Victoria Segment Challenge Final Report – Season 5

Hello fellow cycling enthusiasts, another season has come and gone! We’ve finished off the 5th Season in Summer 2024 with a tough challenge up Dean Park, and here are a bunch of the highlights!!

After finishing Season 4, Spring 2024, we jumped in for another 8 weeks of ups and downs, from June 10th to August 4th (well 11th since we ran the last segments two weeks). That’s another 8 weeks of segments, 16 segments total, and as usual a number of QOMs and KOMs were claimed!

Some quick stats:

  • Number signed up: 61
  • Number in the Strava group: over 260
  • Number who rode at least one S5 segment: 52
  • Male:female split: 42:10

Special Recognition – The HardCore!

Once again we set a new road season record with 10 riders who made it out every single week (one more than the record of 9 last season), and I’d be remiss not to give a special shout out to Dan Blackwell, Travis Field, Dave Bitschy, Evan Thomas, Mark Devitt, Rose Aarrestad, Greg Goforth, Jamie Caskenette, Tyler Galts and Zach Mallett for this achievement! (I also made it out each week, but not sure if I should count! πŸ˜‰)

More Neat Stats

At the end of Season 4 I ran a short poll, 15 participated, thank you! Congrats to Nicky who won the $10 Meet Gift Card draw prize!

Always appreciate hearing the feedback, here are some of the more interesting responses:

A surprising number of riders want longer segments…!

Looks like the mix of segments is a good call!

And looks like I’m not too verbose with my weekly updates, glad most of you have been enjoying them. 😁

Some other quick stats – for people who treated it as a competition vs personal challenge, it was nearly evently split, 8/7. 14/15 prefer the mix of existing and new segments (with one preffering the new segments, yay!) 3/4 felt the segments for S4 were all generally safe, and 1/4 thought maybe a few were iffy, but overall safe.

As far as popular and least popular segments in Season 4, both Bear Mtn and Bear Hill came up. For both categories!!! Love ’em or hate ’em!

Consensus is highly in favour of the current categories, scoring system, and most like the bonuses and curses. 3/4 check the results weekly, and the other 1/4 check less frequently.

For prizes, it was interesting to see about a 50/50 split between liking the chance to win stuff vs ‘it’s nice, but not really important’. But there was one question with a 100% agreement, and that was everyone agrees the random draw is preferred (vs placement.)

3/4 prefer the Weekly Update emails to the Strava posts, and just a little interest in adding more social integrations (eg Spond or Discord), so gonna leave that for now.

Thanks again for your feedback on this!!

Here’s a few charts from our Season 5 sign-up as well (note we had 61 people sign up, but a few never joined in – hope to see you next season!!)

Above are our returning riders, and a slightly different question:

That’s an interesting one, I expected a lot more on disc brakes, but glad to see I’m not the only one!

The Series

This season we mixed things up, and the theme was Rider’s Choice, where our participants had the option to suggest segments, and boy did they!!

I was really impressed with the suggestions, and if something ever happens to me, I’d trust Travis Orr and Dave Bitschy to take over the series, as their suggestions ended up in the series most often. Out of the 16 segments, 9 were Rider’s Choice submissions, and I think they really helped shape the season! I was surprised no one suggested any of the segments we’ve used in the past (this was an option for the submissions, if anyone wanted a rematch!), but I really enjoyed all the new segments, and it renewed the spark in me that came about from the original KOMpetition, which was checking out cool new roads and routes. So a big thanks again to everyone who sent in an idea. (And feel free to any time!)

We ventured out a bit further than usual, touching Sooke and out close to the airport in Saanich to wrap up the season with a big climb route of my own invention (that I made up a year ago). We had to revise one segment on Cresswell, as it had been chipsealed that week, but otherwise everything went pretty smoothly.

Everyone who took part gets a big thank you and congrats and I appreciate you for joining in this silly grassroots cycling series, but we have to focus on the top of the leaderboards, and here’s our season end breakdown!

