Series Scoring Questions

Our summer series is mostly for fun. It's a great Wednesday evening, enjoying the outdoors after work. And we're really excited to make use of Valmont Bike Park. Of course, it works well as tune-ups for major races, and counts for a good workout. Some racers of course take our series very seriously. (There are some prizes in the works for series winners...maybe that has something to do with it.) That being said, we've been debating on how to score the series.

In years past, we've had a couple different methods for scoring, with mixed reviews. This year, we'd love your input first. Here are some of the options we've had and are considering:

1. Totaling every single race. It comes down in part to pure attendance. We of course like attendance; it means more money raised for the CU Cycling Team. People get sick though, or go on vacations, and may miss a race anyway. Should missing a day be reason to loose the overall?
2. Dropping the worst 3 races. This way, you can go on that vacation without feeling too nervous about your positioning in the standings. 13 races is a long series, so maybe drop the worst 5. But then our attendance may drop.
3. Score 50 places deep, so that everyone has points on the line, and you still get fun and aggressive racing for 20th place.
4. Score just 15 deep, and everyone else gets a few points purely for attendance. That way, there is still an incentive to attend, but a top-5 racer who flats and rolls in slowly for last doesn't loose as much to the overall leader as if we were to score 50 deep.

Or some combination of the above? Or other options? As it stands now, we are thinking of dropping 4 races, scoring 15 deep, and giving points for attendance. See the last sheet on last year's results as an example. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Moving to Valmont Bike Park

We've been working closely with the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation and will officially be moving our Summer Series to Valmont Bike Park! We're really excited about it and hope you all are too. Over on Valmont and Airport Road, you'll get a bunch of new courses with more variety, still with the same fun atmosphere we've always had. Great mid-week family activities - mom and dad can shred some single track, and the little juniors can develop their fat-tire skills (free for them as always). We'll also be working with EXPAND to get some of those modified super-aero mountain bikes racing a few times this summer too.

Only 2 downsides to VBP:

1. The facility fee requires us to bump up prices for registration; and

2. It's a little further out than the ol' Research Park, but you should bike there anyways. Just think of it like a longer warm-up.

Check out Kris's article about it over at 303 Cycling. We should have pre-registration up at PreRace later today or tomorrow. We'll see you next week! (at VALMONT).

Spring in Colorado...

It's May 1st. That means short track is right around the corner. What's with the foot of fresh snow? I guess head up to A-Basin and enjoy it. But I have faith it will be gone by the time our Wednesday night series kicks off...just 3 weeks away.

We're still waiting on a few last minute details to get finalized, and we're still looking for a couple more volunteers and prize sponsors. Once we have everything lined up, we'll get a flyer out, and you'll be the first to get it.

In the mean time, sit tight, tune up your suspensions, and cheer on our road team at Nationals this weekend in Utah! Woo! They're going to crush it!

We'll see you on May 22nd!

A great 2012 season

A huge thanks to everyone for coming out this summer to our short track series. Aside from a couple of weather issues, it's been a lot of fun to put on. We've had a lot of help from some very dedicated volunteers, and with their help, and your attendance, we've been able to raise a pretty decent amount of money for the CU Cycling Team.

The short track fundraiser goes a long way to help our team develop and travel to races throughout the year. Indeed, the new mountain bike season is off to a great start, and hopefully we'll be able to improve upon last year's 2nd place at Nationals. Track Nationals is right around the corner too.

So thanks again to everyone that helped out, sponsored, and even just attended our races, making it another great summer of short track. We'll see you again in May 2013!

Costume Race!

Thanks to everyone who still came out last week. It's been a rough short track season, with a heat wave and some poorly timed rain. Hopefully Wednesday will bring the perfect atmosphere for the last short track race of the summer. Make it a race to remember with some wild costumes, we'll be giving out prizes to the best one.

Until Wednesday, check out some photos from Jeff Stephenson. The total standings are posted as well here. As for tabulating the overall standings...with the number of races that have been cancelled due to weather, we're only dropping two races instead of 3. It looks like most people have missed at least one that they can forget about. One more will emphasize consistency with results. With that, we still have several of close races on our hands.

See you in costume on Wednesday!

Skratch Labs tomorrow!

We've had some really close races the past two weeks. Check out the results for July 11 and 18, as well as the latest standings with the links over on the right.
While you're at it, relive the action of the 11th through photos:
Courtesy of  Yann Ropers and Jeff Stephenson

Some big news for tomorrow (as you may have guessed from the title of this post), Allen Lim is donating a significant amount of his Skratch Labs super secret drink mix! I'm pretty partial to the Lemons and Limes.

See you tomorrow!

June 27 Cancelled

Hey everyone. So the dry weather made for fast dirt last week, but as I'm sure you know it unfortunately left Colorado susceptible to fires. Because of one so close by, we're cancelling short track this week. Nobody needs to be racing hard and gasping for air when there's only smoke around. We wish everyone close to the fires as much luck as possible.
Stay Safe, and we'll see you in 2 weeks.