On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 6/1/2009
Setting the Pace
It seems slightly ironic that the Latin root of the word peace is "pace," as in "pacem in terris." Ironic because, in the world of recreational bicycling, few subjects are less likely to promote peace on earth than the matter of pace.
We all do the best we can to propel our bikes along the road at a brisk, sustainable pace, but each of us being slightly different in our power output, our stamina, our agendas--dozens of variables--it seems no two of us have exactly identical natural paces: that steady, sustainable sweet spot where we're making good time and could do it all day.
And yet we like to ride in groups. It's fun and it can be usefully efficient, sharing the work of pushing forward against the atmosphere--swimming through the air. Call it a paceline or a peloton or just a pack of pals pedaling together, it's one of the fundamental dynamics of the bike world. But because each of us brings that slightly variable set of tools to the group, we all have to forge some mutually acceptable compromise that will keep the group intact. The greater good of the greater group: the strongest riders backing it off just a hair or taking slightly longer pulls; the weakest riders digging just a bit deeper to hang in, then soft-pedaling their short pulls so as not to blow up and blow off the back. On a good day, with a good group, it can be a thing of beauty; a joy to behold and to be a part of. Strength in numbers.
The vast spectrum of recreational riders is too broad for all of them to find common ground in one group on one ride. So most bike clubs will have some sort of ratings system that attempts to identify several levels of riders (or rides), based, first of all, on natural pace. If you look at upcoming rides listed in a club's calendar, you will see some sort of specs that try to define the nature of each ride. How long, how hilly, how fast? Distance and climbing difficulty can be fairly easily quantified, but how fast are we going to ride? How hard will we hammer...or not? That is less easy to define, and the subjective, ambiguous nature of that spec leads to confusion and frustration for many.
You think you've found a ride that suits your ambitions and skills. You show up figuring to be in the mix all day long. But then a handful of people show up who appear--by your reckoning--to be riding way faster than the advertised pace, and they blow the group apart. Or else some people show up who are immediately dropped--who are clearly in way over their heads--and the rest of the riders have to grapple with the decision to either cut them loose to find their own way home or to wait for them at every junction and hilltop, etc. Were these faster or slower riders not clear on the specs, or was it you who figured it wrong?
While accepting that no one set of specs with four or five categories is ever going to work flawlessly, we still can make some attempts to fine tune the details so that they work as well as possible; so that the vast majority of participants on club rides will end up doing the rides that fit them best, with pleasantly rewarding rides the result.
My club--the Santa Rosa Cycling Club--has suffered through its fair share of pace angst over the years. Matters came to a head in 2000, when there was enough upset on the part of enough people to cause us to closely examine our existing ratings system and then to toss out the old one and implement a new one which we hoped would better serve all the club members. As the club's Ride Director at the time--in charge of coordinating the ride calendar--I took a leading role in the reinvention of our ratings. It has been ten years since we introduced the new specs, and I think I can say they do work better than what we had before. I cannot say they have entirely eliminated the confusion and frustration. No system is bomb proof. But things do seem better overall now. This column is a look back at that significant little chapter in club lore. My hope is that there might be some useful ideas in what we did that you can try in your club (should your club find itself grappling with the same thorny issues).
First a look back to see how we got to where we are now. The club began as a pure racing club back in the late 60's, but by the mid-70's had evolved into a more full-spectrum recreational club. There were still racers involved and some even competed in club kit. But there were also leisurely riders and others focused on ultra-marathon stuff like double centuries, not to mention a very active mountain bike contingent. Our archives are a little sketchy prior to the beginning of the 80's, but I can look up newsletters from that period and find a very loose "index" attempting to rate the rides. There were letters A through F assigned to rate level of difficulty, mostly defined in terms of climbing challenge. "Pace" was covered by this catch-all qualifier: "Pace will normally be flexible and riders should not feel obligated to go faster than their ability. No riders will be left behind alone; however, riders should not show up for rides way beyond their ability."
