My First Sportive / How is it Timed?

markdavidhill

When you stop at a food station, is that period of time included in your overall time?

Thx.

styxd

No. You can roll up to the food station and then stay there eating as many cakes and sandwiches as you can physically manage. Then set off 2 hours later and still smash in 20mph average.

Omar Little

I've been on a couple of sportives where there were timing mats going in and out of main food stop but most dont have this. The ones where it was stopped also gave two times afterwards - an overall time and a rolling time.

Liam 2010

markdavidhill wrote:

When you stop at a food station, is that period of time included in your overall time?

Thx.

Hi Mark,

Some sportives might differ in whether they stop the time at food stations, but most of the sportives I have been one do include the food stop time in your overall time and do not stop the time.

The general rule for most is that the time records continously from the minute you cross the start line to the minute you cross the finish.

You can stop your computer when you're at food stations to get a moving time, but this won't be what the sportive records down, they will record your overall time. From experience this can vastly differ, we got waylaid at a nice food station on the great shakespeare, spent 15-20 mins in there lol.

To give an example, one of my sportives form last summer was.....moving time 7:01....recorded overall time 7:31. That added 31 minutes is down to food and toilet stops, etc.

napoleond

Just time it yourself?

I don't get the hang up with timing at sportives. If you want to compete, race. If you want to time it, use a bike computer/stopwatch. Want to compare your ride with others? Use Strava.
I find it frankly daft that people brag about their time in a sportive but leave out the fact they were stopped 25 minutes at feed stops and had stopped their timer.

In my mind a sportive is a personal challenge, a social ride and a way of finding new routes/riding places you wouldn't normally ride.

markdavidhill

NapoleonD wrote:

Just time it yourself?

I don't get the hang up with timing at sportives. If you want to compete, race. If you want to time it, use a bike computer/stopwatch. Want to compare your ride with others? Use Strava.
I find it frankly daft that people brag about their time in a sportive but leave out the fact they were stopped 25 minutes at feed stops and had stopped their timer.

In my mind a sportive is a personal challenge, a social ride and a way of finding new routes/riding places you wouldn't normally ride.

I can subscribe to that.

marcusjb

NapoleonD wrote:

Just time it yourself?

I don't get the hang up with timing at sportives. If you want to compete, race. If you want to time it, use a bike computer/stopwatch. Want to compare your ride with others? Use Strava.
I find it frankly daft that people brag about their time in a sportive but leave out the fact they were stopped 25 minutes at feed stops and had stopped their timer.

In my mind a sportive is a personal challenge, a social ride and a way of finding new routes/riding places you wouldn't normally ride.

(As usual), very sensible.

And as for anyone who stops their timers when they are eating etc. - that's not really how it works! If it was, I managed a 56 hour PBP last year ignoring the 20 hours I had off the bike!

I'm generally only ever interested in a couple of stats when I ride - moving average speed and total average speed. Both help me calculate how much time I have in hand and how long I might be able to rest at a given stop.

polocini

I organise sportives and I'm interested in people discussing overall timing. I personally can't stand it and wish it was banned. I used chip timing at our first event and it just turned out to be an expensive ball ache. There are so many variables of junctions, traffic lights, motorists etc that a time is meaningless. And don't even get me started on time standards and certs for gold and silver etc.

I've dropped the timing but am using strava instead for climbs. It's much more fun.

Turn up ride your bike and enjoy the route. simple.

AL

spokegeezer

Isn't strava more of an Ego platform than anything else discussed here?

I can't think of anything else more pointless than Strava.

David-Witts

Hi,

Want to compare your ride with others? Use Strava. Really? In Strava, I can compare my ride with the other riders from the club that I'm in, but how do I compare against riders who aren't in the same cycling club?

Thanks for any information?

Davy

Pseudonym

NapoleonD wrote:

Just time it yourself?

I don't get the hang up with timing at sportives. If you want to compete, race. If you want to time it, use a bike computer/stopwatch. Want to compare your ride with others? Use Strava.
I find it frankly daft that people brag about their time in a sportive but leave out the fact they were stopped 25 minutes at feed stops and had stopped their timer.

In my mind a sportive is a personal challenge, a social ride and a way of finding new routes/riding places you wouldn't normally ride.

just about the perfect answer - nothing else to be said.

springtide9

It's generally overall time. As above, if time matters, time yourself.

I've come around to the thinking that if you want to set PB on routes, ride solo or with a small group with that goal in mind.

For Sportives, you've paid a premium to enjoy the hospitality... so why spend 2 mins at a feed station filling bottles and eating your own 'power bars', when you could drink tea and eat WI cake!
I think Sportives are about enjoying the day. If you are interested in times, time yourself and use your average rolling speed...
TBH, if you take advantage of the 'hospitality', I'm sure that any 'resting time' recovery is counteracted by trying to ride after eating lots of rich cake, as opposed to consuming 'synthetic energy' in the form of gels, bars or jelly's.

nferrar

Banning event timing on sportives would get my vote, I'm sure everyone can afford a basic bike computer or at least know how to use a watch which means the only point of event timing is people wanting to be competitive against others which goes against what sportives should be. As has been said, if you want to race then grow some balls and enter a race, not a sportive.

springtide9

nferrar wrote:

Banning event timing on sportives would get my vote, I'm sure everyone can afford a basic bike computer or at least know how to use a watch which means the only point of event timing is people wanting to be competitive against others which goes against what sportives should be. As has been said, if you want to race then grow some balls and enter a race, not a sportive.

There is no need to 'ban' timings.. and the same goes for Audaxes. All what is missing is an understanding on what the overall timing actually means.

I don't get the hang up with timing at sportives. If you want to compete, race. If you want to time it, use a bike computer/stopwatch. Want to compare your ride with others? Use Strava.
I find it frankly daft that people brag about their time in a sportive but leave out the fact they were stopped 25 minutes at feed stops and had stopped their timer.

I actually disagree with the above statement.... because the whole point of a Sportive is that it's NOT a race, it's a personal challenge as well as a social event, so overall time for me has less (or even no) meaning.
I did an event last weekend... I rode for 8 hrs and stopped for 1.5 hrs. In terms of how hard the ride was, it would have been much easier to ride for 9 hrs and stop for 0.5 hrs (for the same overall time). If/when I ride another event, I'll be more interested in reducing the riding time rather than the 'cake eating and chatting time'.

About the timing, there maybe a few people out there who consider the timings as if it was a race, but for most people it's just a discussion metric over a pint in the pub with your mates.
And to anyone who doesn't understand what a Sportive or Audax actually is and might have been impressed with this 'metric', they have no idea in terms of difficulty the difference between riding a 100 mile Sportive in 5 hrs compared to 7 hrs. I really don't understand why people get so 'heated' over Sportive timings.

nferrar

My problem is it adds significantly to the cost and absolutely does cause big groups forming blasting their way through doing through-and-off turns which can be dangerous to other sportive riders who might not have experienced that and aren't sure how to react. If the whole point of 'racing' a sportive is about a personal challenge then why do you need 10+ other people helping you maintain an artificially high average speed?
Take £10 off my entry fee and let me time myself, I can manage pressing a couple of buttons...

markos1963

Why worry about times on a sportive? It's a social event and should be ridden as such. If you care about timing then go and do a TT where it does matter.