Trail centre racing ... opinions please

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Trail centre racing ... opinions please

81 posts & 31 voices | Started 8 months ago by magoo37 | Latest reply from bangin on

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magoo37 - Member

I have recently returned to the world of mountain bikes after 15 years away and am loving the way the sport has evolved in that time!

Having visited the 3 closest trail centres to me (FoD, Cannock and Ashton Court)I was amazed at the sheer number of riders that this type of venue attracts although now I've ridden them I can see why!

I'm unlucky enough to work nights which means my overactive brain has waaaay too much time to think about stuff but tonight I started thinking about MTB racing and how it seems to have changed since the days of the old Malvern Hills Classic etc ... now it seems that xc racing is struggling to get decent sized entries and downhill is for kids who havent yet discovered they are mortal after all ... but what about the rest of us??

I then went back to thinking about all the riders I'd seen at Cannock on Sunday and quickly outlined in my head a trail racing series but as I am very recently back please stop me if this is already happening or has been and gone!

The idea is that each round would visit a different trail centre and each round would see the riders have a timed run on the chosen route (at 30 second intervals) in the morning followed by a second timed run in the afternoon with each riders fastest time counting.. 2 runs a day allows riders unfamiliar with trail a chance to use run 1 as more of a practice run.
I am aware that this format is similar to enduro but it is the whole run that gets timed in this series so slightly different!
As I said, just an outline at the moment which is here to be shot at but I personally think this could be a winner ... I reckon the sort of lads I saw flying around Cannock would love the chance to prove to their mates who's the quickest and it would also encourage people to branch out and try other centres

Be great to hear your views, good or bad, I'm not planning on taking things any further until I get a good feel for how much interest there would be but should the response be good i can start talking to venues and potential sponsors etc

So lets hear it ......

Posted 8 months ago #
FunkyDunc - Member

I don't think you could justify closing a trail centre route for a whole day just so a limited number of people could race round it.

Posted 8 months ago #
billyboulders - Member

What about the people who have no interest in proving anything and might have driven miles to ride the trail centre. Wouldn't they get in the way of the racers?

EDIT: Aah now I read funkyduncs post as well I see you mean close the trail centre while the race is on. Can't see that working. I hardly ever ride trail centres 'cos the nearest one is miles away. If I did take the 2 hour+ drive I'd be unlikely to check if it was going to be open and peed off if I got there to find it closed

Posted 8 months ago #
pete68 - Member

Xc racing is still popular,its just not the be all and end all it was. Certainly some of this years national series sold out. Plus there's plenty of events already for the less competitive. The 12and24 hour racing and marathons are hugely popular. Can't see any need for any more.

Posted 8 months ago #
Wookster - Member

What you talking about does already happen to a certain exten, the kona mash up and is it the mega endour event they had a leg In keilder a few years back I think!

Posted 8 months ago #
don simon - Member

Llandegla was closed for the day to host Deg yn Llandegla and I presume the centre owners believe it has some merit, from the first two replies it isn't for marketing purposes.

Posted 8 months ago #
magoo37 - Member

I did say the idea was there to be shot at!!!

Hopefully there might be some supportive opinions as well, let's wait and see

Now, where's my flak jacket ......

Posted 8 months ago #
scaredypants - Member

night racing series ?

Posted 8 months ago #
neninja - Member

The Hamsterley 121 format seems a decent one.
Day 1 - an XC type race around red/black trails - regular vistors were still riding the trails in amongst the people racing so no trail access was closed. I that they reduced the distance for the XC race this year, I'm assuming to make it more accessible to your average Joe.
Day 2 - use the same bike (but can change tyres/pedals) for a downhill race. The downhill was more like a steep black grade trail than a full on downhill course. Muddy, rooted with options to avoid drops etc.

Combined scores determine the winner.

Posted 8 months ago #
emac65 - Member

The old Dragon Afan Enduros(not the monster ones) that included a lot of the purpose built trails there were very good,but only run for a couple of years back in 2004-05.Think it was lack of interest that put paid to them,first one sold out & then only about half the numbers turned up the following year.......

Posted 8 months ago #
hels - Member

IME putting on races at popular trail centres gets the racers in, but is a PITA, however with careful management and the co-operation of the FCS (or landowners) can be successful. But you can't use the main trails, that's just asking for hoardes of angry punters. But on the plus side you get to use some other bits, and there is a cafe at the end.

The Glentress 7 this year was a great event, using that model.

Posted 8 months ago #
phil.w - Member

I don't think you could justify closing a trail centre route for a whole day just so a limited number of people could race round it.

It all ready happens. Oddly though, I can think of more triathlons & duathlons that use trail centres than straight up MTB races.

