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Club 10 TT League - Advice & Opinion wanted
I've been speaking to Tim about jazzing up our club 10's and introducing some competition within it over the season, rather than just seeing who has posted the fastest time on the night. A number of other clubs run a points league so i have asked about setting something up with us, which Tim is happy for me to look after. But i have zero experience of how they work and need some advice and opinion on how it should run.
I have a basic idea of how it could work, points given from 30 to 1 for the fastest rider to slowest riders which is simple enough, but to make it fairer to all we should add a handicap league, but this is where my limits of understanding are stretched. I would appreciate if i could have to chat to some of you who have an understanding of how it could work.
I'll be making my first visit to the club night this Tuesday, between 8-8.30, who else will be there i can chat to?
Also i have taken on the role of TT press secretary, i'll be putting our weekly results into the local Comet which i'm pretty sure will be the L'worth & Baldock edition. Some extra incentive to post a good time! Let's see how this works out, in theory it could be expanded to include other CCA results across road racing etc, but depends on how much paper space we can get.
I have a basic idea of how it could work, points given from 30 to 1 for the fastest rider to slowest riders which is simple enough, but to make it fairer to all we should add a handicap league, but this is where my limits of understanding are stretched. I would appreciate if i could have to chat to some of you who have an understanding of how it could work.
I'll be making my first visit to the club night this Tuesday, between 8-8.30, who else will be there i can chat to?
Also i have taken on the role of TT press secretary, i'll be putting our weekly results into the local Comet which i'm pretty sure will be the L'worth & Baldock edition. Some extra incentive to post a good time! Let's see how this works out, in theory it could be expanded to include other CCA results across road racing etc, but depends on how much paper space we can get.
Comments
Well done, great initiative.
A previous club I belonged to had a target time system. The target was based on your previous season's best time. If you were a new rider then your first two times were averaged. Whoever beat their target time by the most won the handicap prize. I seem to remember it was based on your best 4 or 5 rides so the amount you beat your target by was aggregated.
Mark.
Letchworth Velo (back in the day) simply subtracted your handicap time from your actual time. The handicap time was determined by someone experienced. So the whole system was reliant on that persons judgement. It worked well though and we ended up with a thrilling competition going to the final week. I was very proud to win the Presidents Cup that year!
I support too your idea to be Press Secretary. Why limit yourself to TTs though? Other races are swifted reported on The Forum, why not summarise those? From what I understand papers like consistency, so to get some coverage I think you need to submit a report each week every week. It may take some time for the papers to trust that you are reliable before they start printing anything.
Good luck with this.
Daniel
Regarding the handicap table, I'd need the get a better idea of how it works, how you assign a handicap to each rider, and how the handicap changes during the season. This is where I need the most guidance.
With the paper stuff, I need to find out on Tuesday how many words we can squeeze in. I'm happy to include whatever else happens with CCA riders if there are reports posted on here.
Traditional Points table: we have a maximum of 30 riders for our TT's, so in keeping with this the fastest rider will get 30 points, second 29 and so on. Every TT will count (so starting from last week) and I will also keep a record of the number of TT's each rider has done.
I will also award maximum points to riders who help out at TT's (but no more than two of these). I will include an Old School road bike results table (nothing aero), as i know a number of you do it on your road bikes. And there will be a Ladies table and Junior table.
Awesome job in picking this up, well done.
1) We already have U16s and Junior riders competing in the club 10s and there are likely to be some U14s too during the season. There's a big difference between the abilities of our current crop of regional/national standard Juniors and those of twelve-year-old novices, so I'd suggest separate scoring for U14, U16 and Junior categories.
2) You might want to adopt a "best eight scores count" approach in order to balance out the effects of illness, holidays, work commitments, etc.. I suspect this will also be more likely to leave the league overall results to be decided right at the end of the season, rather than by the beginning of July.
I like the idea of rewarding time-keeping/pushing duties with maximum points. However, if you adopt my suggestion 2) above I suggest that only one of these should count among the best eight scores.
Mark F
I know you can be in danger of making it too complicated but in every sport (running, triathlon,duathlon- in my case, even football) that has leagues there are division for old as well as young - so come on cut us old 'en some slack.
I'm aware of the need to try and cater for everyone, but as you say I'm in danger of making it too complicated and taking too much on.
I spoke to Tim last night and he is keen on running a handicap league, as this then does involve everyone fairly and can lead to an exciting end to the season. The skill is setting up each rider's handicap which will be work in progress, i will work on it with Tim.
There will still be the traditional 'Scratch' points table as outlined above.
Both of these will work off your 8 best rides as suggested by Mark F, which based on 14 TT's overall seems a fair number for everyone to make.
And either of the above (or both) can be split to show Seniors, Vets, Ladies, Juniors, Road Bikes only etc.
Tim did mention that the current TT cups given to fastest Man/Lady/Junior could be awarded to the Handicap winners, tbc.
All of this is work in progress. As it will be taking into account the 8 best rides, there will be no meaningful results until the end of June anyway, so by then we'll have something set up, and you can size up the competition.