Lies, damned lies and statistics

Being a niche in a niche sport, Cyclocross draws some obsessive behavioral types.  I include myself among the geeky set of these but am completely outdone by the works of Colin Reuter made available in crossresults.com. 

This useful website employs some simple, clever mathematical modeling to come up with a dynamic ranking and prediction mechanism for cyclocross racing at http://crossresults.com.  The ranking system is so accurate that a number of races in the US North East are seeded using this ranking. 

Racers have a numerical ranking based on their results of the preceding 12 months.  The lower the number of your ranking, the better.  Top ranked is Sven Nys, previously a world champion with a points score of around 97 as of early Nov 2011.  A score around the hundred mark means that you're one of the top riders in the world and are probably fluent in Flemish.  Points scores under 200 are good pros or national level amateur racers.  If your points are below 300 you are a top regional rider at Masters level and even better if not Masters.  Below 400 and you're doing well.  Above 400 and below 500 means you finish races mostly in the bottom half of the field.  Above 500 means you need to review your training plans.  Above 600 means you need to take up a new sport or at least ride your bike at least once a week when you're not racing.

Your ranking is based on a running average of your recent scores with the most recent events weighing most heavily, reflecting physiological training effects but ignoring those of crashing, mechanical problems, bad days and hangovers.  Also not taking into account are conditions, course difficulty and weather. 

Each time you race, you get points based on your result.  Points for a race are allocated such that

• the total points granted is equal to the total points of entrants as they were at the start of the race
• the winner gets the lowest score - a fraction of the average of the scores of the top 5 finishers  (excluding the winner)
• the median racer scores the points that s/he had at the start of the race
• points granted between consecutive places are constant, in other words the difference between points granted between 1st and 2nd is the same as the difference between 2nd and 3rd and so on
• DNF (did not finish) counts as last.  DFL in fact.

What does this gibberish mean?  It turns out that this model is a pretty accurate measurement of racing form across the population of racers, so much so that many races use this as the basis of seeding riders for call up.  It also has some interesting properties;

• Sandbaggers don't gain.  A sandbagger, someone who races at a lower level than s/he should in order to win, is given points based on the average of the 2nd-5th place riders.  This means that a sandbagger who's significantly better will lower his/her ranking through increased points
• Sandbaggers help the field. By lowering the average of the field, everyone benefits (slightly) from the lower points allocation than they'd have in a more even field
• Normalized, consistency across riders
• Consistency is rewarded and even more so, riders that abandon races are penalized irrespective of the reason

Bikereg.com (the core of competitive cycling in the US) acquired crossresults.com in early 2011.  It should be very interesting to see what improvements are made once full time funding is made to the site.  USA Cycling has already announced that it will be using this mechanism to rank riders in other disciplines.

One of the immediate enhancements was to provide a race prediction function to all users (this was previously available for a small donation).  The race predictor takes the list of registered riders and predicts the outcome of the race using their current rankings.  It's uncannily accurate.

Mt Washington 2011 and an off off-road year

My first post in a long time with a number of others partially written and almost ready to publish.  For reasons I'll go into, I now find myself with a lot more time on my hands and so I'll probably make a lot more progress than I have over the months past.

After last year's huge improvement on my previous best time at Mt Washington, this year was going to be the year where I broke the 80 min barrier and entered the top notch group.  My season started a bit later than I'd intended but steadily the base training came together, with my first race being the difficult Tour of the Battenkill in early April.  I raced in the 40+ group this year, a very hard and competitive field of 125 starters.  This race contains about 20 national level riders who contest the race, about 70 who work together in a set of teams to make it to the finish and the rest who suffer through solo time trials to the end.  Had I known the roads and a bailout route, I would have gladly abandoned but instead pressed on as one of the members of the third group.  At over 3h30 it was my longest ride of the season thus far by at least an hour.

Training intensity picked up a bit with a few time trials thrown in to get the competitive juices flowing and the heart rate up.  I rode in the Eddy class this year - no aero equipment allowed - so named after Eddy Merckx.

The great Belgian Eddy Merckx (nicknamed "the Cannibal" as he showed no mercy in every race and always rode to win) not only dominated the Tour de France for many years but virtually every other Tour and classic race on the calendar. He was really only absent from cyclocross as a racing discipline and though he's a Belgian, the quality and quantity of his palmares more than excuse him from that lapse of judgement.  Eddy set a number of time trial records without the aid of aerodynamics and hence the name for this class of racing. 

I planned on doing more off-road riding on the 'cross and mountain bikes for variety, bike handling and to prepare for the real season of cyclocross in the fall.  Not long after the Battenkil,  I had an early morning ride in Hartshorne Woods, a great mountain bike area near my home.  I was riding with an expert mountain bike rider that meant that I pretty much had to be on the top of my game. Not only was it a very wet morning,  I wasn't feeling that great, in retrospect that should have been enough to abandon the ride.  As it was we had a good 45 min ride until one particularly tricky big log had me going end over the bars and landed very hard on my ribs, giving me a good winding.  I found out later (through x-rays for an unrelated accident) that this left me with 3 fractured ribs, but that didn't stop us finishing the ride in what turned out to be appalling conditions having deteriorated into hard rain and slick track in a matter of minutes.

