2023 Event 1: Hillingdon, Sunday 9th April
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Topic: 2023 Event 1: Hillingdon, Sunday 9th April
Posted By: Kim
Subject: 2023 Event 1: Hillingdon, Sunday 9th April
Date Posted: 06 April 2023 at 1:39pm
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Oddly we don't already have a thread for this. Usual format: 30min + 1 lap anti-clockwise (slow and fast groups) followed by: 30min+1 lap clockwise (slow and fast groups) Be there from 10:00, Racing starts at 11:00 I've finished the number allocation. New riders should have an email from me informing them of their race number. I've spent the winter hacking around with the timing system, which should result in a few improvements in how results are presented this season. One major innovation is that I've made CrossMgr speak the same language as the BHPC web server, so we can now have http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Results/live.aspx" rel="nofollow - live results during the race . One side effect of this is that the unstarted test TT (which Natalya decided last year stands for 'tag test') functions as a useful list of who has entered and what their race numbers are, so I've uploaded that one early: http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/liveresults/2023-04-09-Hillingdon1-TagTest-r0-.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/liveresults/2023-04-09-Hillingdon1-TagTest-r0-.html Let me know if I've typoed your name or your race classes are wrong or whatever... (Anyone wondering about the presence of a 'Race' class, this is a start-wave class for administrative purposes - it isn't part of the BHPC championship. The slow and fast groups will have unique start waves to enable the races to be merged in the timing software, rather than a hacky spreadsheet.)
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Replies:
Posted By: PaulM
Date Posted: 06 April 2023 at 9:44pm
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Hi Kim, I can't see myself on the lists. Paul Meredith, Race no 217. My helmet is missing a tag, and the remaining one is two years old so I probably need to pick up new tags. I should be there in good time on Sunday. Thanks, Paul ------------- Paul |
Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 06 April 2023 at 11:48pm
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Many thanks for all the work on this Kim!! ------------- |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 1:58am
Thanks for that. For some reason your entry has confused my sign-on-email parsing script, so it never got added to the CSV. I'll sort that out manually and try to debug it tomorrow. At least it's not the shop misbehaving this time.
I'll also compare the shop's list with my own, in case this has happened to someone else. (My fault for not doing this as a matter of course.)
Due to unprecedented demand for new timing tags, I've now run out of spare ones (and a couple of riders are going to have to have a single tag), so cherish the one that's on your helmet, in case the emergency order for more fails to turn up in time... |
PaulM wrote:Posted By: MattH
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 7:29am
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I'm not on the list either... was number 214. I should be OK for tags. Sorry Kim! Matt |
Posted By: MattH
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 11:32am
| Looks good now, thanks Kim! |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 12:48pm
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Okay, it seems you both managed to break my shonky parser for the horrendous HTML emails the shop produces by the devious method of putting a date in the comment field. Now fixed, and I've added some code to generate a warning if it processes an order and fails to find any rider data, rather than just not adding anything to the list. This doesn't appear to have affected anyone else.
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Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 12:54pm
| Meanwhile, sheer weight of numbers mean the slow race is now mostly composed of handcyclists and new riders, so a fair number of regulars are going to get promoted to the fast race. |
Posted By: PaulM
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 1:18pm
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Thanks. I'll keep out of Slade's way as he laps and re-laps me! ------------- Paul |
Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 07 April 2023 at 1:26pm
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I picked the machine with the best mirrors in anticipation… ------------- |
Posted By: tincanracer
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 6:57am
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Kim, could you please confirm which race Robert and I are in. Thanks Stuart (Glen) ------------- Laid Back in Spirit |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 12:52pm
You're in the slow race as requested. Robert's in the fast race on account of being one of the faster 'slow' riders who's been promoted in order to balance the numbers. (The slow race is still oversubscribed.) I appreciate that everyone wants to be in the slow race, but the priority is separating the inexperienced from the faster riders, and trying to minimise the number of people on the track at once.
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Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 12:54pm
Good news! The Royal mail delivered. So there will be a pair of fresh tags for PaulM and everyone else who requested them.
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Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 1:14pm
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Yep!! It’s always tricky to get the slow/fast balance right and someone will always be disappointed. One possibility is three groups and shorter races at some events, but that wouldn’t please everyone either of course. ------------- |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 2:59pm
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As it is, there's a fair amount of overlap. A couple of the handcyclists are significantly faster than the rest of the group, but they've specifically requested to be put together in the first race because some have impairments that make staying warmed up between races difficult. We've also got a few new riders who I expect will be quite quick, but don't necessarily have much track (or in a couple of case, recumbent) experience. Safer for everyone if they're the ones doing the overtaking. And of course I'm in the fast race this time because Andrew won't be there... (Worth reiterating that the results of the race groups get combined, so your championship points (f you care about such things) depend on your speed relative to both sets of riders, so it doesn't make huge difference which group you're in.)
