Tria Cycling presented by DonohooAuto

Great turnout today for the points kick-off! Let me re-emphasize that the entire purpose of this series is to encourage, motivate, and push people beyond just another mediocre year of winter training. We want to encourage everyone from the fastest Cat 1 to the slowest Cat 5 or unlicensed rider to improve their fitness through friendly competition in the attack zones and a good steady tempo for the rest of the ride.

With regards to encouragement and motivation, we are trying out a slightly revised points system this year (finalized at the store stop today). Here’s how it will work. For each attack zone, points will be awarded for 1st – 5th places just like last year as follows:

5 base points + category bonus points – 1st
4 base points + category bonus points – 2nd
3 base points + category bonus points – 3rd
2 base points + category bonus points – 4th
1 base points + category bonus points – 5th

Category bonus points will be different this year with increasing weights for lower categories as follows:

0 points – Cat 1
1 points – Cat 2
3 points – Cat 3
5 points – Cat 4
7 points – Cat 5 / Women

With regards to women, the same bonus point structure will be in place for the women’s overall competition with the exception as noted above … if a woman places in the top 5 with the men, she will receive 7 bonus points regardless of her category but not in addition to her normal category based bonus points. This is a little tricky, so let me describe it with an example: if Katherine had won the women’s sprint AND placed 5th in the attack zone with the men, then she would receive her normal 5 points for winning the attack zone plus an additional 7 bonus points for placing with the men for a total of 12 points. She would not receive her normal 3 points as a Cat 3.

The team competition has been updated a bit this year in two ways: first, all individual riders on the winning team for the day get an additional two points added to their individual overall score. Second, Tria has been split up into four separate teams based on Cat 1 leaders on the team as follows:

Tria Green – Brian Toone
Tria Red – Pat Allison
Tria Blue – Terry Duran
Tria Yellow – Paul Tower / Darryl Seelhorst

This makes the team competition a more fair and exciting competition rather than Tria winning the team competition another year based on the sheer number of riders that we have participating. We are still working on our internal team structure beyond that, and it did cost one of the Tria teams some points today because Chris Allison’s points weren’t able to count towards any of the Tria teams since we all raced individually today. Still, the Tria team leaders’ points will count toward their respective team totals for the BBL training series.

This leads us to a quick recap of today’s solitary attack zone and the points awarded. We rode the old school Camp Winnie + Sterrett route with a very strong tailwind on the way out of town. This kept the pace high, but manageable with the tailwind. Once we made it to the Sterrett attack zone, it was fireworks from the moment Terry Duran blew the whistle. Several riders slipped away early on the first hill getting a good gap. As the strung out pack finally caught up to them before the crest of the hill, Darrell O’Quinn (Moontoast Tristar) put in a perfectly timed solo attack and pushed it hard extending his lead on the downhill as the group worked out who should chase. Finally, there was a flurry of attacks and another solo rider bridged across to Darrell, but the relentless pace in the pack caught the two riders at the base of the final hill. Jim Brock put in a monster attack halfway up the hill and got away solo. I attacked near the top of the steep part of the hill and bridged across to Jim before the final turn at the church. Chris Allison saw my move and was immediately on my wheel. I had broken my rear derailleur shifter earlier in the ride so I was stuck in one gear and knew that I couldn’t slow down or try any cat/mouse games. So when I made it up to Jim, I attacked hard again to go right by, but there was no shaking a very strong Chris and he came around to take the sprint easily. I came in second with Jim in third ahead of the group. At the front of the group, Pat Allison took the sprint ahead of Will Hibberts to round out the top 5.

As far as points goes, here’s the explanation on how the points worked out ordered by the placing in today’s attack zone:

Chris Allison – 6 points total – 5 base points (1st) + 1 category bonus point
Brian Toone – 4 points total – 4 base points (2nd) + 0 category bonus points
Jim Brock – 6 points total – 3 base points (3rd) + 1 category bonus points + 2 team bonus points (Alabama Masters won today’s team competition)
Pat Allison – 2 points total – 2 base points (4th) + 0 category bonus points
Will Hibberts – 4 points total – 1 base point (5th) + 1 category bonus point + 2 team bonus points

There was also heated competition for the women’s sprint with Amy Gravlee going hard early and then fading a bit, and a new contender, Hallie Blunk, taking an early lead in the women’s competition by winning the first attack zone of the year. Katherine Herring came in second with Terri Jones behind for third, followed by Beth Hollingsworth who made the drive up from Tuscaloosa along with a great group of Velocity Pro Cycle riders. Amy slid back to 5th rounding out the top 5 in the women’s competition. I have updated the points based on Kat’s comment (thanks!).

Here is a link to the current points standing: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0At4CJfC5J_FPdDJTODdxdFdvWDMxeVRaa1BHVndrRXc&hl=en

Pat Allison also posted a great recap on his website leaditout.com – check it out!