Posted 8 months ago #
clubber - Member

Having visited the 3 closest trail centres to me (FoD, Cannock and Ashton Court)

Just FYI but I'd say that those three aren't really classic 'trail centres' - more typical are the Welsh and Scottish ones IMO and certainly what people tend to refer to by 'Trail Centres'.

If you've not been yet, it's worth the trip (Afan or CwmCarn if those three were local ish for you).

Posted 8 months ago #
njee20 - Member

Trail centres also don't make good race courses generally, too much singletrack means no overtaking. Unless you had some sort of seeding you'd have huge queues of riders pretty quickly if you set them off at 30s intervals.

Posted 8 months ago #
hels - Member

We have run loads of TTs on singletrack - a good great big FO climb and 60 secondn intervals at the start sorts them out fairly well, overtaking has never been an issue as they are coming along one at a time, not belting out from a start gun at warp factor 9 in groups of 50, with elbows and egos locked and loaded.

Posted 8 months ago #
crazy-legs - Member

They close bits of Glentress, Innerleithen, Coed y Brenin, Kirroughtree etc all the time for racing!
No reason why it can't be done, you just need to ensure that a) it's well advertised and b) even if people do turn up without knowing anything about the racing, they can still ride at least some of the trails.

Just need to ensure that the course isn't all singletrack and technical sections, there has to be extra fireroad in there to string out the field a bit and allow overtaking.

Posted 8 months ago #
Brownbacks - Member

we organise races at a single trail centre.

Our format is XC but with cyclocross timing.

Your TT format can be done but you need to think about a lot of things like insurance, marshals, risk assessments, first aid, sponsors, publicity, toilets, etc and then move that round to each location.

The other user point is important, there will be plenty of people who will try and ride your closed trails whilst racing is on who will basically not care about your event. we get around that with a supportive landowner and lots of marshals and racing 10-12 on a Sunday morning when the site is relatively quiet but it's been difficult a couple of times

Posted 8 months ago #
derekrides - Member

Don't Gravity Enduro series work a bit like that? Kind of time trial and down bits.. I don't really know much about them, just the dude who sold me my bike said it would be great for Gravity Enduro racing so I guess it must be happening somewhere.

Late edit.. Here I googleyed

Posted 8 months ago #
njee20 - Member

We have run loads of TTs on singletrack - a good great big FO climb and 60 secondn intervals at the start sorts them out fairly well, overtaking has never been an issue as they are coming along one at a time, not belting out from a start gun at warp factor 9 in groups of 50, with elbows and egos locked and loaded.

That's not really what's being talked about though, we're talking laps of a trail centre trail, many of which just don't have that terrain to sort people out. White's Level for example, which would be a good length, just wouldn't work, at all! Agree that using parts of a trail can work.

Posted 8 months ago #
GW - Member

downhill is for kids who havent yet discovered they are mortal after all
bit of a narrowminded STW view there, eh?

Trail centres also don't make good race courses generally, too much singletrack means no overtaking. Unless you had some sort of seeding you'd have huge queues of riders pretty quickly if you set them off at 30s intervals.
yet more utter pish spouted from Njee's keyboard

Posted 8 months ago #
thisisnotaspoon - Member

XC races tend to spread out a fair ammount, the first climb breaks up the bunch, then the faster riders can conserve energy on the singletrack even if they get stuck behind a fitter rider with less 'skill' and overtake them on the next climbas they're refreshed.

I suggested something similar not long back but never did anything with it, kind of like the enduro format, but done on 'flat' courses, so you'd ride plenty of sections, but biased towards sprinting rather than endurance, kinda like the opposite of a 24h XC race.

Posted 8 months ago #
Brownbacks - Member

yet more utter pish spouted from Njee's keyboard

a bit harsh!

I'll happily compare our courses to anywhere in the country though

Posted 8 months ago #
phil.w - Member

Trail centres also don't make good race courses generally, too much singletrack means no overtaking. Unless you had some sort of seeding

Like a putting a swim or run in first?

Posted 8 months ago #
rkk01 - Member

Trail centres also don't make good race courses generally, too much singletrack means no overtaking

Agreed - certainly to an extent...

I did the two Dragon Afan Enduros, and blwdy hard they were too...

For the "non-racers" it was a pretty long day out. The last big Skyline fire road climb caused me to blow up in a big way

The "racers" all complained that they couldn't overtake on the singletrack - only on the fire road climbs. So fit, but not technically gifted riders could storm up the climbs (Whites excepted) and hold up the traffic on the mainly singletrack descents.

As for the big drop off in numbers - well I know I found it a very hard ride, but did come back for year 2. I'd think long and hard about signing up again at the moment though...

Posted 8 months ago #
GW - Member

are you honestly saying you couldn't overtake on this..

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ohm5-zqXQk
WTF?

:/

Posted 8 months ago #
emac65 - Member

I did the two Dragon Afan Enduros, and blwdy hard they were too...

