Racing season 21

dahat · 07-01-2021 11:39am #1

For those involved or with more knowledge than me any estimate when there may be racing in Ireland?

March is a no go for me & in terms of training to a start date maybe May?

This new variant could kill all non elite sport for a long time this year.

G1032 · 07-01-2021 8:23pm

I'd say we haven't a snowballs chance in hell of seeing a race before June.
I've no more knowledge that yourself I'd imagine but I just can't see any racing going ahead.
I'm going to keep training away anyway but obviously without a specific start date in mind.

wirelessdude01 · 07-01-2021 8:27pm

June/July/August could be possible.

Bambaata · 07-01-2021 9:02pm

I expect nothing before mid to late summer, perhaps July/August. Any season at all would be great, even 6-8 weeks of it!

I keep saying this to myself anyway when i realise i havent started any training yet

Euppy · 07-01-2021 9:21pm

I hope that Cycling Ireland would push for the ability to hold TT races, and that race organisers would be willing to run some more.

Big bunch cycling any time soon is a hard sell in my eyes

07Lapierre · 07-01-2021 9:55pm

Small club races? Possible in June,July,August? But who knows...we could be in level 5 no. 4 by then!

dahat · 07-01-2021 10:43pm

Regional club leagues with limited numbers could be possible but it depends on the buy in from stakeholders as well.

CramCycle · 08-01-2021 12:48am

Talking to the virologists in work, it really depends on how safe the government play it. People don't seem to realise that the vaccine even at wide spread coverage might not put an end to restrictions if we play it safe, until blanket coverage is achieved, we should be cautious.

In reality, I see local club Strava TT leagues and Zwift leagues for the immediate future, at least till summer. Maybe real TT races over the summer, and a return to real racing in time for the CX season.

Personally, having talked to a friend who manages one of the private testing labs, the Ct numbers (indicative of viral load in laymans terms), have lowered in a large subset of people who were asymptomatic since mid December (basically means they had higher amounts of virus spreading from them). This fits in with Cillian de Gascun being way off the mark and the more virulent strains being quite embedded in the population since mid December.

The Vaccines are great but the fear of long covid has me playing it cautious, even if its allowed earlier, unless things change drastically, I won't be doing much past Strava KOMs for many months. I say this as someone who was out at Mondello and organising Club league races in the middle of last year. I was happy that the viral load in the outdoors was simply not a factor for infection rates. With the current strains showing Ct values >2 lower, I will wait until the epidemiology analyses it, I'll play it safe. Gridded starts and restricted numbers might make it far safer but until the data comes in, I'll wait it out.

For clarity, I manage a lab, I am not a virologist or an epidemiologist and my views are my own and just playing off the back off socially distant water cooler talk. I am happy to say I could be completely wrong.

daragh_ · 08-01-2021 10:50am

Hmmm. Time to reset the training to be more TT Focused?

ednwireland · 08-01-2021 10:51am

CramCycle wrote: »

Talking to the virologists in work, it really depends on how safe the government play it. People don't seem to realise that the vaccine even at wide spread coverage might not put an end to restrictions if we play it safe, until blanket coverage is achieved, we should be cautious.

funny that i was having a very similar discussion with a work colleague yesterday.
i dont see any change in restrictions in 2021 hopefully summer gives us some respite (i don't work in any medical field so my opinion is totally irrelevant !)

nilhg · 08-01-2021 11:00am

Listening to Leo Varadkar and Paschal Donohue say business should be prepared to stay shut till the end of March and the seeing UK abandon any effort to run state exams in June (can the LC be far behind?) has taken the wind out of my sails big time. So much depends on the roll out of the vaccines and what attitude the health authorities take as the various age groups are done, will there be a general relaxation of restrictions once all the 60+ age group are done or 50+ aor even younger?

I'll be racing mostly with the IVCA so I'd expect a more cautious attitude there than maybe CI will take.

lennymc · 08-01-2021 11:27am

nilhg wrote: »

I'll be racing mostly with the IVCA so I'd expect a more cautious attitude there than maybe CI will take.

what is the latest with ivca - i had planned on racing with them last year, but then covid, but havent heard anything in relation to this year.

Whyner · 08-01-2021 11:32am

Depressing thread

Time to renovate the pain cave

nilhg · 08-01-2021 11:40am

lennymc wrote: »

what is the latest with ivca - i had planned on racing with them last year, but then covid, but havent heard anything in relation to this year.

I'm only a very ordinary member but the plan for 2021 was to affiliate with CI and run the IVCA schedule as a large club league, anyone riding would need at least a CI LC licence.

