Wahoo/RGT Cycling: NorCal Tue Niter: Cañada College Circuit
TUESDAYS 6 PM PACIFIC
20 KM, MORE OR LESS
USA Cycling announced E-Cycling Nationals will return to RGT in Feb 2023.
This week is a tough one!
The Cañada College circuit featured as a collegiate race back in the day, and has been a regular on the Palo Alto Noon Ride for decades. This week we feature it on the NorCal Tue Niter.
We’ve had a string of flat or mostly flat courses, and this week the climbers get their chance. It’s really more about you and the course over the other riders. Whatever happens in the race, you’re guaranteed a good workout this week!
There’s a long schedule of events on the menu for the rest of this year, with a mix of climbing and flats, crits and road races, based on IRL race routes, “century” ride routes, and training routes. This week is on the extreme climbing end of our spectrum. Next week we return to the flat-lands, with a criterium in San Lois Obispo, home of another California collegiate cycling powerhouse.
If you love short climbs, make sure to join this one, since the vast majority of the courses in the series are not in this class. In fact, nothing on Zwift is quite like this course, either. Way too much fun for 20 km…
That was really hard… we had 15 starters, 14 finishers, With Brian Kellison taking the overall. There was twitch streaming by BrianKellison and BeatsGamesLife.
Next week is the San Luis Obispo Criterium, a flat circuit in the central coast college town.
Too bad!
RGT is a great racing platform, but it really needs more racers, and with more racers will come more events, so there’s no more obvious holes in the community racing calendar.
In the western US weekday evenings, we really have this series, and Colorado Thursdays (6:20 pm or 6:30 pm Pacific).
For eastern US evenings, there’s really nothing, except for the occasional OTR stage, since the preceding events are a bit late. OTR run their stage races with 3 events per day to cover multiple time zones, but the only one which gets really good turnout is the Europe version. Also the ongoing ARL series has events which align with the eastern time zone. But neither of these is a weekly series.
In Europe there’s a lot more choice – check out RGTDB.
After last week’s monster climbing route, back to the (relative) flatlands with the San Luis Obispo Criterium, a circuit in downtown SLO, best known as the site of Cal Poly, a traditional powerhouse of collegiate cycling.
This week the NorCal Tue Niter takes on a 20 km loop which is part of the 100 mile Solvang Century Ride circuit. This popular early season ride is many riders’ first 100-miler of the year. The circuit, near Orcutt, features light climbing. RGTDb
This week we do the finale of the Mount Hamilton Road Race… the IRL race is 100 km over the Mt Hamilton summit, a 30 km climb gaining over 1300 meters. But we’ll skip all of that and jump straight to the final 20 km into Livermore: finishing with a fast and slightly technical descent into the flat sprint for the line.
This week is 3 laps of a fun, rolling circuit around the Angel Island perimeter road. Angel Island is in the San Francisco Bay between San Francisco, Oakland, and Tiburon. Formerly an immigration center (“the Ellis Island of the Pacific”) and a military base, it’s now a park, accessible only by water. It’s popular to take the ferry to the island and ride bikes around the paved (but rough) perimeter road, or the hillier, unpaved road further inland.
It’s rolling terrain with the most notable climb at the old East Garrison, now mostly in ruins.
We previously raced this the other direction: this time we go clockwise.
I’m not aware of any IRL bike races on the course, but in RGT, permits and logistics are a non-issue.
Count me in! A benefit of sleeping through my am workout is I’m free to take this week’s race on 3 laps up those rollers looks like a good MAP replacement race.
Would you perhaps have a magic road link so I could pre-ride the course as warmup? I’ve done Paradise Loop IRL (in pouring rain, so was not in heaven) but never made it across to Angel Island
This week’s NorCal Tue Niter: the Space Country Classic at Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the central coast of California. This is a shortened version of the circuit to fit in with the NorCal Tue Niter 20 km target distance.
The circuit is unusual in that often there’s a climb of and decent of a hill. This route has a descent followed by a climb, with most of the circuit on a plateau.
This week on the NorCal Tue Niter: the Chico Airport Crit. This is a standard, time-proven, flat 4-corner 1 km course, which may seem superficially dull, but always makes for solid racing.
Chico is in the central valley, at the Sierra Foothills, and one of California’s agricultural centers.
BTW, Tue is when RGT releases it’s steering option (steering left and right in a lane for drafting or moving up) – “A” steers left, “D” steers right, or use the app or electronic steering hardware. So this is a chance to try that out in a race!
This week on a Valentine’s Day edition of the NorCal Tue Niter, a fantasy course I consider a lot of fun, “the Spirograph.” To add to the effect, I’ve boosted the number of bots this week, as well, keeping our tried-and-true range of 80-230 watts.
With the added bots, everyone should have wheels to follow if they wish.
And a reminder that RGT now has steering, so those who’ve not used this yet will want to practice a bit beforehand… for example the airport real road is a good option. It adds a lot to the racing tactics.
3 laps up those rollers looks like a good MAP replacement race.