In its own simple way, that pretty much sums things up. Perhaps that's all one ever needs to know! But for better or worse, we are a society of laws and rules and definitions, and some amongst us at least are not happy unless everything is spelled out as accurately as possible. Moreover, what appears to be a workable policy for a club with 100 members (as the club was then) may not work as well for a club with close to a thousand members (as the club is now). So over the years, we have made repeated attempts to refine our ratings. In the mid-80's, in the club ride list, we start seeing pace broken out into three tiers: Leisurely, Moderate, and Brisk/Fast. No explanation is given as to what exactly those terms mean, beyond what the words obviously imply. Levi Leipheimer's Leisurely might be my Brisk/Fast. Levi may be unlikely to show up on our club rides, but guys who train and race with him do, so that example is not really all that far-fetched.
Those in leadership roles in the club at the time must have come to the conclusion that these terms were a little too vague because in April, 1989, we see the introduction of a much more precisely defined and stratified system for rating rides. It features three components: miles, which is obvious and non-subjective; terrain, which is broken out in a scale of 1-5, with 1 being dead flat and 5 being very hilly; finally, there is pace, which being the most subjective and variable of all, has six tiers, all carefully defined...
S (Slow): less than 10 mph; for families, children. Regroups often. Waits for slower riders.
L (Leisurely): 10-12 mph; stops as needed, waits for slower riders.
M (Moderate): 13-15 mph; Good riders. Regroups every 30-45 minutes. Waits for slower riders.
B (Brisk): 16-18 mph; Experienced riders. Regroups every hour. May require paceline riding.
F (Fast): 19-21 mph; Strong riders. Infrequent stops. Requires paceline riding. No obligation to wait.
VF (Very Fast): 21 mph and faster. Very strong riders. Requires paceline riding. No obligation to wait.
I can tell you straight off that the VF listing was never used. It was pretty much redundant with the F listing. Likewise, the S designation was too fine a gradation from the L, and those effectively morphed into one group as well. So the six tiers became a de facto four, pretty much right from the beginning.
There are all sorts of interesting points here, now that we have these more extensive descriptions of what might be expected on a given ride. But the key index here, and the one that caused the most confusion in the club, was those miles-per-hour figures. There was a note at the top of the pace classification key that said this: "Pace ratings are based on level ground, non-paceline speeds. The average speed for the entire ride will be lower and depend on terrain and wind conditions." That seems to me to be a reasonable disclaimer, although in the everyday world of club rides, it apparently fell well short of satsifying everyone.
I started riding with the club around 1988 or 1989, but I was just a clueless newbie when this system was being put in place. As far as I understood club dynamics at the time, I thought it worked pretty well, although it was clearly not perfect. For a first-hand account of the thinking that went into this new system, I fired off an e-mail to Don Wolf, who was the Ride Director at the time and one of the people most responsible for its implementation. In answer to my query, I received this reply...
"Twenty years on and now I'm supposed to remember?
"1989 was pretty much as now (or perhaps ever since the second bike was made): people complained that the pace was higher on rides than was listed. Just like now, we had the riders in the know moving down one category cuz they were tired of being dropped and left for dead while trying to do rides that seemed just right for them. 'Course then that meant the riders that moved down then proceeded to hammer the holy living shit out of the group that they moved down into.
"Trying to bring a little clarity to the pacing thing, I borrowed (with their consent) most of the categories from Chico Velo. The idea was that if you could ride the route as written--by yourself--and comfortably maintain 16-18 mph (for Brisk) on the flat portions, then it was a ride for you. It was never supposed to be a speed limit, nor any indication of average speed, just what a solo rider could do on that given route.
