Block Pass

jezzasnr

Being an absolute fresh faced virgin to the delights of racing, just wondered what the general thoughts are regarding block passing. ie. shoving yourself up the inside line to the extent that you force your target to stop as their way is blocked, and allowing you to pass using the slight advantage of the little momentum that you've carried into the corner.
Now, i can see a case for this at the sharp end of a hotly contested race, but is it frowned upon when nearer the back and essentially it's not going to trouble the overall standings?
It's been emphasized by commissaries that we should all give each other respect, and particularly be aware of leaders when you are about to get lapped, but it still happened a couple of times on Sunday, once on the opening lap when a large group had formed at a bottleneck on the opening lap & a rider crunched his way through on the inside, only to get passed again by the fitter riders once the course opened up and pedaling was involved again.
Or should i just MTFU, all's fair in love & racing.

tgotb

I think a certain level of blocking is acceptable in cyclocross, between riders who are actually competing against each other (ie on the same lap). I've certainly closed the door on other riders at corners, and had the door closed on me, with no complaint in either case. I think that so long as you're riding a vaguely reasonable line, if you end up impeding a rider because part of your bike is in front of him, that's generally fine. Shoving your way up the inside of a bunch of "jammed" riders who are waiting to get past a bottleneck is not something I'd do, though we've all seen it happen.

One thing I do feel strongly about though, is uniformity of rule observance right through the field. So, if a given move is acceptable at the front, it should also be acceptable further back. That doesn't mean the leader can cut up lapped riders and cause them to wipe out, but it does mean that the two riders battling for 40th place should be able to pull the same moves on each other (if they have the bike handling skills) as the riders battling for 1st.

devhads

Speaking as someone who is always racing towards the back of the field I'd say it makes absolutely no difference where you are in the race. We're all having a race and if you're not going to try and make up a place or two with those type of moves then there's not much point doing it at all. I did slightly block a guy on the last lap at the weekend, racing to be first to a bit of a funnel which I knew would be important to beat him, I got there slightly ahead so he had to brake, but that's just racing. We had a bit of a chat about it after and it wasn't a problem.

I agree that pushing up the inside at a bottleneck is a bit much. As this is most likely to happen early in the race it may be riders that feel a bit peeved about their gridding position or are not regular league riders and haven't been gridded. It's not something I'd ever do. In the race on Saturday the gridding was a bit strange as it was not the usual league format and I was for some reason gridded on the third row with a fair few quicker riders behind. Nobody 'pushed in' at the first bottleneck, but plenty passed me on the first lap.

Incidentally I tried on a couple of occasions to overtake on an inside line on Saturday but it didn't work. I got level as we came out of the corner but I'd had to scrub more speed off so the other rider carried more speed on the tape-tape line and pulled away again. I wouldn't say I was trying to block, just trying something different.

cyclingsheep

Yep, agree with the above. I think so long as you're not giving the guy a shove, putting your nose up the inside is just racing, they could equally shut the door in your face if the had the inclination. Last year I had a guy try and carry more speed than me into a corner as I was already turning, I didn't change my line and his front wheel hit my back and he hit the deck. We chatted about it afterwards and he confessed to trying to scare me off my line and accepted the resultant crash as part of the risk of his manoeuvre. There's been many times I've tried to go up the inside only to have to brake because the guy in front has closed the door, it's part of the fun of racing and part of why I love it. Apparently it is a lot more aggressive on the continent but don't know from personal experience.