flight.  Pic from Guy Swarbrick

The TP is a pretty rad mix of anaerobic/aerobic demands, technique, and pacing strategy.  I might crack open the MAOD simulator whirlygig soon to look at the physiological side soon, but since I haven't quite hacked the US National Team's power files yet, I figured I'd look at something simple regarding pacing, especially since the women's race is a good example of how different race situations call for different strategies.

One of the cool elements of TP (and team time trial, which I got to race some of in college) is that the team has to decide how to manage racing with riders of different strengths / aero profiles.  Do stronger riders pull longer at the same speed, faster for the same duration, or somewhere in between? How would having a 6'3" rider drafting behind a 5'7" rider affect length/intensity of pulls?  The conventional wisdom is that constant speed is better than equal-length pulls, since the added stress of accelerating/decelerating as different riders hit the front usually outweighs any benefit.

So is that how it works at the highest level? I got the lap splits from the men's and women's qualifying, first round, and finals races and plotted the standard deviation of lap times vs the team's final race time.  On the graphs, closer to zero on the x-axis means more consistent pacing, and closer to zero on the y-axis means a faster time.  First, the men:

There aren't a ton of data points, but generally, faster teams are also more consistent in their pacing.  On average, for every additional second of lap inconsistency, you might expect a team to go 10 seconds slower (insert large grain of salt).  The limit of just looking at split times is that obviously, all the teams don't start with the same horsepower, resources, training time together, etc.  Given how specialized an event like the TP is, countries that put more resources into training a dialed TP team likely see benefits in both increased strength and technique. (Profound, I know.)

LLLLLLLLADIES!

The positive correlation between lap time consistency and final time was stronger in the women's races--in the neighborhood of 18-21 seconds faster overall per second of lap consistency.

One way to look at the data points is to view points below the regression line as having more horsepower and less consistent pacing, while points above the line have better pacing but less horsepower.  The most interesting example is in the women's final, where Canada beat the US 5:20.1 to 5:25.8.  Despite being in the gold medal ride, the US women had the most lap variation of all eight finals runs.  Here's what the lap splits between the US and Canada looked like:

The increase in the blue line in the last few laps is the US team losing some steam.  One reason they may have slowed down is that they had to burn a big match in the first round (where they rode a 4:21.5) just to make it to the gold medal ride. Another may have to do with the structure of the competition affecting their strategy.  If a team is trying to do the fastest run they can, a consistent pacing strategy is ideal.  But the strategy changes once you're in the gold medal ride where the worst you can get is 2nd place, and you're facing an opponent that has been consistently stronger than you.  In that case, the best option may be to try and match them, even if it means risking blowing up in the final kilometer.  It looks like that's what happened to the US women's team.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained! And they still wound up with a silver medal.

A cool problem would be looking at TP power files and coming up with a way to model the actual cost of inconsistency. But that will have to wait until I want to do something other than some rookie ax+b nonsense.

Walla Walla...with Jake!

I went to the Tour of Walla Walla with Jake this year!  

Jake and I got to stay in a child's bedroom with two beds like this:

Adorable!

Racing festivities were scheduled to begin on Friday with a 62-mile road race for the men and a bag full of anti-race-development incentives for the women.  That went well until the stage was canceled due to lack of course marshals.  All those snacks for nothing. Next!

The TT was a TT.  I beat Jake's triathlon bike, which is the only thing that matters. After team nap time, team coffee time, team pillow talk, team fight club, team shower time, team nail-polish application, and team snacks, we rolled out to the crit.  We parked where we always parked and listened to some kind of country music.

Jake and I wore fluo orange socks for the crit. Flying squirrel tactics defined the first 20minutes of racing. I was astonished at the tremendous sprinting ability that some racers demonstrated out of turn 1 early in the race. Also out of turn 2, 3, 4, 5, and every other point in the race (except for the sprint at like, the end of the race). After coasting with Jake and eating more snacks, I countered a Jacob Rathe/Benny Swedburg/HB move and got away with Dylan Davies of Russ Hays and Darren Goff of Live Well. The three of us were all pretty high on the BMI chart, so we motored and were holding at 15-20s, splitting primes and trying to get some time. Eventually shit heated up behind and we were caught with 1.5 to go. Jake got knocked out of good position due to a last lap crash, but received many congratulations for his strong riding in the breakaway, that popular rascal!