I haven't heard anything since end of last season so I'm presuming that there were no unexpected hitches and we'll be good to go once the covid situation allows.

dahat · 08-01-2021 11:45am

Whyner wrote: »

Depressing thread

Time to renovate the pain cave

I’ve got a half decent one now but thread is still depressing.

Looks like I may need to reassess my coaching if things don’t improve around May.

lennymc · 08-01-2021 11:46am

nilhg wrote: »

I'm only a very ordinary member but the plan for 2021 was to affiliate with CI and run the IVCA schedule as a large club league, anyone riding would need at least a CI LC licence.

I haven't heard anything since end of last season so I'm presuming that there were no unexpected hitches and we'll be good to go once the covid situation allows.

Thanks for that - I'm also only a very ordinary member. Would make sense I guess.

Macy0161 · 08-01-2021 12:13pm

Went full on with the mancave since full lockdown, for training and drinking!

I've the club open race in mid-June as the end of my plan in TrainerRoad plan builder, but am not optimistic.

I think a lot miss the point that while the old and those with underlying conditions are most vulnerable, it doesn't mean everyone else is zero risk. So I don't expect things back to "normal" until vaccine levels are up to effective levels, which possibly may be higher with the new variants than was initially expected.

I'd share the fear of getting long covid myself, having seen the impact of it on someone a similar age. While maybe not as fit me, they weren't unfit (had a physical job) and weren't overweight. He had it in March, up to and including ICU, and they're still f*cked. I don't know whether it's the winter period, bubble over christmas, but I'm much more wary now.

I went with an Open race licence, but was keeping an eye on the IVCA to see did they open membership - it doesn't appear to have been updated in months?

JimmiesRustled · 08-01-2021 12:17pm

dahat wrote: »

I’ve got a half decent one now but thread is still depressing.

Looks like I may need to reassess my coaching if things don’t improve around May.

Base training all season long

On a slightly different note, it might be a good time to dial in what works and what doesn't. All riders respond to different levels on intensity and duration differently. I know lads that would be able to put in 6-8 hours a week and still rip the legs off everyone around them and others putting in 15 hours a week just to keep up.

For me anyway it'll be a bit of trial and error to try and figure out what works best. Reassess every few months to see where things stand and change it up if required. I'm giving Xert a shot with the recommended workouts based on their version of TSS (XSS). If it works it works. If it doesn't the worst of it will be getting dropped in Zwift races.

daragh_ · 08-01-2021 12:46pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

I went with an Open race licence, but was keeping an eye on the IVCA to see did they open membership - it doesn't appear to have been updated in months?

AFAIK closed to new members for the moment. A few of my Club mates have tried to join with no success.

Macy0161 · 08-01-2021 1:35pm

daragh_ wrote: »

AFAIK closed to new members for the moment. A few of my Club mates have tried to join with no success.

Missed the deadline in 2019 for 2020 by a couple of days. tbh fair enough in the circumstances.

lennymc · 08-01-2021 1:39pm

Macy0161 wrote: »

Missed the deadline in 2019 for 2020 by a couple of days. tbh fair enough in the circumstances.

I would imagine it would be closed until the whole covid thing blows over

daragh_ · 08-01-2021 1:57pm

lennymc wrote: »

I would imagine it would be closed until the whole covid thing blows over

Yep. Will be a while before I get to see you vanish up the road :rolleyes:

lennymc · 08-01-2021 2:08pm

daragh_ wrote: »

Yep. Will be a while before I get to see you vanish up the road :rolleyes:

it will most certainly be a while before anyone sees me vanishing up the road - does going out the back count as vanishing up the road?

harringtonp · 09-01-2021 4:41pm

CramCycle wrote: »

In reality, I see local club Strava TT leagues and Zwift leagues for the immediate future, at least till summer. Maybe real TT races over the summer, and a return to real racing in time for the CX season.

Personally, having talked to a friend who manages one of the private testing labs, the Ct numbers (indicative of viral load in laymans terms), have lowered in a large subset of people who were asymptomatic since mid December (basically means they had higher amounts of virus spreading from them). This fits in with Cillian de Gascun being way off the mark and the more virulent strains being quite embedded in the population since mid December.

That's interesting. It would be useful if they gave people a number when they test positive rather a "true" boolean value.

And I wouldn't agree with your take on the race schedule... you can buy me a pint if you're wrong and we meet in person at a race over the summer :-)

And the reasoning is that we all suffer from the everlasting doom and boom effect. Covid is bad now but the more of it there is around the less there will be afterwards. This peak is already worse than last springs peak and it's earlier in the year too. When the curve does go down there will be less people to get infected on the next rise due to a combination of previous infections and vaccination.