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Posted By: MattH
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 7:25pm
| What's the score with car parking at Hillingdon? I've only been there twice, once for a BC classroom training session which didn't have many people there so was easy, and once with BHPC in covid times so there were odd rules in place as I remember it - but I'm aware that as there are a lot of handcyclists then there may be additional space constraints so they can park close. |
Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 7:47pm
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The parking area nearest to the clubhouse will be reserved for wheelchair users. You can park in the service road at your own risk (we have had p*k*ys breaking into cars in the past there). Safest is probably to park in the Goals car park next door where there are cameras. ------------- |
Posted By: MattH
Date Posted: 08 April 2023 at 9:23pm
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OK, thanks. Wasn't sure if Goals were OK with that or not. See you tomorrow!
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Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 09 April 2023 at 7:13pm
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Many thanks to everyone who came along today and especially to Kim and Natalya for taking care of the timing electrickery. Apologies for all the off-track cock-ups (mainly gates opening late and some of you getting parking tickets). All out of our control I’m afraid. Im pretty sure nobody will receive a fine so please just ignore the tickets - if anyone does then please let me know and I’ll sort it out with the gym manager - he was very pleasant when I spoke to him. It does however raise some questions for the next time we go to Hillingdon. We’ll make sure everyone knows the score before signing up to race for that one. On the plus side the weather was fantastic and the racing seemed to go ok. ------------- |
Posted By: MattH
Date Posted: 09 April 2023 at 8:40pm
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Yes, thanks to everyone who put time and effort into putting this on - especially whoever remembered to book the weather! A great day out.
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Posted By: legs_larry
Date Posted: 09 April 2023 at 9:05pm
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Photies! Get 'em while they're 'ot! https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_larrington/albums/72177720307365681 ------------- ==================== a bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 09 April 2023 at 11:12pm
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Results! Exhibit A: Live results more or less as they came out during the racing (I'll take these down soon, but might be useful for comparison if you think there's been a data-wrangling error below)... http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/liveresults/" rel="nofollow - http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/liveresults/ (This was a huge success, helped more than a little by functional WiFi from the cubhouse.) Exhibit B: Polished results after going through the Shiny! New! Excel-free merge process, and a bit of virtual photo-finish adjudication... http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/events23/01/index.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/events23/01/index.html Exhibit C: Championship points based on the above.... http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/events23/01/hillingdon.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/events23/01/hillingdon.html Usual disclaimer applies: I'm dead on my feet and will be going to bed after hanging out the laundry and pushing a bugfix for SeriesMgr (not my bug!) to GitHub. If you think there's something wrong with either the who's-riding-what or the bistromathics, let me know and I'll investigate.
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Posted By: russellbridge
Date Posted: 10 April 2023 at 8:16am
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Thanks to all for a great day's racing, really enjoyed that. I picked up a s/hand GoPro 7 over winter and tested it out in the first race yesterday. Overlaid with the data from the Garmin 520 head unit and power pedals it produces a nice result - the image stabilistion of the Gopro works really well, although I think it would benefit from a rear facing camera inlay too (not possible with the gopro). Strangely using 1080p / 30fps produces 4Gb files for 11mins of racing, where as 4k / 30fps also produces 4Gb files for 11mins - I would have thought that the lower res would produce much smaller files. I'll have to have a play... And the wind noise needs sorting - this might not be an issue if the camera is inside the fairing moving forwards... Unedited 30min fast race here. What you can't see is Kim being towed round for 29mins and 50secs... :) https://youtu.be/BOP_AwRXDF0" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/BOP_AwRXDF0
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Posted By: legs_larry
Date Posted: 10 April 2023 at 10:19am
Needs a LordHostis commentary  ------------- ==================== a bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds |
Posted By: johnlucian
Date Posted: 10 April 2023 at 11:53am
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Thank you Kim fir taking care if the results. You are doing fantastic to sort it out and improve it. Looking at my results from yesterday it looks something is wrong. I have lapped Dan Bergonzzi in the first race and I have been almost a lap up in the second race, bur I am behind in in Championship. So have a look to see what us wrong. Probably I should be just behind you in both races. ------------- John Lucian |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 10 April 2023 at 2:52pm
