RR: Blackburn 1/20 ITT

Blackburn Cycling Club held an ITT up the 1/20 today – great day for my
first attempt at this climb, sun shining and not much wind about. Good
turn out by HCC members too.

Brief Overview:
1/20 - 6.75 km @ 4.2% (see c2m for more details)
My _personally recorded_ time: 15:52 (polar HRM lap timer)

I did note there were lots of unhappy riders around after the event.
Further comment withheld pending the publication of “official timings”
and/or a statement by Blackburn.

Other than that, an awesome days riding with a great bunch of guys.


GPL


--
gplama

gplama Wrote:

Other than that, an awesome days riding with a great bunch of guys.
GPL
awww shucks

A copy of my brief report

-----

Just a quick run down on some times and places

Me- 16:37 and 2nd place in M17

Peter B- 15:50ish!!! 1st place in M17

Daniel B- 15:00ish!!! 1st place in M19

Shane M- 15:52?? Not bad for a first time up.

Nick C- 16:20ish (I think) 3rd in ???? with the assistance of some
shonky time-keeping, who knows really.

Stuart D- 17:10??

Quadzilla (rus C)- 16:55

I think that's it...
A quick summary would be, late to start, late to give out prizemoney
and a severe lack of grade two maths really showed in the
organisation by Blackburn.

But still fun.


--
Jono L

gplama wrote:
Blackburn Cycling Club held an ITT up the 1/20 today - great day for my
first attempt at this climb, sun shining and not much wind about. Good
turn out by HCC members too.

Brief Overview:
1/20 - 6.75 km @ 4.2% (see c2m for more details)
My _personally recorded_ time: 15:52 (polar HRM lap timer)

I did note there were lots of unhappy riders around after the event.
Further comment withheld pending the publication of "official timings"
and/or a statement by Blackburn.

I was the one holding you at the start line. No-one said
hello .. bums!

Anyway, the story with the timing is this - as I'm lead to
believe.

About 20 mins into the event, the clock at the top stopped
working properly. Yes, there should have been redundancy, but
it seems there wasn't. As such, the timing got mucked up. At
the start we were too busy recording starters to deal with
the stuff at the top, and as anyone who's volunteered to help
run an event will know, when things go wrong, and you're
short on numbers, fixing it can be non-trivial.

That's what I heard, anyway.

"Bleve" wrote in message ...

I was the one holding you at the start line. No-one said
hello .. bums!

I saw your ABOC kit when I was warming up.. but by the time I'd lined up I
only had one thing on my mind "flat out!"

Anyway, the story with the timing is this - as I'm lead to
believe.

Comments no longer withheld..

My start was also botched by someone pulling out a few spots ahead of me...
I think I was sent off at 9:53:00 not 9:52:30 (or by my watch somewhere
around 9:56!) .. I understand and appreciate the efforts of the
volunteers who run these events... but the one thing that just _cant_ go
wrong in an ITT is the timing. I'd be more ticked off if I had been
training specifically for this event.. any ideas what the club is going to
do about this? I'd have liked to see them withhold the prize money, refund
everyone their entry fee, then maybe reschedule it for a later date..

The local shops did a little more business late in the morning with almost
2hrs of everyone standing around and running out of food/drink...

cheers,
GPL

GPLama wrote:
"Bleve" wrote in message ...

I was the one holding you at the start line. No-one said
hello .. bums!

I saw your ABOC kit when I was warming up.. but by the time I'd lined up I
only had one thing on my mind "flat out!"

bums!

Anyway, the story with the timing is this - as I'm lead to
believe.

Comments no longer withheld..

My start was also botched by someone pulling out a few spots ahead of me...
I think I was sent off at 9:53:00 not 9:52:30 (or by my watch somewhere
around 9:56!) ..

I thought we had that side of it sorted. And yes, the startline
clock was ~3 mins slow, but as it was set to match the one at the
top, that shouldn't have mattered (save for the obvious, if a
clock fails, then if it's the right time, then any other
timekeeper will do.... ). History shows the folly of that
assumption (that the clocks will work).

I understand and appreciate the efforts of the
volunteers who run these events... but the one thing that just _cant_ go
wrong in an ITT is the timing. I'd be more ticked off if I had been
training specifically for this event.. any ideas what the club is going to
do about this?