That crash and those ribs were the start of my off off-road season.  They did hamper my training a bit, making the deep breathing required for high intensity efforts very painful.  I use that crash as an excuse for a slightly worse performance than I expected at my next race at Mt Whiteface in June (1h03).

By mid July my ribs were mostly better, training had gone well and I'd built a good aerobic fitness.  We were now entering our hard training phase leading up to Mt Washington which called for about 8-10 hrs of intense training per week.  Weight reduction continued and two weeks before Mt Washington I was at the 174lb (79kg) that I had targeted as race weight.  My training load was higher than it had ever been I was sure of a good result in the big race.  In the graph below, the blue line is an objective measure of fitness.  Until mid August it was climbing steadily to levels not previously seen.

All that remained now was one tune up race before the Rockpile.  That race was the Woods Hollow Classic Mountain Bike race which I had done the year before as my first off-road race on my mountain bike.  I pre-rode the course once with my son Matt - he rode my mountain bike and I rode the 'cross bike as I intended so to do in the race.  While it's certainly harder on that bike than a mountain bike, I wasn't aiming for a podium position but was more after the experience of riding it at pace in race conditions as preparations for 'cross later in the year.

Race day came and I lined up with about 40 or 50 others in the Sports class.  Some very strong riders including a couple of pros and well known local mountain bikers adorned the field.  I had a good start and was in the top 10 through the first lap of 3.  I did a poor jump over a log which dislodged my back wheel which I then ignored until my brakes sawed a slice through the tire giving me a blowout and an abandonment.

Very dejected I walked and carried my bike back to the start.  As my rear tire was shot with no chance of repair, I rode it a bit too and found that it actually rode OK.  I'd heard that about tubular tires but hadn't tried it before.  On my way back I decided to ride in the beginners' race.  After all I was a beginner, I'd done less than 10 offroad races and only 1 mountain bike race and after all this was a training day, not a race day.  So I went back, fitted my spare back wheel, warmed up again and lined up for the 2 lap race.

Starter's gun went and I was second at the first turn leading to the first dirt section.  I overtook the leader shortly thereafter and decided to give it all to try to shake him.  After giving it all I had for a few minutes I looked behind to see clear ground for at least 50m.  From there I decided just to ride as hard as I could.

I had started in the second wave of beginners.  The first wave comprised the 20-39 year olds, the second wave the rest, starting 3 minutes after the first.  I started overtaking first wavers after about 5 minutes and found later in the race that I was actually lapping people.

At this stage I felt invincible.  As I had in the first race, I found that in comparison to the previous year, I felt very comfortable on the singletrack and was flying along.  I was climbing fast and really pushing hard on the flat sections.  My fitness was good and the confidence that grew out of racing 'cross last year had really given me an edge.

About a mile from the finish I had most of the hard part of the course behind me and now realized that it was quite likely that I was going to win the race.  A first for me in 4 years of competitive cycling.  I reckoned that I was about 2-3 minutes ahead of the next rider and just had to hang on.  Belting downhill on the singletrack after the one real climb, I took a slightly wrong line and punctured my front tire.  I heard the hissing and couldn't believe it.  I had somehow got into the position of winning and threw it away.  I started slowing down, thinking that I had to get off and maybe should run to try to make it to the finish.  I knew that I most likely couldn't do that and win and so somehow convinced myself that I could ride the flat front tubular.  I put the gas on again and carried on downhill.  It was fine for a few meters until the next slippery corner where my front wheel washed out and I found myself tumbling downhill head over heels.

Another off off-road day.

I sat up, hurting.  Felt my head and neck - OK.  Arms OK.  Face OK.  Shoulder sore.  I felt along my left clavicle and felt a bump sticking up - not out of the skin - but something where it shouldn't be.  My clavicle was broken.  Mt Washington was over.  All because I wanted to win a stupid beginner's mountain bike race.

I dragged my bike up to the track and sat on the side of the road.  After a minute or two a few of my competitors started flying, each asking if I was OK.  "No", I yelled, "I've broken bones, call someone".  This continued until eventually I was hauled out of the park into an ambulance manned by EWR baggage handlers, taken to an emergency room, who apart from a really good nurse who was a fellow racing cyclist, was filled with bored people who seemed disinterested in any type of service.  Many hours later after lots of help from my wife Isobel and in turn by friends Doug and Cindy, I returned home in sling realizing how stupid I'd been.

The rest is surgery.  4 days later that comminuted fracture was bolted together with 9 Titanium screws onto a plate into

Now I have physiotherapy and months to think about before racing again.  I did try to ride on the indoor trainer a couple of days ago but the combination of pain from the left clavicle in taking weight and the prickliness of sweat on my sutures cut the ride short to 20 mins or so.

I have lots of good and famous company in this regard

Wiggo also suffered the same fate in this year's TdF:

and the infamousTyler Hamilton who rode through a Tour de France with a fractured collarbone and  ground his teeth flat in dealing with the pain.  He may have had a few other chemical assistants in this regard it's alleged.  Even so, that's hell of a lot of mind over matter.

So for now, it's recovery and reflection.  It isalso  quite nice not worrying too much about what I eat now.