The road race was the usual 90 miles of tailwind climbing. Jake was hurting from the burger I force fed him the night before, so he was in conservation mode. I was feeling good and wanted to find a way to try and win like a #professional instead of defending my 12th place GC, which would have been a #bitchmove. Ian Crane was leading GC, but his main man Carson Miller was momentarily sleepy from pulling like a champ with 35mi to go, so I attacked with Jordan Cheyne (2nd GC) on the more selective tailwind climb, and we had a gap until every other team realized that I might leapfrog them into 9th and started chasing.

Moment of seriousness:  the willingness of people to do the race leader's work for him never ceases to amaze me.  Congrats to everyone who chased us and then missed the actual selection on the last lap:  good job. Actual quote from the race:

"So where are you in GC?"

"Oh, like Xth place." (not 1st)

"So are you going to try and attack?"

"Nah, I'll probably defend."

Heads up: no one is trying to take your top-10 GC spot, which besides is a result that zero people care about.  Going into a race with the mentality that you're not going to challenge the race leader, but that you will challenge other racers who are trying to attack the race leader in order to save the small scraps that you've managed to secure is a pretty lame way to spend a weekend and a couple hundred dollars if you ask me.  Plus it makes Ian Crane's life easier, which no one should ever support.

The real selection came the last time up the same hill, and Jake and I were both too sleepy to go with it. 8 guys including Crane bridged to the small break and went to the line with ~0:45 on our group, which means we dropped way down in team GC, individual GC, and ego size :(((((

Jake gave me San Pellegrino Orange Juice after, which made everything better.  Overall, a great weekend for snacks.

Local Crits

(edited to correct prize purses for Brad Lewis and Derby Days)

It seems like there's a time each year in Washington for a rant concerning prize money inequality between men and women / prize money-to-registration fee ratios.  This year, the rant came right at the end of June, which made sense because a) The Joe Homes threw some chum in the water with a  Facebook post, and b) it was the weekend of Tacoma Twilight, the only local crit of the year to offer zero prize money for any women's field.

First off:  Ivy, if you want lots of minutes per dollar, I think RAAM has a great ratio.

One issue with discussions like these is that they often bring out opinions based on impressions and anecdotal evidence rather than an actual examination of the trends that are being criticized.  So because I only contribute to a discussion if I am completely right about everything ever (which happens surprisingly frequently), I decided to look at some stats from WA crits to see what is going on.  After all, I didn't complete my college education in vain. I completed it in Walla Walla.

All the info here came from results sheets, registration websites, race fliers, and emails with local promoters.

Stats. Ready, go! Let's start with a simple one: total prize purse, men and women combined.

Okay, so I see an outlier. Derby days paid out $8575  across all categories. Next best was Joe Matava at $1831.  They achieved this by paying out 50% of registrations for all women's races, including $425 for the women's Cat 4.

Alright. Objections.  No fair! It doesn't take # of racers into account! Joe Holmes probably packed a ferry with every racer on the entire Island of Kitsap to race and pad his wallet with reg $. Nope. White Bread wasn't even there.  Here's average prize money per entrant.

Okay, that's impressive. $28.84 to second place Tacoma's $6.73.  But Derby Days is probably one of the more expensive crits, so they can pay out more for the same % of registration income, right? Wrong again. Here is prize purse to total registration income.

Pretty much the same as the last graph.  Stop and think about this one for a minute. Derby Days paid out $1.02 for every dollar that it brought in through registration. North Bend was a distant second at 27 cents on the dollar, which they achieved by paying out 50% of reg in all paying categories.  Volunteer Park's purse was middle of the pack, but they brought in so much money from their big fields that they wound up last by this measure at 10 cents on the dollar.

Now, no self-respecting promoter is going to shell out without getting his beak wet first, so where did all of Derby Days' money come from? Joe Holmes gave some answers about that a few years ago.  Go get sponsors.  There is obviously more to the prize purse equation than how much money a race brings in through registration.  There are costs of permits, porta-pots, coppers, officials, insurance, etc., and Joe admits that he saves money by combining Derby Days with an existing street festival, something that not every race has the option to do (why don't we have a naked Fremont solstice crit, btw? Oh, because we would need ink numbers. Plus we would have to see Stangeland topless. Nevermind.).  But even taking that into account,  it should be clear that promoters could do a lot more in terms of making their races more affordable to justify the low prize purse, or increasing their prize purse to justify the entry fee.

