Stage 3 of the Working Man’s Stage Race is a points race set on a quarter-mile track (Star Speedway) in
The cat 4 race does 80 laps (20 miles) with every 5th lap being for points. The scoring system was 5 points for 1st, 3 points for 2nd, 2 points for 3rd, and 1 point for 4th. The finishing lap and half-way lap were for double points. If you lapped the pelican you were awarded 20 points. If the pelican lapped you it was a 20 point deduction. This stage was rained out in the 2007 WMSR and this was my first time doing a points race.
The pace started off hard right from the first lap. With a points lap every fifth lap, the pace would ramp up and up until the final lap, then go easy as the people that sprinted for points let up to rejoin the pelican. This repeated every fives laps for the duration of the 80-lap race.
I didn’t even think about contesting the first points lap as I was trying to figure out a strategy. Before I knew it, we were at the bell lap for the second points lap and I was in terrible position with no shot at taking points. This kind of turned into the theme for the night, as the points laps seemed to come up much more frequently than I expected.
Positioning for the sprint was extremely difficult for me. Early on, I kept trying to work the inside line and moved up coming up as we came out of turns. The trouble with this plan is that you end up dive bombing people on the inside of the next turn. With the banked corners it is easy for the racer higher up in the turn to pressure you down into the rumble strips. On several occasions I narrowly missed riding over them and quickly abandoned the inside line approach.
The third points lap was my first real effort power-wise. I was about 10 wheels back as we crossed the line with the bell ringing. I stuck to the outside and came out of the saddle to sprint as we came around turns 3 and 4. Watts were great for this effort (1170W for 5s), but the strategy was terrible. Sprinting along the outside line on this tight track was useless because the distance traveled is so much greater. I hardly made any ground on the lead 5 riders and had to give up on my effort as I came out of turn 4 as I had no shot.
After that failed attempt I got the idea in my head that I needed to fight to stay closer to the front to have a shot at these points. In hindsite this was a terrible idea as all it did was make the easy times hard, which left me with no gas for the sprints. On several points laps I found myself in the top 5 as we crossed with one to go, but then had nothing left to sprint with. I was that guy that wasn’t strong enough to hold the wheel of the person in front of him.
Some time after the half-way lap I tried another strategy: find the race leader (Jordan Winkler, Cambridge Bicycles) and ride his wheel to the finish. CB seemed to have a good leadout train going so it seemed like a good plan. After several attempts at doing that it was apparent that it wasn’t going to work. Turns out that another CB rider (Erik Peterson) was playing a sweeper roll and protecting
As we neared the end of the race, I was getting pretty frustrated as I still hadn’t even scored a single point. It seemed like every strategy I tried failed, and I certainly wasn’t strong enough to just power my way through like John Neagle (Quad Cycles) was doing. With 5 to go I caught a break and ended up in perfect position by sheer luck. I just stayed on the front train of 3 people to take fourth place and one point for the lap. I might have had the legs to sprint for more points on this lap, but the drive to do so was gone by this point. I did not contest the finishing sprint.
So in the end I scored one point (haha!), putting me in 20th place. By the end of the race I was pretty pumped just to have that one point to separate myself from the people that didn’t get any. Not to mention I was just exhausted and ready to take a little racing break for a while.
While I was a little bummed that I didn’t do better, it was a good experience to do a points race and I think I have things a little more figured out now. A couple of notes that I will try to remember for next time:
1) Go easy when the pace slows down. Don’t use this time to gain position unless you’re going to go off the front.
2) Quality before quantity when going for points. There are too many people in the race to try and win each sprint going at 80% effort, and one first place is worth five fourth places.
3) The track is only 400 meters long. That means that for a sprinting range of 200m, you need to attack with half a lap to go even though it feels like a long distance.
4) Do your passing on the outside to gain position, but make sure to be on the inside line going into final turn before the line.
5) The sprints are typically done in the saddle on the corners, which makes for a slightly longer and less intense sprint.
Some statistics for the race are shown below. Average speed was 25.7 mph which I thought was quite high considering how peaky the pace was. My average power was 244W which is quite a bit higher than usual (even higher than Longsjo criterium, 236W). Normalized power was 271W which isn’t very high, especially considering that average power was on the high side. This translates into a VI (norm power ÷ avg power) of 1.11 which is relatively low, suggesting that the pace was pretty smooth. I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that very little speed (if any) is lost on the corners of the track. However, I thought that the pace in general was peaky as we sped up and slowed down for points laps. My strategy of trying to move up when the pace slowed up was probably the second reason for a low VI, as this tended to even out my efforts. I’ve found that I tend to do better at peaky efforts than I do at steady state efforts (climbing *cough cough*), so this may have been part of the reason I felt weak during the race.
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