NFI I'm afraid. IMO there's too much focus on the DeBortoli,
and not enough on the other races. I've made this point at
club meetings, but they're determined to throw everyone
at the DB tour, and it seems to me that this is at the expense
of the other events.

But, in this case, the ITT problem was caused by faulty equipment
(the clocks were brand new... **** happens ...) and lack of
redundancy. For what it's worth, I'm lead to believe that
Blackburn has bought some RFID tags and future races will
be automagically timed. This is part rumour, and part inside
knowledge. Details are sketchy by design In the past
timekeeping has been done very well, but the regular timekeeper
was on holidays with his kids.

You can write to the club, and express
(reasonably please, the bloke who gets the email has nowt to
do with the 1:20 ITT) your thoughts.

I'd have liked to see them withhold the prize money, refund
everyone their entry fee, then maybe reschedule it for a later date..

I can understand that desire.

The local shops did a little more business late in the morning with almost
2hrs of everyone standing around and running out of food/drink...

heh!

After my job was done myself and a friend went for a tootle up
to skyline and then down through Montrose, and we got back
to the start just in time to see a big bunch leaving! And
we were taking it pretty easy up the hill.

Ultimatly, there's a good argument for making a single professional
organisation to run races (anything bigger than a club-only
event), properly equipt, qualified commisaires etc.. It might
add a dollar or two to entry fees, but entry fees at the moment
are so cheap it's a joke anyway, but it may prevent the
kind of thing you're complaining (justifiably) about.

Bleve Wrote:

I was the one holding you at the start line. No-one said
hello .. bums!

Anyway, the story with the timing is this - as I'm lead to
believe.

About 20 mins into the event, the clock at the top stopped
working properly. Yes, there should have been redundancy, but
it seems there wasn't. As such, the timing got mucked up. At
the start we were too busy recording starters to deal with
the stuff at the top, and as anyone who's volunteered to help
run an event will know, when things go wrong, and you're
short on numbers, fixing it can be non-trivial.

That's what I heard, anyway.
Sorry for not saying hello , I saw one poor little kid go about one
metre then clip out of his pedal a la Lance Armstrong.

With some of the Hawthorn TT's (which are now all cancelled) we used a
laptop and excel spreadsheet which automatically detracted a person's
start time from their gross time and everything worked out well, just a
thought.


--
Jono L

Jono L wrote:

Sorry for not saying hello , I saw one poor little kid go about one
metre then clip out of his pedal a la Lance Armstrong.

It's funny, I've been a start-holder a few times for ITTs and some
people just can't seem to "get" a held start. They wobble, fidgit,
lean etc ... you can't have a small, light person as a holder. As
ITTs aren't my pet event (esp with a bloody hill in it!) I volunteer
to do that job a lot

With some of the Hawthorn TT's (which are now all cancelled) we used a
laptop and excel spreadsheet which automatically detracted a person's
start time from their gross time and everything worked out well, just a
thought.

As I replied to FD, we have done that in the past (but a little
more sophisticated, the setup is done to deal with multiple
riders arriving at the same time etc). But, Alan was away and
it's his laptop. There's an argument to suggest that the club buy
a laptop or PDA or whatever, but as I also mentioned, there's some
changes coming WRT using RFID for timing, and we're not sure yet
what hardware will be required to drive it.

This all sounds like a bunch of excuses, I'm sorry.

"Bleve" wrote in message ...

This all sounds like a bunch of excuses, I'm sorry.


No need to apologise. It is good to hear the point of view of someone who
was involved in the event/host club.

Bring on RFID!!


cheers,
GPL
:looking up RFID hacking:

On 2005-09-26, GPLama (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
Bring on RFID!!


cheers,
GPL
:looking up RFID hacking:

Don't put your bike in the microwave.

--
TimC
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull
his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you
understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send
signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that
there is no cat. -- Albie E. on radios.

TimC wrote:
On 2005-09-26, GPLama (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
Bring on RFID!!


cheers,
GPL
:looking up RFID hacking:

Don't put your bike in the microwave.

Or at least, don't put the numbers in it anyway. These
tags are going to be attached to jersey numbers.