Okay, now for the contentious stuff: man vs. woman.  Here's the trend that is the source for most of the complaints from the ladies:

When I look at this, I think, a) Joe Holmes is trying to compensate for something by having the longest bar, and b) women are getting the short end of the stick.  Apparently, having a small women's prize purse is enough to keep the complaints at bay, but it becomes too much to bear when Tacoma  tells women that the joy of racing should be enough for them. I mean the joy of racing and a $20 gift certificate to Pirelli's Pizza.  And an envelope. You can reuse that.  Again, I'm skeptical of whether Joe Matava actually paid out as strong as they did at the women's race.  I'm still waiting to hear from the promoter, but if anyone knows either way, they should let me know. (update: Joe Matava promoters confirmed they paid out 50% to all women's categories)

So you don't need that chart to know that men's purses are almost without exception substantially bigger than women's. But you do need the following chart to show you how much money there is per entrant, male and female, at the races.

This chart takes into account the fact that even though there is generally less money available to women's fields, there are also generally fewer women showing up. Among races that actually paid out to women, all but Ballard and Derby Days actually saw more money per female racer than per male racer.  This illustrates the chicken-and-egg situation: women won't show up if there's lousy money, and promoters are less likely to obtain prize money if they expect low turnout. Vicious cycle! For an individual female racer, it is hard to strike a balance between wanting to hold promoters accountable  and wanting to give them a reason to pay out.  Support a race with a bad purse and you're enabling a trend you oppose; boycott it and you give them a reason to further cut prizes.  Because the group of female racers who might show up on a given race day is a much harder force to organize than the small number of people responsible for gathering prize money for a race, the onus to provide prize money falls primarily on the promoter. "If you build it, they will come" kind of thing. In exchange, women need to be ready to reward responsive promoters with their patronage.

But if you build it, will they come? This chart represents riders per $100 of prize fee. You would expect it to be pretty flat, since races with less prize money would get fewer entrants.

There is no correlation between prize purse and number of racers. Volunteer park gets 36 racers for $100 in prizes, while Derby Days gets 3.  There are a lot of variables at play here. Derby Days was the same day as Boise Twilight and Tour of White Rock, so in spite of its large prize list, it didn't have a big draw.  Bellingham had masters medals up for grabs so it got a lot of racers for an average prize purse. Volunteer Park is like a 2 minute ride from most people in the city.  It had the 3rd smallest purse, but the largest turnout of any crit on the calendar by more than 100 racers.

Here's one take that I think misses the mark:

Yeah, if you don't like it, you can leave! 

A couple of false assumptions here. First, there are a limited number of promoters in the state.  It's not like there are tons of disgruntled promoters who couldn't find a time slot on the calendar and are waiting for someone to make a mistake so they can snatch a spot.  Second, promoters can be lazy and still not be priced out of the market.  The previous chart shows that race attendance is inelastic with respect to prize money. People will still show up, albeit begrudgingly, even if a race has a bad prize purse.  This isn't the first year that Brad Lewis hasn't had a women's purse, yet women continue to come and race.  The economic transaction argument relies on perfect competition and elastic race attendance, neither of which is the case.  Third, telling someone to take a hike if they don't like the way things are is a really shitty way of avoiding problems with the status quo, and is especially easy to do when you're not the one who has it rough.  For perspective, very few, if any racers in the state are going to live and die based on prize money at local crits.  In fact, the situation isn't even burdensome enough that racers are leaving the sport in droves.  But is that really the standard we should use to decide whether or not there is room for improvement in our current system?

The takeaway for me from all this is that promoters can decide whether they want to provide development for the sport by doing the leg work to make racing less financially burdensome for racers, or whether they want to provide a consumer good that transfers more of the cost of racing onto the racers.  Making money off of a race and slacking on finding sponsors is obviously winning with some of the promoters in the area, and the market currently allows them to do that without fear of repercussion.  Luckily for anyone who doesn't like the way things are, the racing community is small, and we don't all have to be price-takers.  #occupyboatstreet