We've worked through it: - In the first race, you did 14 laps, finishing in 10th position. Dan did 13 laps and finished 12th (Tim MacDonald was 11th). I was immediately ahead of you in 9th. The lap times all look reasonable. - Once merged with the slow race, I remained in 9th, but your finish position become 12th and Dan's 18th: Two of the slow race riders were between me and you, and another four (the peloton of fast handcyclists) were between you and Tim, with Dan behind him. In the second race, Dan spent most of the race on my wheel. I followed Russell until lap 11 when he started slowing down, and I saw you up ahead on the same lap. I launched an attack (©2022 Lord Hostis), and got ahead of you, bringing Dan with me. Dan then overtook me on the last lap and beat me conclusively to the finish. - Looking at the results, Dan and I were about 23 seconds ahead of you on lap 13. Slash nipped through for the finish about 5 seconds after us, and caused Tim and you to get the flag, while Dan and I continued to complete another lap. Therefore Dan was 8th, I was 9th, Tim 10th and you were 11th. Again, the lap times all look reasonable, and the video shows Dan and I going through before Slash (and Tim and You) get the flag. - After merging with the slow race, those positions become Dan 9th, me 10th, Tim 16th and you 17th - this time the peloton of fast handcyclists came in between me and Tim, knocking you down the finish order. The http://www.bhpc.org.uk/Data/Sites/1/media/events/events23/01/hillingdon.html" rel="nofollow - SeriesMgr output has the same finish positions, and I don't see an obvious error in the points calculation. Your overall points are a lot lower than Dan's because 18th+9th scores 300 points and 12+17th scores 252.
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Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 10 April 2023 at 3:01pm
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Unrelated to the above, I've spotted a loss of precision in the start time offset when merging the results. The GUI is unhelpfully causing the offset to be rounded to the nearest second when you make changes to the category screen (eg. to put them in a sensible order), which will affect the first lap time of people in the fast race by some consistent fraction of a second. I'll fix this, but it's going to take some time, as I'm going to have to reverse-engineer some GUI code to do it. Meanwhile, if anyone spots any other issues, let me know.
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Posted By: johnlucian
Date Posted: 10 April 2023 at 6:19pm
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Oops, I have missed Dan going past me! I did not expected Dan be faster than you. Congratulations to him! ------------- John Lucian |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 11 April 2023 at 12:42am
This is now fixed. Changing start wave offsets to use millisecond precision throughout was less complicated than I feared, but I had to make changes in a few different places. I've regenerated the merged results using the updated software, and rebuilt the points table.
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Posted By: russellbridge
Date Posted: 11 April 2023 at 10:08pm
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Hi Kim, good races on Sunday - I really enjoyed them! My legs gave up a bit (lot!) in the second race... Tim's asked this on Facebook so I'll relay this on here: In the second race, how come the 5 handcyclists with 21.xxmph are ahead of Tim, John and me with 22.xxmph? Thanks Russ
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Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 11 April 2023 at 11:35pm
Because they've done more laps (this may be less obvious if you've not got "Show every lap" selected).
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Posted By: johnlucian
Date Posted: 11 April 2023 at 11:50pm
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In the past the speed was always the defining number for the finishing order. Because we could have done another lap at the same average speed if the leader have not stopped us doing so. Looks at previous years results. It is not our fault that we were not allowed to do another lap because our speed was faster. I am not so bothered of the results, but you will have the same problems in future races if you do not consider average speed as the finishing order. ------------- John Lucian |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 12 April 2023 at 1:39am
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It was, but that was just the first algorithm I came up with in 2019 based on a non-existent understanding of cycle racing[1] that I've had the niggling feeling might be simple, obvious and wrong ever since - so I wouldn't read anything into that. I was working on the principle that The Nice Mr Sitarski knows a hell of a lot more about scoring races than I do, and that if I could just find a way to feed accurate lap times for both groups into his algorithms at once, everything would be correct, without having to worry about Excel munging the data. (While also making things considerably easier for the time team, and more transparent fr the racers.) I'm not sure if there *is* a fair way to combine the results of multiple criterium races? We really would be better off doing races with a fixed time or number of laps, which is what the software is designed for. But I don't think that actually solves this particular problem, as a rider who manages to cross the line just before the clock ticks over will still get to do another lap. (Is this fair? It doesn't seem unreasonable that getting to the finish line sooner is a Good Thing when trying to win a race...) I don't know what to do now. This evening I've been working on fixing bugs in and improving the performance of the video capture software (which is a CPU hog, and was getting the windows 'Not Responding' treatment at Hillingdon), so I'll finish that, but I'm not touching any more ranking/scoring stuff until I know what the algorithm is actually supposed to be. I've tried searching the web, but merging races isn't a thing that normal clubs do. (I think they're more strict about dividing people into different categories, but that's a bucket of spiders even if everyone was on a boring UCI compliant upwrong for every race.) [1] I like riding bikes. Sometimes I like going fast. And I have an unreasonable tolerance for ****ing around with computers. But I have approximately zero interest in sport, and I appear to have let the Club down badly by not appreciating this was a problem.
