Seeding in Mtb

[The expat cyclist]

I can see there are a lot of people who are "FOR" seeding in Mtb races. So am I.

But how does one go ahead and do this? What wil be the criteria to get a good seeding position?

[ASTANA]

race time - like in road. Do the same - winners time and the index thingy like PPA calculates your seeding. That not good enough ?

 

Then let pll start in different groups, not just Seeded and unseeded.

 

Its usually the not-so-fast guys who push in to start off the front with the winners. This then creates a ball's up on the first hill of single track part...

 

[AndreZA]

Stuff the race time. It is not important in MTB races. Take position rather. If your seeding is in the top 10% of the national seeding index, you get to start with the first 10% on the day. YOu can have 10 groups per distance on the day, 1-10, 11-20 etc.

[ASTANA]

I for one would be more amped to race my MTB in the winter time, as up till now I only raced once in a while, other than that I trained on the MTB during winter time, summer is race time on the road, and for something different - MTBing midway through the summer races.

 

If MTB created that seeding immage, more ppl would race, and thus up the racing standart in SA / Western cape.

 

Then we can have XC races with laps and only let rider A - D race in one go and the other groups can be split up as well - like the road crit races. Elites, A-D, E - H etc

 

This way we can make everyone happy and inprove the standart of racing

 

[ASTANA]

 

Stuff the race time. It is not important in MTB races. Take position rather. If your seeding is in the top 10% of the national seeding index' date=' you get to start with the first 10% on the day. YOu can have 10 groups per distance on the day, 1-10, 11-20 etc.[/quote']

 

Good idea, but sometimes you get caught up and loose time and position. So if you can start further up field you have the advantage or opportunity to stay with the leaders and up your chances for a good finish position.

 

[The expat cyclist]

Stuff the race time. It is not important in MTB races. Take position rather. If your seeding is in the top 10% of the national seeding index' date=' you get to start with the first 10% on the day. YOu can have 10 groups per distance on the day, 1-10, 11-20 etc.[/quote']

 

I liiiiiiiiike!

[AndreZA]

For seeding to work, you will have to get licensed and we MTBers don't like the man. Damn the man, save the empire.

[Nancy Drew]

www.roag.co.za

 

 

[Daxiet]

 

Stuff the race time. It is not important in MTB races. Take position rather. If your seeding is in the top 10% of the national seeding index' date=' you get to start with the first 10% on the day. YOu can have 10 groups per distance on the day, 1-10, 11-20 etc.[/quote']

 

Agree 100%

 

On the note of ROAG, thus far they are KZN based hence to get a seeding you need to participate in one of their races in KZN only at this stage.

 

[Gravity Sux]

Stuff the race time. It is not important in MTB races. Take position rather. If your seeding is in the top 10% of the national seeding index' date=' you get to start with the first 10% on the day. YOu can have 10 groups per distance on the day, 1-10, 11-20 etc.[/quote']

 

I think this is the way to go. If you compare time index for the same position in the field you will see that time index varies a lot depending on how tough the race is. If I enter a race I have not done before I pull the previous year results, work out what position corresponds to the % in the field and use that time for my target, works pretty well.

 

At the moment ROAG are using the time index thing, we will have to see how they handle easy / tough races and also team races where your index is that of the slowest team member. Can't see anybody bailing from Sani2c just because they don't want to mess up their seeding

[BrettAS]

Seeding MTB events is a must!! the bigger events are NON negotiable as far as we are concerned.

 

Unfortnately its not as simple as one thinks. Just a few things to consider are the following:

 

Comparable data - i cant take wessells data and feed it into my system because he uses different criteria to me, and i cant verify if John Smit is actuall the same guy as J Smit or not. Thats why we use ROAG numbers - its the same for every event.

 

Different distances, difficulty, quality of field, multi stage events, teams etc.

 

ROAG is doing their best to get something started. we are using a formula created by somebody way cleverer than me to create an index of a riders ability. soemhow these clever guys can tell you what your time on a 30km race would have been when compared to the winners time of say the 50km race. these indeces are averaged. this in theory should create a level playing field - or no bumps on the sigle track.

 

Yes - at the moment ROAG is KZN based, however we would love to get involved elsewhere. we chatted to Wessell but nothing came of it. anybody else out there who wants to give ROAG a try??

[Gravity Sux]

Keep ut the good work ROAG. Must say even if you have not found that magic formula yet Karkloof was a great experience this year and the seeding / batching played a big part in that. In 2008 the vets started in the last batch and there was a lot of slower traffic on all of the single track. At least this year the traffic I encountered was  moving at a similar pace and there was less urgency to pass / be passed.

 

At least with seeding course designers can have single track earlier in the race without having to worry about massive congestion. Definately a win for riders

[Fritz Pienaar]

 

 

 

We all agree seeding or batch starts are needed and

seemingly a combination of both.

 

The problem is universal though. Unfortunately we are at the

forefront of this and the situation is unique to South Africa as we have the LARGEST

participation base of any country in the world. And unfortunately we cannot

simply adapt a system.

 

 

 

It's doesn't help we go for ROAG up here in Gauteng because:

 

 

 

1. Only Three / Four races use the ROAG system.

 

2. Rider pool is too small with 80% KZN based riders.

 

3. 90% + of Gauteng MTB races here use the SStiming system

with built in timing chips and not Mr Price chip / Roag board.

 

4. We already created boards with chips as unique identities

for riders and have handed out / sold thousands of boards and thus can?t adopt Roag?s

system.

 

 

 

NATIONAL MTB SERIES

 

 

 

Advantages of our system:

 

 

 

1. It's National.

 

2. 12 Events, catering for three main disciplines of the

sport.

 

3. Less social, more racing orientated, courses harder than

most races.

 

4. Official SA-MTB / CSA approved NATIONAL MARATHON SERIES,

for seeding at top events like 94.7 etc.

 

5. Many Clubs / Provinces allocate colours according to National

MTB series placing.

 

6. National MTB Series is points based not time or position.

 

7. Points are calculated according to the difficulty of the

race, your time behind the leader, based on a sliding scale of the top 70% of

riders behind the winner. So not just position, ie. you are awarded more points

the closer in time you are behind the leader and less points the further in

time you are behind the leader, but not added like the tour de france, as

staging events work differently and only on time.

 

8. Bigger rider pool (we currently have 10 000 participants

and 40 000 strong database) but still need more events to increase it even

further - constraint to 7 events because of budget.

 

9. National pool of riders - most widely covered geographical

area.

 

 

We recently added the Nissan Provincial series to our pool

of events, which increased our events to 17 per annum and will increase our

rider base even further.

 

 

We

are happy to incorporate the Roag event results into our Seeding system, but it

is not that simple as Brett quite rightly said as we can not verify the

identity of riders. ID numbers doesn?t get captured at most events, because it

is too long and time consuming and capturing errors occur. It may be an option to use license numbers as

a unique ID, but MTB riders will have to license in order for this to work.

Fritz Pienaar2009-06-22 14:18:11

[scotty]

I believe this will be a good thing, but keep to seeded to strength and not age cats.

[AndreZA]

This is becomming another "us vs them" battle like Winning time and Champion chip. The people in Kaapfontein like WT and get great service and us educated people like CC because we get excellent service. One system should be adopted by CSA and that is that.

[thehermanator]

Well said Warren