RideLondon: more controversy and confusion as rider times will be paused at feed stations

As I said below, anyone who is interested in their time is recording it themselves anyway, so they can do what they want - including both elapsed and moving time and make their excuses accordingly. If only there was a puncture option.

For the casual rider who has a passing interest, stopping the clock will seem perfectly sensible and relieve any minor sense of injustice.

In any case, I'd have thought that competitors participants who were in it for bragging rights counted on Strava. Why do the event organisers need or want rankings when it is officially not competitive? Or is this all just their way of messaging to encourage people to take sensible rest breaks?

they dont publish rankings, you just get given a time, with breakdowns on the times you passed timing loops around the course, so you can see how your pacing went, and it enables friends/family to follow your progress via the app/online.

the purpose of pausing the timing at some of these rest stops I think will become much more obvious post event. just take it as read riders who do stop, might be spending considerably more time at them than they anticipate.

because normally the official timing is just the time it takes you from the start line to the finish line. It works off an RFID chip attached to your rider numbers that you attach to your bike and helmet, so when you pass over basically a cable they tape to the road it records the time you passed it. So they wont really "pause" the timing, youll simply ride over one of these cables on entry & exit to these feed zones and theyll just subtract the time you spend in between off your total completion time.

sportives like this are all inclusive, Ride London has in the past been a bit more picky about riders it chooses as its generally oversubscribed (not sure this edition is though given you can still pick up charity spaces to ride) and it tries to socially engineer the mix of abilities and riders, so its not all about ultra fast mamil club riders.

and its not a race, people dont treat it as a race, they might want to set the best time they can as a goal, or get bragging rights over their friends and that might lead to some people riding in a way thats more likely to cause crashes in groups of riders, as theyll start taking racing lines through corners, divebombing you into corners, trying to grab max aero benefit from you, tailgating etc etc which is something you only get on closed road sportives ime.

but the majority of people are generally relaxed and sensible about how they will ride it and just want to get to the finish

IanMSpencer wrote:

though my cynical view of the organisers is that they will use this as an excuse for their poor organisation ("We are sorry that you had to queue 90 minutes for a toilet, but please note it did not affect your official time, so what's the problem? Yours condescendingly, Brasher Jnr.")

Exactly that, my cynicism of this move is the same, the Chipping Ongar stop is literally described as just the High street, which the route also passes through I guess, how is that going to work at all with thousands of cyclists stopped plus feed zone,bike parked,loos, mechanics pedestrians wandering around and riders riding through ?

I think it's absolutely a preemptive ppo move as a well we told you it wasnt a race and your timing was stopped, so sorry you spent 2hrs stuck in Chipping Ongar queuing for a loo but what's the big deal. And bizarrely, as why would you even do this, the guide references a relax and refuel spot at a pub only 2 miles further up the road from the official Chipping Ongar stop, where your timing wont stop I guess. But its like they clearly know some of these stops arent going to work.

I kind of feel sorry for some of the riders as you can see the excitement alot are getting now they have their rider packs and it just feels like its going to be a horrendous experience for alot of them.

asmallsol wrote:

Looking at headlines online, big money is up for grabs, so it is in fact a race.

I think you may be confusing the sportive with the women's professional race that runs alongside it (or rather, vice versa).

Surreyrider wrote:

Why is this even a story?

Because there's a limited amount of material to generate stories on a cycling site.

Surreyrider wrote:

Why has Road CC headlined it "controversy"? 

I guess because there has been some (albeit limited) controversy, per the tweets referenced. And that's what the article's about.

They're pathetically inventive then. There are loads of stories they could write if they used a bit of imagination and nous. 

There is no controversy. My Garmin has a pause function, Strava uses moving time but it's easy to see elapsed time. 

So as I said before why is this even a story?

Surreyrider wrote:

There is no controversy. My Garmin has a pause function, Strava uses moving time but it's easy to see elapsed time.

You're confusing whether there should be a controversy (or whether you think there should be one) with whether there is one.

It appears that theres quite a lot of comment and engagement on it, so that seems like a story to me. 

People seem to want to comment on whether there'll be weather

The people who care about speeds and time likely wont be stopping anyway, this is far more a not so subtle way of acknowledging those that do stop at Felsted and Chipping Ongar specifically are probably going to be spending way longer than they expect or want there.

which brings it's own issues like cool down, energy crashing etc but they are trying to take away the implicit time pressure of losing large chunks of time at a stop as even the slowest rider will still have a goal time to complete in.

I mean there are still cut off times on the route so you cant really afford to hang about, but I reckon we will be hearing horror stories post ride of people getting stuck for an hour or more in worst cases at these stops, just because they arent big enough to cope with the volume of riders.

Generally agree - the one point you miss (at least on my 2 times) is that RideLondon feedstations are massively congested so you queue to park your bike, queue to get your flapjack and fluids then queue to get out again.  Leith (or was it Box) hills feedstop was a nightmare.

A quick stop is pretty hard especially in the middle start groups.

The marathon guy on twitter missed the point that running feed stops and cycling feed stops are very different things imo.

Can you imagine them setting up a long table with water in cups for riders to attempt to grab whilst moving

As I interpret the guide though ONLY Felsted and Chipping Ongar are welfare stops where times are paused, and I expect that's because neither location is remotely sized to cope with a normal sized sportive, let alone something like this. Expect congestion at those stops to be the biggest complaints from most riders post event.

If congested there might be a crush to get to the timing gate at the stop entrance !