"Yeah sure, there were 25-mph pace lines on Brisk rides, but that wasn't because that was appropriate for the category. And Brisk's "May require paceline riding" is not the same as going like a bunch of scalded cats the whole ride. That said, it's not really a bad thing that the pace is higher than advertised. Well, unless the ride leader is in the paceline and involved in leaving other actual Brisk riders to die horrible deaths along the road somewhere. There will always be faster riders, and there will always be days that you can't hold the pace. No biggy. Except for the ride leader, cuz they're actually the only person that gave their word about the route and pace. I think that as long as there are actually riders present that have come to ride the pledged pace, the ride leader owes it to them to stay with them and ride the ride as written. The faster riders will always be up ahead, so if they have trouble (mechanical, crash, etc), the ride-leader group will come up to them eventually. Not so if the ride leader goes off with his fast buddies and leaves the slower riders to fend for themselves.
"Or is it just about counting coup on slower riders? I guess that's OK too just as long as it's not the ride leader who's doing it. We all know what it feels like to be dropped and left, but that's no way to have a social club, if you ask me."
That's an excellent summary of what responsible ride leading should be. But the one problem Don leaves hanging is that the wording in the new system was misunderstood by a large number of riders who were attempting to use the index to find their place in the club family. Whether the riders were being hopelessly obtuse in not getting it or whether the wording was simply too vague or misleading doesn't really matter. The end result was that many, many people were confused and frustrated. Usually those complaining were riders who showed up for a ride that they felt was a good fit for them, only to be slaughtered by a cohort of faster riders...riders who in all likelihood should have been on a different, faster ride.
For better or worse, many of us take our cycling cues from the world of racing. We behave in some way that is an approximation of the way races work. With that ethos in mind, it's always more fun to be at the front, being a big dawg, than it is to be struggling at the back, just barely hanging on or not hanging on at all...left for dead, as Don puts it. In order to tilt the odds in their favor, many ride leaders, clearly among the faster riders in the club, would drop down a level and list rides at the Brisk pace so they could be assured of being at the front and king of the hill. And as Don notes, it trickled down, with the Brisk riders, shelled out the back of their own rides, poaching on the turf of the Moderates, with predictable results. What made all this possible and plausible was a rating system that was too vague and too poorly understood. It's just human nature to exploit the angles and loopholes, and these ratings left folks too much wiggle room for tilting the playing field.
I took over as Ride Director around 1994 and inherited the task of attempting to explain the posted miles-per-hour rationale...again and again and again. After listening to an endless litany of grousing about a failure of truth in advertising, we finally decided to revamp this system in 2000. As I wrote in the club newsletter at the time, we did not undertake the changes lightly. The old system had worked, up to a point, and we had great respect for the club leaders who had created it, ten years earlier. Besides, we weren't sure any new system would work any better. Nevertheless, we decided to take a whack at it.
The key change was to clarify that miles-per-hour yardstick; to come up with a better method for the members to assess their own place within the ratings matrix. We needed a way to generate more concrete, quantifiable numbers than the old hypothetical "level-road, non-paceline" scenario. What we came up with is the cornerstone of our improved system, and it's the one idea I would have you take away from this to apply to your own club's program. We set up a "speed trap" that riders could go out and do on their own or in a group. Their times through the trap could then be measured against fixed time windows in our ratings scale.
First we found a good course for our time trial. It's a 4.4-mile stretch of Graton Road, from the town of Graton to the summit of a long climb (see the profile). It's a mostly uphill run, but is never too steep for even beginning riders, and yet is long enough and hard enough to create some gaps in the ranks of average club riders. (Were this a climb in a pro race, it would likely not even be categorized, and most pros would whiz up it in a group, with very little time difference from the swiftest to the slowest. But we're not pros, and for us, the hill is substantial enough to generate significant, measurable differences.)
It has three different uphill sections, each with its own character, with the last one being the hardest. It has a little downhill, which you can either cruise through or attack. And it has a long false-flat uphill of about 1%. Each section makes different demands on a rider, and altogether they represent a good sampling of cycling challenges. The figures generated by this little run are therefore considered good indicators of a rider's overall speed, fitness, stamina, etc.
