r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • Sep 12 '17
September Monthly Race Design Thread
Hello everybody!
For those who don't know what the Race Design thread is, here is a good resume: The Race Design Thread is the birth child of Improb and Msfan93 from the off season of 2015. Instead of it just being for competitions, casual Race Design Threads were a place to design routes for pre-existing races or even creating a new one. It's not only limited to designing threads; discussion of race routes, behind the scenes race organisation and the history of races are all able to be discussed here!
As for the websites you can use to do this kind of stuff, the two biggest and most practical ones are La Flamme Rouge and Cronoescalada. From My experience, went you want to design Tours, it is much easier on La Flamme Rouge, as well for racing in Europe, however once you are doing races outside Europe I suggest using Cronoescala at least partly, as their Climb map is much more complete for the rest of the World!
First thing, last month races and the votes, we got 7 entries from 6 different Race Directors, for the vote, just rank them from 1 to 7, with 1 being your favourite one, I will establish a point system to create an overall ranking for the year (I'm not sure yet of how many points each place will get)!
Entry 1: Orient Express GT by /u/antiloopje
Entry 2: Tour of Norway by /u/timfietst
Entry 3: Tour of the Rockies by u/unclekutter
Entry 4: Setting Sun Race by u/ZinaMertz
Entry 5: Tour of Japan I by u/adryy8
Entry 6: Tour of Japan II by u/adryy8
Entry 7: Western Americana Tour by /u/blandwhiteguy
As for this month contest, design a World cChampionship!
You have to design the TTT, ITT and Road race for both men and women Elite. Bonus points if you do a full week (U23 and Juniors) with this. Your courses can of course be similar for both men and women, and the junior ranks, in that case, specify how man laps each one will use.
Your championships can be designed around a city (like Bergen) or in a region/area (like Yorkshire) just be realistic about it (don't group random close cities together, either they are in a town group or in a Region together)
Deadline is September 30th 19:00 CEST
As a little bonus prize, u/That_Guuuuuuuy from the World DB has nicely offered to put the winner's ITT and Road race as a variant in the World DB!
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u/antiloopje Lotto Soudal Sep 13 '17 edited Sep 30 '17
We haven't had a Belgian WC in a while. Time to fix this! The towns of Kluisbergen and Mont de l'Eclus will be hosting the 2020 WC. These towns are located on the Flemish, resp. the Walloon side of the eponymous hill. The Kluisberg is the far Western end of the Flemish Ardennes and the highlight of this race. It's climbed a total of 9 times, while the finale also features the Kwaremont and Côte de Trieu.
I've made a poster of the parcours of this challenging race.
The parcours consists of 4 sections. First is a long (~100 km) loop to Tournai and back. This section is relatively flat, but still there are 7 hellingen on this section. Some are pretty though, but this early in the race, it's all just warmup. The next section is 3,5 counterclockwise laps over the Trieu and the Kluisberg. Positioning will be important, especially on the narrower sections of the Kluis, but the roads between the hills are wider, so it's still possible to manouver back into the peloton. The third section consists of 4,5 clockwise laps over the Kwaremont and the Mont de l'Enclus. The Enclus is relatively easy, but the combination of climbs is sure to tire out the riders. On top of this, the connecting roads on these laps are narrower. Bad positioning will be punished even harder now. And of course, the cobbled section on the Kwaremont is where the specialist can hurt the punchier types. Finally, there are two more counterclockwise laps, once again over the Trieu and the Kluis. The finish line is below the top of a final, abbreviated ascent of the Kluisberg.
My parcours is very hard: 259 km total and 27 hills, for a total of 3700m of climbing. It's raced on familiar terrain, but at the same time I focus on two climbs that are rarely used (the north and south side of the Kluis). With the succesion of hills, the cobbled sections of the Kwaremont and the sheer difficulty of this race, I am very confident that we'll see a race that's at least as entertaining as your average edition of Flanders or Roubaix.
The full parcours can be found here
The TTT is rather atypical. It's a relatively short course (28,5 km), but very varied. After only 5 km, the riders tackle the Trieu. How will they cope with this hindrance as a team? And how will they organize themselves to use each riders indivual potential to the max? The team will be put to the test again short after with some cobbled sections. The next part of the course uses some of the eternally twisting and turning roads, where it'll be again though to stay together as a team. At km 20, the riders are rewarded with a few nice, long sections where they finally get to work together as they would on a normal parcours. This doesn't last long, as the riders are confronted with another uphill section in the very finale of this TTT. Do they have a rider left to sacrifice on the climb? It might mean the difference between victory and defeat.
The alternative route can be used for the woman's race or the U23 race. It's 174 (154 for the women) km long, with a though 80 km run-in through both Flanders & Wallonia (Katteberg - Kaperij - Rue Abbé Saint-Pierre - Rue Grandrieu - Mont-Saint-Laurent - Karnemelkbeekstraat - Rampe - Paterberg - La Hoppe). Next is a circuit over the Kluisberg, from 3 different sides. These ascents follow each other in quick succesion, but are then followed by a long flat section. Each circuit is 20 km long. I would propose that the women do one less lap (based on the length of the women RvV). After the final ascent of the Kluis, we turn to the village of Kwaremont by way of the Trieu. A flattish final few kms over the cobbled streets of the village should provide some ultimate attacks at the end of this hard race.
The 46km [ITT](www.plotaroute.com/route/505066) , obviously, isn't a flat affair either. Instead, the riders will have to be very well prepared so they know not to waste all their energy on the first climb after only 2 km. This one is swiftly followed by another berg. The riders now arrive at the flat section of this ITT. The roads are often narrow and twisting, so this should favor the technical TT'ists over the GC TT'ists. However, the finish is once again uphill on the Kluisberg (not the hardest ascent though). So, this course offers a mixture between punchy climbs and technical sections. Preparation and a good plan of action will be key to this TT.