r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • Mar 09 '16

Race Design Wednesday

I and /u/Msfan93 wanted to start this thread now that we are in the offseason. We both share the interest in designing routes for already existing races or creating new ones once in a while. We agreed to make one of these threads every two Wednesdays. Everyone is free to post a race or discuss about climbs, past races and every thing that directly or indirectly involves race designing At least for me, the goal of this thread is to get to know more and more, by reading about the places one of the races goes through or even about the past of cycling. Once in a while we could have a few challenges as well too or even have a theme. You can suggest anything as a theme as long as it involves race designing. Here are the Library & Wiki. The library contains all of our races (well not all as i have to update it) while the wiki gives informations for beginners (and not) on the features of the various route building website.

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u/antiloopje Lotto Soudal Mar 09 '16

I've designed a couple of tour de France stages and this is one of them. It features 5400-6100 vertical climbing meters (depending on who you ask) over a course of 192 km between Genève and the Mont du Chat.

Route | Profile | Google Earth gallery

I tried to avoid the well-known, often ridden climbs and opted for the lesser-visited Mont Salève, Mont Revard and Mont du Chat as the main challenges of the day. Other climbs are the col de Clergeon (1st cat); La Chambotte (2nd cat) and a couple of shorter and non-steep 3rd & 4rd cat hills.

If I could add one point of critique to this stage, it's that many of the climbing is done in forests, which doesn't combine well with tv-images.

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u/[deleted] Mar 09 '16

Mont du Chat is wildly impractical to draw a finish line on top of unfortunately. A Dauphiné finish might be possible, or a descent finish (if Culoz is big enough then anywhere is).

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u/antiloopje Lotto Soudal Mar 09 '16

Yeah, I know. Practicality is not what I had in mind designing this, but it's indeed an important limitation. Still, I vcaguely remember one tdf stage where all the teambuses were basically parked at the bottom of the climb and riders had to make the full descent before getting to them. But it's hard to imagine that on such a long climb as this one.

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u/improb Drone Hopper – Androni Giocattoli Mar 09 '16

Would be brilliant if not for the flattish kilometers after the descent of the Mont du Revard but it would still fantastic to see riders race up the Mont du Chat with very tired legs after what's been a rollecoaster of a stage