Upgrading. How does it work?

I’d like to genuinely start a dialogue about what I see as a major issue of modern day amateur cycling, the upgrade process. So clearly that first sentence has to be read a little tongue in cheek because I realize we aren’t curing cancer or solving Spain’s debt crisis, but, for those of us out there who spend a significant amount of time training and then racing, I think we owe it to ourselves and future generations to try and come up with a better system and solve this problem.

Issue 1 –

Fundamentally I think the current system is a problem because it does nothing but encourage bunch sprints and individual racing, regardless of how many matching jerseys may be in the field. Nobody gets rewarded for sacrificing themselves for a teammate, which, is what real bike racing is. Somebody tell me the last time Danny Pate won a bike race? Now tell me how long he stayed unemployed with the HTC collapse? We need to upgrade more Danny Pates  because they make racing safer by ensuring it’s fast and less guys are confusing themselves for Mark Cavendish with 500m to go.

I have no idea how you go about proving that despite not having impressive results you should be upgrade material. In our current system there doesn’t seem to be a way. But if you take our little team of VeloWorks-Spokes, Etc as an example, we’ve got a slew of podiums, and two wins (not counting training races), and exactly two guys with upgrade points. But ask them why they were able to win. Neither are going to say it’s solely because of their finish kick. That’s what we’re trying to do, so our small team is happy making that sacrifice for each other, but in the current upgrade model, our sprinters don’t get to say, they only agree to the Cat 3 upgrade if you bring these 3 guys with us, like Cavendish likely did with Pate and Eisel and like Contador has done with Pereiro and Hernandez when he’s moved teams.

Issue 2 –

Upgrading seems straight forward enough. You go to this website (http://www.usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=580) and you figure out how many guys started your race with one finger on the top, then you scroll down to your finishing position on the left, you then move those fingers down and to the right, respectively, and when they hit each other, that’s how many points your previous race earned you. Write that down and repeat the process for each race, adding those up until you get to 20. When you’ve gotten to 20 points, you send in an email requesting your upgrade and provide the coordinator with the names and results of those races. There’s also the 25 races with 10, top 10s or 20 pack finishes as an option, but unless your single, and want to drive to Jersey every weekend (they have a lot of crits with overlapping category fields), not many guys are upgrading using that method. But, then again, what do I know?

Apparently I know nothing. Because a quick review of the guys suddenly racing Cat 3s shows that the above described process is not how it actually works. And it’s not just this year, I looked up a bunch of guys who I’d raced with in 2011 that are now Cat 3s and a result in the single digit is rare, and they certainly didn’t race 25 times. One guy recently upgraded and I count 7 points from Cat 4 races. I’m confused. Are you?

If we’re going to have this point system, we should at least use it, right?

Issue 3 –

Training races, juniors and masters races counting for upgrade points. This shouldn’t even be an issue, but, apparently it is.

Training races obviously shouldn’t count, especially training races that aren’t even bothering to score more than 3 guys. Since the field size matters in how many points you earn and for a 50+ crit, 6^th place gets 1 point, can every guy in that race claim to have gotten 4-6? Who’s going to know? And who even knows if there were really 50 guys there? Results get screwed up all the time. I currently have a DNF and a 23^rd from Carl Dolan for the same race. Neither of those results are what they posted at the actual race site after the protest period closed. While that’s a whole different issue, at least, if push came to shove, somebody is trying to keep a record of that race. Those training races, at this point, basically didn’t happen, unless you need them to. See what I’m getting at here?

Junior races also shouldn’t count for upgrades and I say that as a person who is invested in the junior racing in this area. I whole heartedly believe that junior racing is important to grow this sport (that’s not rocket science) and I wish that every race was required to host a junior field, but with that said, there’s a lot of local guys using junior’s races as upgrade points and that’s just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Their fields are tiny and often dominated by two teams. If they do start with 20, only 10 are going to be left at the end, which really means you started with 10. (I like race attrition, but at least in the 4s the guys have done 10 5 races at some point. So even if they do get dropped, it’s not their first time racing. The juniors don’t have that same qualifying standard.) If one team is racing for 1 or 2 guys then 20% of the field just sits up on the last lap to make sure their teammates get the points to spread the upgrade love around. I understand that this point slightly negates my point above. It’s good that the kids are thinking about those things in making their race strategy. That will help them down the road. But that means whoever’s getting points from that race really only raced like 5 people that day. You get an upgrade point for that?

99% of these kids are going to be a much better and faster bike racer in the long term than I ever hope to be. I’m fine with that and in fact, I hope for that. But that’s not the point in this discussion.

Master’s – I don’t know if this is an issue. I don’t think it is. But for consistency sake I’ll throw it out there. I believe category upgrade points should be earned from category based racing. Masters will get their upgrades naturally every 10 years.  I also think most guys racing the Master’s races are primarily excited to not race with the point hunters in the 4s and 3s. They like their skin and want to see it stay attached. I’m secretly counting down the days!

And a few conspiracy theories:

-          Since your category is self-selected when renewing your annual license, what’s to stop you from just picking whatever category you want? Nobody’s checking into that.
-           Races over the past few years have been notoriously slow and or just not bothering to post results online, whether that’s on BikeReg, USA Cycling or their own website. If a tree falls in the woods and it doesn’t end up on the internet then who really won that race?

One day I hope to be a Cat 3 bike racer, if for no other reason than to stop saying “Cat 4” when someone asks me what category I am, but I have no idea how to solve this upgrade puzzle as it seems to get more confusing by the day and with each person I hear of getting an upgrade approved. It’s quite possible that I’m over thinking the whole thing and all I have to do is ask nicely. Maybe at the end of the season I’ll try that. But given these scenarios, I honestly think there’s an over-arching issue with this fundamental process of amateur bike racing that can and needs to be addressed. I just don’t have any good ideas. Maybe you do? If so, leave them in the comments and maybe next week we’ll tackle that Spain issue.