Life aint easy son..............;o)

They were hard,but it was a good hard & the final bit of singletrack down to the pools more than made up for all the pain.....

Posted 8 months ago #
ir_bandito - Member

The Whinlatter Enduro uses the Altura trail.
Its rubbish. Pay £25 to ride around a trail centre, getting constantly held up on the singletrack by the same people who tear past you on the fire-roads.

Not good.

Posted 8 months ago #
rkk01 - Member

I really don't see a lot of overtaking spots on that vid....

It's not like going out with half a dozen mates, where you can mess around and jostle for position.

A large field of riders, all trying to defend their position, regardless of fitness, skill or tiredness. You're not trying to get past 1 or 2 Sunday pootlers - there may be 80+ riders to pass (well unless you are slow like me)

Posted 8 months ago #
rkk01 - Member

Life aint easy son..............;o)

Like I said - I signed up for the second one

Posted 8 months ago #
njee20 - Member

What's that GW? Is that the sound of you being wrong? Eek! I imagine you'll have more 'hilarious' put downs though.

There are of course some trails where it would work, where there is a decent fireroad climb, and then other overtaking sections. There is a lot of potential in interspersing trail centre trails with 'normal' trails to make a more usable course.

I've done an XC race at Cwmcarn, 3 laps, first lap up the road, laps 2 & 3 just straight laps of the Twrch trail. It was crap as a course. Motorbike gates are a pain. There's very little overtaking potential, as we caught backmarkers this was a real problem. If you were doing a single timed run it just wouldn't have worked at all.

If you could do qualifying somehow maybe it would. Maybe have a very short section of 2 minutes as a 'seeding' run or something. It would be fun to do wholly on trail centre trails in theory, you'd just have to pick your venues carefully.

Posted 8 months ago #
thisisnotaspoon - Member

I reckon the sort of lads I saw flying around Cannock would love the chance to prove to their mates who's the quickest

Pay £25 to ride around a trail centre

Actualy, MTBGuisbrough had an informal time trial round Dalby Red, no entry fee, course already marked, so mates are already free to do this for free.

I think things like freelap or GPS racing will slowly get more popular, nothing to stop somenoe setting up a website with a list of trail center sections and the GPS co-ordinates for the start finish, race between those 2 points, upload the gps file, find out where onthe leaderboard you fit in.

IIRC Gawton already has freelap gates installed permenantly and the leaderboard is on the Dirt website. Maybe ST/MBR/MBUK could club together and sponsor something similar? Would be quite cool to get home and be able to see that I'm 1254th slowest down the hills at Kielder, but 500th fastest or vice-versa.

Posted 8 months ago #
GW - Member

I really don't see a lot of overtaking spots on that vid....
FFS! open your eyes you don't have to stick to the bloody sheep line all the way.

It's not like going out with half a dozen mates, where you can mess around and jostle for position.
Uh? WTF are you on about?

A large field of riders, all trying to defend their position, regardless of fitness, skill or tiredness. You're not trying to get past 1 or 2 Sunday pootlers - there may be 80+ riders to pass (well unless you are slow like me)
OMG! even if you were Vouilloz, you're not going need to pass 80 riders on a 5min stretch of trail centre descent in either a gravity Enduro or an XC race.

Posted 8 months ago #
njee20 - Member

you're not going need to pass 80 riders on a 5min stretch of trail centre descent in either a gravity Enduro or an XC race.

But we're not talking about either of those, the suggestion was a time trial-esque lap of a trail centre, say an hour. Unless you have a way of setting people off in speed order there will be huge trains of riders. Try reading posts first.

TINAS's idea is a good one, online leaderboards, which is effectively what is being suggested, but without the 'event' side of it. Although then you'll no doubt get people riding like lunatics trying for their 'best' race lap.

Posted 8 months ago #
rkk01 - Member

How many then - half a dozen overtakes?

My comments are based on having tried the format being discussed... (ETA - well the enduro idea, not TT)

IIRC the first hour or two had stacks of queues

Posted 8 months ago #
hels - Member

I think 60 second intervals would be enough to spread people out well enough, I would define a bottleneck as (being generous) 4 riders ?

It just doesn't happen, don't ask me to explain the physics, but if you seed by categories and put anybody with known form at the back, it's all good. To catch somebody you have to put a minute into them, that isn't going to happen that quickly, or that frequently if seeded reasonably well.

And the chances of catching your minute man (or woman) just as they catch theirs, and they catch theirs ?

The key is to limit your field according to the course. 120 riders would take 2 hours to set off.

I think the logistics of the race itself would be fine, it's all the other stuff that would be difficult.

P.S Online leaderboards are still unofficial and uninsured races, I am sure the Forestry would LOVE that.

Posted 8 months ago #