Switching routes on a sportive

nic_77

Does anyone else find it really annoying when people switch routes on a sportive without informing the timekeepers at the finish? What I mean is when a rider is signed up to do a long route but they bail en route and switch to the shorter route.... as it leaves them on top of the leader board with an unrealistic time, making it really difficult to work out how you placed.

Not that a sportive is a race you understand

Now of course the organiser could put more checkpoints in, but I guess that would ramp up their costs... maybe riders should have a different coloured number and early finishers for a long course could be asked to just confirm their distance by showing their speedo?

wiffachip

lots of people sign up to longer routes, but for whatever reason aren't able to get the training miles in, eg illness. or the weather might be awful on the day. So they do the shorter route

seems perfectly acceptable to me, it doesn't affect your time

nic_77

I absolutely agree it doesn't affect my time and I have absolutely no problem with riders switching! However, if they don't tell anyone they appear in the finish list for the longer route with their time for the shorter ride - so they do affect my long ride position!

brin

So if someone signs up for say a 100mile ride and does the shorter 50mile ride in 2 1/2 hours it isn't going to be apparent they have switched rides? Most sportive timing systems accommodate for this happening and adjust time to ride length accordingly.

nic_77

@brin - yes that's exactly the problem. Some I've ridden before have an extra timing mat to check off riders on the long route.... the Etape even has checkpoints to ensure no-one is taking shortcuts (surely no-one would stoop that low!)... but all three I've ridden this year have not and therefore the final positions have been misleading - they were all otherwise well organised events as well:
Evans - KOTD
Wiggle - No Excuses
Kilo to Go - Flat out in the Fens

andy_wrx

nic_77 wrote:

I absolutely agree it doesn't affect my time ...
...they do affect my long ride position!

nic_77 wrote:

Not that a sportive is a race you understand

I think you have it - a sportive is not a race, so your position is irrelevant 8)


Sometimes organisers do have different coloured numbers for the different lengths - but that's because the shorter distances are cheaper and they don't want you paying the cheap price, then doing the long route with more feedstops

danowat

Top of the leaderboard?, its not a race FFS!!!!

ColinT2

I don't think it's a problem - I signed up for the shorter ride but finished up doing the longer "challenging" ride.
I have noticed that 30% who signed up for the longer ride either:-
a/ did the shorter ride or b/ couldn't make it to the event!

nic_77

danowat wrote:

Top of the leaderboard?, its not a race FFS!!!!

Why publish positions at all then? Oh yeah, because everyone likes to check how their efforts compared with other riders

It's not life or death, just mildly irritating.

cougie

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. I'm only interested in my ride - not anyone elses or my position.

fluff.

nic_77 wrote:

danowat wrote:

Top of the leaderboard?, its not a race FFS!!!!

Why publish positions at all then? Oh yeah, because everyone likes to check how their efforts compared with other riders

.

Emphasis mine. Don't care in the slightest here.

chipperleenie

Positions are not allowed to be published. I am sure I have read somewhere that published finishing times are meant to be in alphabetical or rider number order and NOT in order of time. There are no prizes allowed in a sportive for that very reason.

If you want to race then ride a race. If you turn sportives into races then they will get wrapped up in all the safety issues that races need to follow such as lead cars, marshalls etc etc.

58585

Here's a link to BC regs for "non-competitive events":
http://www.britishcycling.org.uk/zuvvi/ ... elines.pdf

I would suppose these events are a relative money-spinner so blind eyes are turned, but if someone is injured and says; hey, you guys are promoting a race, I wouldn't have been going as hard if you weren't publishing results - it'd be interesting to see the outcome.

danowat

Kilo to go regularly flout the rules by posting riders overall positions.

gray700

At the flat out in the fens on Sunday i switched routes from the medium to the short. I was fully intending to do the longer route but the signage was absolute garbage and i took a wrong turn early on which resulted in me doing an extra 10 miles. I didnt really fancy doing 122 miles in that kind of heat and with the possibility of more rubbish signs to contend with.

I half considered going and telling the timekeeper in the hall at the end but then i thought who really cares anyway. Its an organised bike ride with feed stops not a race.

jgsi

chipperleenie wrote:

Positions are not allowed to be published. I am sure I have read somewhere that published finishing times are meant to be in alphabetical or rider number order and NOT in order of time. There are no prizes allowed in a sportive for that very reason.

If you want to race then ride a race. If you turn sportives into races then they will get wrapped up in all the safety issues that races need to follow such as lead cars, marshalls etc etc.

I agree race, then race but some organisers are guilty of such promotion by hiliting meaningless 'results'...
http://www.racetimingsystems.com/public ... aceid=1688

SouthernSportive

Riders who have switched distance are usually quite easy to identify; particularly if you have intermediate timing points to compare splits. Post event, I think we normally manage to spot most of them on our events. A few will always slip through the net though, or be too borderline to make a call on, so it does help a lot if riders let us know about changes at the finish.

The problem is though (and the reason why you shouldn't get too worked up about other individual riders times) is that you really can't guarantee the veracity of any riders time on a sportive other than your own. As organisers, we can't verify anything more than that a rider past through a couple of monitored checkpoints on the course. On most sportive courses, that would still leave countless opportunities for nipping the odd short cut here or there, if you felt so inclined. That's pretty pointless on a non competitive event, granted, but who's to say what anyone who cares a bit too much about their final 'position' might be tempted to do?

Our solution to try and help you put your ride in perspective, is to provide some stats for the whole field. We publish average ride times and percentage spreads of time awards for each course, so you can see how you performed compared to the field as whole. It's probably a more useful gauge in context of a sportive than paying too much attention to other individual times.

sheffieldpaul

That's a great reply Southern Sportive. I know it's not a race but the results are published and I know lots of us copy and paste into excel to sort them by time, it's nice to know how your efforts compared to the others and I'd like to think people, although not racing, are being sporting- it's in the name afterall. An extra checkpoint somewhere in the longer route of a sportive is appreciated. Different coloured numbers are also really good- helps you understand those seemingly fresh legs you see after 100 miles who are actually slow riders on the short routes!

bobh

The odd rider changing rides shouldn't really be a problem. On the Ryedale Rumble we have three rides and timing checks at each feed if you miss a check then you drop down a distance by default and it's automatically picked up at the timing control at the end.

Riders also have a colour coded number and an early arrival of a "red" long route code at a later feed station stands out to the timing team positioned there.

As far as the times are concerned we list them alphabetically, it really should be all about personal achievement. We also organise races for those who want the cutting edge of competition, but of course they have to be structured very differently. There are a number of litmus tests that can be applied to an event that tells a Highway Authority or the Police that it is a race, one of these is the publication of a "result". The other is widespread use of social networks where riders are prone to describe the position that they finished in a sportive. We need to be very careful of what we wish for in all of this as before long Sportives could be under the same sort of pressure to remain on the highway as we are currently experiencing with road races. Not everyone is cycling friendly and there have been some extreme examples of direct action in recent years. Perhaps the greatest danger though lies in activated action through local safety advisory groups that could collectively result in a re-defining of grouped rides on the highway.