After we had our course in place, we asked the members to go out and ride it and send us their times. We organized some rides where we did in en masse. We made the point, as strongly as we could make it, that this was not a race; that we were looking for real-world numbers. But we know cyclists, and we know most would get a little competitive about it. So we suggested people ride it once as if it were a winner-take-all time trial, just to see what their very best time could be, and then ride it at a speed approximating what they would ride on an easy, social ride, at what I might call a conversational pace. Lots of club members got into it and helped us out. We logged a lot of good data points. We asked the members to also tell us what level of rider they saw themselves as (using the old system of Leisurely and Brisk and so forth).
I collected data for a few months, then plotted all the points on a big chart, and presented it to the members at a meeting. We kicked the numbers around and finally agreed upon the places to divide the span of times up into our new tiers. Just to wipe the slate clean of any old baggage, we dumped the list of names--the Brisk and Fast and Moderate tags--and simply used A, B, C, and D for our new categories. Here's what we ended up with, including the elapsed-time tiers...
A: relaxed pace; frequent regroups; waits for all riders. Over 26 minutes.
B: touring pace; regroups every 30-45 minutes; waits for all riders. 23-26 minutes.
C: brisk pace; pacelines likely; regroups every 30-60 minutes. 19-22 minutes.
D: Aggressive pace; pacelines; slower riders may miss regroups. Under 19 minutes.
For the past ten years, it seems to have worked pretty well. The only thing we got wrong was the regroup times. It's really more like 30-60 minutes for B and 60-90 minutes for C. After living with that misrepresentation for all these years, we have finally decided to amend those little items to reflect reality.
Obviously, an elapsed time through a moderately challenging uphill time trial is not the only indicator of what sorts of rides one might like. Some people prefer a short, fast ride with minimal regroups...home by noon with the afternoon free for other things. Others like epic rides that take all day. They don't really feel warmed up until they have 100 K on the clock. Some have a hardcore, take-no-prisoners attitude and like to hammer all the time. Others are happier cruising along and chatting with their friends and taking long breaks. And yet all of these riders could record similar times in the speed trap. So yes, lots of other subtle shadings to be considered, but at least the fundamental question of one's natural bike speed could be known. Nothing confusing or misleading about that.
Ten years on, there is still that same tendency for the fastest riders in the club to drop down a tier when they list rides, or for those same riders to show up on rides one category below their native habitat. Part of this is a function of a rather limited number of rides on our schedule. All rides are submitted and led by volunteers, and we have a hard time filling every day of every weekend with a representative sampling of rides in all tiers. So effectively, the D riders often do not have a ride of their own and have to show up for the C ride if they want to play in the sandbox with the other children.
But we are continuing to lean on people to list rides at their honest levels and to do the rides as they are listed, be they B or A or D. And the key to that is the time trial: if you record a time under 19 minutes, then you should not be listing a C ride, unless you are fully committed to riding at a pace below your personal sweet spot. They call the time trial the race of truth, and even though this isn't real racing we're talking about here, the numbers still tell the truth, assuming at least that you rode your Graton Road time trial at your own honest pace.
We also suggest folks do the time trial again every few years. It's an implacable reality that most of us are slowing down as we grow older. If we haven't slowed down yet, we will eventually. In the ten years that the speed trap has been our metric, my own time has gone up by about two minutes. I'm not too thrilled about that, but I have to accept it...the reality check of advancing years.
Maybe your club figured out some solution to this pace issue years ago. (If so, I salute you!) But maybe you are still struggling with it, for one reason or another. If you are, allow me to recommend the speed trap methodology to you. You can certainly find a four or five-mile stretch of local road with no stop signs or signals, not too much traffic, and some interesting combination of ups and downs that will serve as a good petrie dish for gathering your data. (It should have more uphill than anything else if you want the numbers to show a significant spread.) Most of the members, whether they've competitive or not, will enjoy finding out what their times are and how they fit into the broad spectrum of all their peers.
In the end, you'll have a yardstick that you can use to swat folks on the butt if they persist in listing rides (or coming on rides) out of their own category.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net