This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/peloton by /u/Diomedes on 2024-10-03 17:04:56+00:00.
I don’t know about you all, but I absolutely love the strategy and creativity that goes into race design. I know this used to be a thing on this sub (from searching through old posts), and so I thought I would share one of the races I’ve been brainstorming in hopes of reviving the practice a bit. So, here it goes!
The Race: Tour of Massachusetts
What: A four day stage race in my beautiful home state of Massachusetts. Ideally a 2.UWT designation (replacing Guangxi).
When: The Friday-Monday the first week of September. Monday is Labor Day, a federal holiday in the US, meaning more spectators, and putting this race a week before the Canadian Classics should make equipment and rider logistics much easier.
Goals:
- Short, relatively easy, yet exciting stages. This makes it more viable to attract better riders this late in the season, broadcast stages in their entirety, and get the necessary permits to close off roads. This also makes it a good warm-up race for riders who did the Tour and are getting back into shape for Worlds. Short stages held mid-day in Eastern Daylight Time will also make for fantastic evening viewing for European fans.
- Show the beauty of Massachusetts. Besides the TT, most of this race takes place in rural areas. Not only will this make closing off the race course easier, it will allow the race to show off how beautiful this part of the country can be. Ideally this could also attract sponsorship from the Commonwealth’s Tourism Board. Ideally I would do this race in early to mid October to show off the Autumn foliage, but then it would overlap with World Champs and the Italian classics, while also losing the logistical benefit of being close to the Canadian classics.
- A unique parcours that gives the race a distinct flavor and justifies its inclusion in the WT schedule. I love the random late-season stage races, but I also know that a lot of them just blend together and lack a distinct identity. Massachusetts is lucky because it has a lot of cool and crazy things to ride on/through. Slick gravel, narrow wood-paved covered bridges, stupidly steep climbs, winding roads, the list goes on. The race should include these cool features as much as it can. No straight-forward sprint finishes as there are tons of sprint races in Europe around this time.
Note: I don’t route my normal rides so I don’t have much experience/knowledge with mapping software. As such, the one I used (mapometer.com) is pretty janky.
Stage 1: Boston Half-Marathon ITT (Friday)
Stats: 21.1km, 246m ascent, 279m descent (net downhill)
Stage 1 Profile, note the elevation scale
Starting in the lovely town of Wellesley in Boston’s western suburbs, this fairly long opening ITT weaves its way along some of the oldest roads in the country through the second half of the iconic Boston Marathon course. The course is winding and has four major corners, but begins and ends with long straightaways. The 800-meter, ~6% climb beginning around kilometer 11, known as “Heartbreak Hill”, along with the fairly undulating first half of the course and its overall technicality will make for a dynamic TT winnable by a wide variety of riders. Expect large TT specialists to be at a mild disadvantage and for the GC hopefuls to set some fast times.
Besides adding a great flavor of history to this race, following the Boston Marathon course gives two major advantages: 1) local police have experience closing the route and residents are familiar with the requisite detours, 2) it presents us with the possibility of collaborating with the Boston Athletic Association (the organizers of the Marathon) to also offer a Half-marathon for runners the following Saturday. A Saturday Labor-day weekend Half-Marathon on the Boston course would be incredibly popular, and would make putting on this time trial significantly easier logistically and financially.
A stage race this length usually either has a much short TT or no TT at all, so by having one that was fairly long my goal was to offer something that appeals to a slightly different and underserved group of riders. While this won’t be a bingobongo-style rouleur tour, it also won’t just be a miniature grand tour like Paris-Nice. Expect non-traditional, TT-focused GC riders like Brandon McNulty, Jay Vine, Derek Gee, and Magnus Sheffield to thrive on this parcours.
Stage 2: Long Rolling Hills in Central Massachusetts (Saturday)
Stats: 140km, 1800m ascent, 10-20km of gravel
Riding two 70km laps over rolling terrain and occasional gravel in beautiful central Massachusetts, the goal of this stage was to have a long classics-style parcours conducive to a large reduced-bunch sprint of rouleurs and puncheurs. This route is also the most fungible of the four stages, as there are countless beautiful country roads and punchy climbs throughout this region of the state. This was just a fairly random route I chose mostly because I have ridden a few sections of it before. I’m not sure of the exact count of gravel kms in this stage, but I would guess it is at least 10. The gravel here is generally very smooth (like smoother than some tarmac) and so shouldn’t increase the risk of punctures, though it should be enough of a feature to create some selection points. I think this route also goes through a couple of covered bridges, and if I had the desire to spend more time on it I would route it through as many as possible.
At most 25% of this route is what you would call “flat” road, and throughout the course there are numerous small punchy climbs and irregular drags that lie somewhere in between a false-flat and a “real” climb. However, there are two main climbs that should be impactful to the course of the race.
The course also goes past the Massachusetts State Police Academy (the purple area in the center of the map), an intentional choice to hopefully attract a sponsorship from them akin to the Gendarmerie’s sponsorship of the Tour.
The first is a ~3km long, ~4% climb around 17km into each lap. Don’t let the gradient fool you, as it is highly irregular with a few double-digit pinches, and is followed shortly by a 5km section of irregular ascent with its own double-digit pinches. No one will win the stage on this climb, but people will definitely be dropped.
The second is a 1200m, 8% climb 60km into each lap, so 10km from the finish. This will be the real selection climb, essentially a slightly easier version of the Cote de la Redoute, allowing rouleurs to drop sprinters and puncheurs to maybe drop rouleurs. With the short plateau and fast descent to a 5km drag to the finish, the final few minutes of the stage are sure to bring tension as soloists try to hold on to their lead and guys take fliers from the chase.
I’m also thinking that a one or two bonus second sprints would be good to add in somewhere along the course, in addition to a normal 10/6/4 bonus seconds at the finish.
As this stage is sort of a circuit, it could very easily be extended to 210km. I had originally planned for it to be that, but then I realized that doing so would kind of betray my goal of making a fairly easy race with short stages.
Stage 3: Medium Mountain Summit Finish (Sunday)
Stats: 129km, 3100m ascent
Starting in the lovely college town of Amherst near the fairly large Springfield metro area, lodging for teams should be easy to find, and hopefully the depart is mobbed by rowdy college students partying through their first weekend back at school. The race then turns on to quiet, flat country roads along the Connecticut river, allowing riders to shake out the previous two days of racing and get ready for a fiery finale.
Riders then go through a number of quaint New England towns and over a number of iconic bridges, such as the French King bridge in Miller’s Falls. After going through downtown Greenfield, riders contend with the first climb of the day, a 2.4km 6.1% tester. If a breakaway hasn’t already gone, they could go here, though I expect the peloton to just ride through this one. The course then meets occasional punches as it follows the base of the increasingly ominous Deerfield River valley, whose steep walls suggest the hard climb they’ll soon contend with.
Though one of the goals of this race was to make it fairly easy to attract good riders tired from a long season, I didn’t want to do simple unipuerto-style parcours for the mountain-top finish. Instead, this stage …
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/1fvcn4u/race_design_tour_of_massachusetts/