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Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 12 April 2023 at 3:04am
You bloody well haven’t!!! Nobody has put more time and effort into the club than you over the last few years, behind scenes and at pretty much every event. What’s happened are a lot of changes from the way the old manual system and race spreadsheet used to handle stuff. It’s so much better and easier for everyone now. This is a change that some won’t like but 99% won’t be bothered - none of us are finely honed athletes. For most of us our events are social gatherings as much as races. For hosting the world championships it may need another look but that’s over a year away. For our purposes it’s absolutely fine as it is. Many thanks for all you do. It is very much appreciated. Alan ------------- |
Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 12 April 2023 at 6:52am
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The other thing to remember is that although we’re all in the overall results as if it were one big time trial, everyone is actually just racing with the people around them (often in different classes). We’ll never know if the people doing 21MPH in the slow race might have done 22MPH if they’d been in the fast race and latched on to the 22MPH group. No software will ever account for that. ------------- |
Posted By: legs_larry
Date Posted: 12 April 2023 at 9:33am
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Wot Al said ^^^^. ------------- ==================== a bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds |
Posted By: Kim
Date Posted: 12 April 2023 at 11:40pm
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Having given the matter due consideration, I'm of the opinion that: CrossMgr's default behaviour of ranking riders by number of laps and then finish time is both the simplest option (we don't need to write any new code) and likely the fairest (to do more laps you have to ride faster and cross the line earlier, rather than holding back to game your average speed). It's probably even some sort of 'correct', given that the software's been used for years to time far more serious cycling events than ours. If the CompSec/committee/AGM comes to a consensus that the ranking algorithm should be something else, I'll endeavour to implement it. Just don't ask me to justify why it works the way it does. I didn't get where I am today by wasting quality geeking-around-with-computers time learning about sports. (Note, however, that queries of the "Are you sure those lap times are correct?", "I thought I was a lap up on Foo" or "Why does 2.34 seconds appear to round up to 2.5 seconds in the HTML output?" nature are always welcome. I want the results to be as good as they possibly can be, and that means tracking down dodgy tag reads, checking the camera output and investigating potential software bugs, all of which benefit from your real-world input. I wouldn't have spotted the start wave offset precision problem if it hadn't been for John's query above, for example.) Obviously merging the results of two race groups is always going to be artificial, as riders aren't physically on the track together. I think it's still useful to have an indication of relative performance, albeit flawed, rather than just adding up points - particularly for those of us who are more interested in construction or beating personal bests than the championship. Meanwhile, I seem to have made some worthwhile improvements to CrossMgrVideo, and fixed a couple of minor bugs. I can't get it to go 'Not Responding' by feeding it simulated race data, which is promising, though in raw tag read throughput terms nothing compares to a couple of dozen riders and assorted unattended helmets loitering around the finish line during a race... |
Posted By: AlanGoodman
Date Posted: 12 April 2023 at 11:50pm
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Perfect. Thanks Kim. 🙂 ------------- |
Posted By: DavidKK
Date Posted: 07 May 2023 at 9:23pm
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Thanks to the long weekend I've managed to find time to sort out a few pictures for you https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAC8PC" rel="nofollow - https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAC8PC . David
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Posted By: russellbridge
Date Posted: 08 May 2023 at 12:19pm
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Amazing set of photos as per usual David. That one of me and Kim sprinting for the line is a cracker. Likewise the Bath photos too... Russ ps David are you OK if I post a like to these two sets of photos on the Facebook BHPC group?
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Posted By: DavidKK
Date Posted: 08 May 2023 at 7:01pm
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I've no problems with you posting the photos on BHPC Facebook group David
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Posted By: LWaB
Date Posted: 08 May 2023 at 9:04pm
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Nicely done photos. Does anybody want to mention to Felix on the Ti trike that his saddle is a couple of cm too high? |