Considering this and the gradual tendency over time towards less restrictive measures for a give case count (living with covid), its hard to see how there could be less racing than last year and there was a late summer season last year.

Even though its hard to imagine beyond the current doom and gloom, I would even suspect there will be a lot more racing and events than last year rather than just a bit more.

This phase is bad (in Ireland) but I'd bet on it being the last of it, the last big bang so as to speak. I'm not saying it will disappear but come March we will be talking very manageable levels from there on in.

Raymzor · 09-01-2021 6:00pm

harringtonp wrote: »

That's interesting. It would be useful if they gave people a number when they test positive rather a "true" boolean value.

And I wouldn't agree with your take on the race schedule... you can buy me a pint if you're wrong and we meet in person at a race over the summer :-)

And the reasoning is that we all suffer from the everlasting doom and boom effect. Covid is bad now but the more of it there is around the less there will be afterwards. This peak is already worse than last springs peak and it's earlier in the year too. When the curve does go down there will be less people to get infected on the next rise due to a combination of previous infections and vaccination.

Considering this and the gradual tendency over time towards less restrictive measures for a give case count (living with covid), its hard to see how there could be less racing than last year and there was a late summer season last year.

Even though its hard to imagine beyond the current doom and gloom, I would even suspect there will be a lot more racing and events than last year rather than just a bit more.

This phase is bad (in Ireland) but I'd bet on it being the last of it, the last big bang so as to speak. I'm not saying it will disappear but come March we will be talking very manageable levels from there on in.

I agree with your views above. Unfortunately it took a 7 week full lockdown followed by a 5 week level 3 type lockdown for racing to be viable in 2020.

CramCycle · 09-01-2021 6:11pm

harringtonp wrote: »

That's interesting. It would be useful if they gave people a number when they test positive rather a "true" boolean value.

I would disagree, as the number could be indicative of alot of things and with all the CT nuts out there claiming a high Ct value is not a real positive. You would see people jumping on, well its a false positive (incredibly rare, false negatives are far more likely), well the number is so high I must be over the hump of it so I don't need to wait two weeks and so on. Some people will jump on any justification to get around something and regrettably, while I would have agreed with this type of rationale in the past, there is too much BS floating around for anyone to be trusted to do what they are meant to if given the true number.

harringtonp · 09-01-2021 6:24pm

CramCycle wrote: »

I would disagree, as the number could be indicative of alot of things and with all the CT nuts out there claiming a high Ct value is not a real positive. You would see people jumping on, well its a false positive (incredibly rare, false negatives are far more likely), well the number is so high I must be over the hump of it so I don't need to wait two weeks and so on. Some people will jump on any justification to get around something and regrettably, while I would have agreed with this type of rationale in the past, there is too much BS floating around for anyone to be trusted to do what they are meant to if given the true number.

Take your point. Except people can ignore it all anyway... Reject the close contact call, block HSE reminder texts, not tell family or friends, pretend it all never happened.

Those who want to do the right thing will do it regardless of a number, those who don't won't .

Weepsie · 09-01-2021 7:03pm

We have an exhausted and overstretched health service too. Any serious competitive sporting event tends to require some form of medical assistance.

You could be testing the good will of certain services if we start to plan for events the moment restrictions are lifted and things look vaguely normal again. And that's for more than just cycling events.

Macy0161 · 10-01-2021 11:59pm

harringtonp wrote: »

And the reasoning is that we all suffer from the everlasting doom and boom effect. Covid is bad now but the more of it there is around the less there will be afterwards. This peak is already worse than last springs peak and it's earlier in the year too. When the curve does go down there will be less people to get infected on the next rise due to a combination of previous infections and vaccination.

I think we'll be waiting for widespread vaccination. There's no reliable antibody test, at least that establishes immunity. We're currently not testing anyone but the symptomatic (and in wave 1, we weren't even testing all the symptomatic). So I don't see previous infection levels coming into play at all.

It also assumes the next variants don't negatively impact on the effectiveness of the vaccines. There's already question marks on the oxford vaccine because of the uk and saf variants as I understand it, and the higher transmission rates mean we need a higher vaccine up take of the current ones for the same level of effectiveness.

Hopefully you're more in line with what happens than I am though!

Raymzor · 06-02-2021 10:32pm

dahat wrote: »

For those involved or with more knowledge than me any estimate when there may be racing in Ireland?

March is a no go for me & in terms of training to a start date maybe May?

This new variant could kill all non elite sport for a long time this year.

Any new views on this one. I could use some motivation!!!

wirelessdude01 · 06-02-2021 10:45pm

Raymzor wrote: »

Any new views on this one. I could use some motivation!!!

Mid May is the rumour but realistically I think mid July.

Racing season 21

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