The A’s

Beginning with the female side, unfortunately we only had 3 A riders total this season, but they often made a statement when they did ride! Laura aka The Squaremeat started off strong, but unfortunately had an accident that took her out for the rest of the season, but fortunately she’s doing well. Sofia also had some awesome rides, but was away kicking butt at various international disc golf tournaments, and Emma came in for the final week and blew everyone’s socks off! So great when we see these riders, hopefully we see them more in the Gravel Edition!

Our final podium is:

  1. Sofia Donnecke (215pts)
  2. The Squaremeat (100pts)
  3. Emma Skaug (55pts)

Over on the Open side, we had another record turn-out and an exceptionally competitive field! Props to Travis F and Glennon for joining me as part of Team B+, moving up from B to A for this season! Julian, Carson, Erik, Rich and Leo all logged some fantastic times, late-comer Brennen as well, and Louis was just off the final podium (and likely would have won the series if he hadn’t missed a week, similar situation with Julian who was in 2nd going into the final week, but wasn’t able to hit the segments), but our final podium rewards consistency, and that leaves us with these two fine riders (and myself!):

  1. Travis Field (709pts)
  2. Vegan Dave Shishkoff (677pts)
  3. Dan Blackwell (655pts)

The B’s

Similar to the A’s, our Female B category was low this season, with Renata being the lone rider, but all credit to her for holding up category, and hopefully we’ll see more of our B women back next season!

Our final Female B podium is:

  1. Renata Troc (705pts)

The Open B field is usually our largest, but with three of us joining the A’s, there were 15 left duking it out! Todd, Travis O, Josh, Joel C and Joel W were constantly in the action, but Mark got ahead by 30pts to secure 3rd, Evan’s consistent season got him 2nd, and Dave B dropped a ton of big watts to claim 1st by a pretty hefty margin, well done!

  1. Dave Bitschy (763pts)
  2. Evan Thomas (686pts)
  3. Mark Devitt (656pts)

The C’s

As always our female category had a great turnout, and Bonnie, Lynn and Lani put in great rides, but Jane and Kristin claimed the two lower podium spots, and newcomer Rose both posted consistently fast times, and also made it out each week, putting her on the top step, nicely done!

  1. Rose Aarrestad (737pts)
  2. Kristin Rooker πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡² (591pts)
  3. Jane Logan (486pts)

Over with the guys, Tyler G, Kit, Quinn and Matthew had to settle with being the ‘best of the rest’ in this nail-biter of a season, as only a few points separated 1st-3rd coming into the final week!! But in the end Zach took the series overall, but only by 4pts!! I don’t believe we’ve had a closer finish! Jamie was 2nd, and Greg just barely behind in 3rd, fantastic season!!

Out of 12 riders, here’s our Top 3:

  1. Zach Mallett (746pts)
  2. Jamie Caskenette (742pts)
  3. Greg Goforth (735pts)

Phew – what an awesome season!!

Note in the scoring sheet the tabs at the bottom to flip between overall and individual weeks. If a PDF is preferred, simply click here! Here is the full link to the GoogleDoc. (You can view the Notes each week for the Bonus and Curse details, which doesn’t show up in the table below.)

We have very generous event supporters, so as always a huge thank-you to the businesses and groups below for contributing to ourΒ  Season 5 draw prizes!

Each week we gave away some of this awesome swag by random draw!

Finishing Up!

If anyone wants to re-live Season 5, here’s an archive of all the segments.

Thanks so much to all who took part, from our riders to our supporters, it’s a pretty cool little community we’ve got here! It was really fun to do the Rider’s Choice theme, and hear from those who are passionate and invested in the series, and get to share that with everyone else. And as mentioned, they got me on some new roads, and found some new routes and hills. Not to mention feeling inspired by seeing so many of you crush those segments, or just complete them (that last one up Dean was a brute!!) Pretty fun stuff. πŸ’–

As this is a blog post, please do feel free to add a comment below – it’s great hearing what you enjoy about the series, and who knows, might inspire someone else to join in as well!

See you out there for Season 6 (and beyond!!)

– Dave

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