Hi folks!
Looking for experienced racers and/or ambitious first-time racers to test a (free) web tool I built that generates full race tactic plans for you based on the course, weather, competitors, your fitness, last year’s race dynamics (where applicable) and more. It also gives you a stem sticker to print out.
This is a passion project that somewhat escalated – built it for my own race at first, but, honestly, noticed pretty soon that this should be helpful to others like me, too. Folks who are very interested in race tactics and like to be well prepared on paper. Dropping in some screenshots here – very much looking forward to hearing what y’all think! Thanks for giving your time
Find it here: flagdrop.cc – no registration needed, free – looking for testers.
Really interesting tool. I’m not a particularly experienced racer – I’m doing my 4th race this Saturday at Tahoe Truckee Gravel – but I’m interested to have any sort of plan going into the race which is more than I could’ve said previously!
Aside from the validity of the advice it provides I did find it occasionally hard to read. Some items are in really small fonts, in particular the green and red dashes for the pro and con lists. Maybe do those in green and red fonts?
Otherwise though it seems cool!
EDIT: it would also be nice to have a way to save more than just the final one page summary so you can go back and revisit the the entire analysis or print it out in some format to get it offline.
Great feedback, I really appreciate it. All taken on board for my next update. Especially the last one, I can see why that would be useful. For now, when you reload the site, it should at least keep your inputs populated and all you’ll need to do is re-attach the gpx, and hit generate again. As the weather changes closer to the race, it might actually give you an adapted plan…
Good luck on Saturday! Let me know how it goes
Ah great point about the weather! I’ll plan to run another simulation closer to the day. In particular for an update with the wind. There are two really windy bits of the course.
Looking forward to seeing how it goes 
I shall report back.
There is so much nuance and uncontrolled chaos in mass start racing that I’d question the ability of any tool to provide much useful guidance beyond the obvious selective spots on the course based on wind and terrain, etc.. But when people think something isn’t possible, that’s usually a sign that you might be onto something cool and innovative. Not much to add other than good luck with it.
I do think the hard part isn’t pointing out the critical aspects of the race or coming up with a general strategy for a rider’s experience or physiology, but translating a strategy into specific execution during a race. It’s easy to say “hold on to the lead pack until you are close to blowing up” in a gravel race, but it takes a lot of experience to figure out what that means during a race.
Thanks grwolf, great point. In my mind this tool prepares you as well as you can be prepared on paper, so that you can then rely on instinct and experience with confidence in the moment. If that makes sense.
In terms of the execution being the hard part – I also agree here. The tool does go into details there, including, for example visualization homework to help psychologically prep for the high pressure moments. And a recon checklist for what to check so you, again, are prepared to react in the moment. Hoping it gets folks to have thought through what they can come race day. I’d love to hear what you think if you did want to give it a go.
Reporting back from the field:
Had my A race Saturday and did well. FTP showed up to play and I took 20min off last year’s time.
I think the FlagDrop app probably helped although I wouldn’t say I executed the plan anything like it was prescribed. But it did give me a great framework to work from and gave me a lot of things to think about in – just the mechanics of racing and pacing and strategy, etc - that I wouldn’t have thought of. My sense of the tool (being, myself, quite inexperienced in racing by comparison to many here) is that it is in fact a great tool for the inexperienced. Sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know and the app helped me understand race planning better even if it didn’t always settle on specific choices that would have been more appropriate for me. Using the app though in combination with this race I learned a ton for the next race.
I think it over prescribed my use of aid stations which cost me a few minutes. I think I could’ve done without two of the four stops I made. It definitely over prescribed my use of power. There is no way I could’ve produced the numbers it was suggesting but in relative terms I more or less followed the same contour as far as when to wait and when to push. For one thing I think when the app suggests any kind of wattage it should be altitude adjusted. The race was at 6000-8000 ft where there is a noticeable drop-off in fitness but the recommended power number seemed to ignore that. I adjusted on my own.
Overall I would recommend this tool for anyone new-ish or intermediate to races and who don’t really know where to start. It was hugely helpful for that. I certainly went in more confident than before and having a plan was helpful even if I had to adjust to more realistic power numbers. Just having an idea about when to chase, when to let people go, when to find a group, when to go solo… it was great having that intel and it felt like it paid off. Its completely possible too that as I get more experienced I could be able to use the tool more to my benefit.
Anyway, very nice job Seb, I think the idea is an interesting one and has potential.
Thank you so much for the report.
20 minutes faster than last year is HUGE. Great to hear Flag Drop might have helped, though it sounds like you also did a step up in fitness.
What you describe is I think the core value idea of this app: To make you as prepared as possible on paper. In my own experience in using it I also found it to be a good teacher – it makes me think about tactics way more.
The specific feedback you give is great. I will make sure altitude is factored in – hopefully that takes care of the power number mismatch. 6000-8000 feet is serious altitude that, by conventional rules of thumb, would need 10-15% down adjustment of your power numbers.
Wishing you the best of luck for the next race, and again – thanks for giving it a try and the great report. I will work hard to make this as useful as possible!
