I have been racing some of these races lately as a B. I notice that B starts 1 min before A in all races regardless. The experienced racers know that this is too little, and base the tactics on letting the As catch the Bs and hope some of the Bs can stay with the As. This is a clear sign that the time gap must be longer.
By looking at the race results for Chase Race with Category Enforcement, the start list is almost flipped around in the result list. IMO a good chase race is when all categories fight to catch the next category in the final kms. This is not possible with the current setup.
Could it be possible to adjust the time gap between the categories based on the racecourse maybe?
I have done some of these recently in the C category. It’s a similar story there. The C group just cruises along at about 2.5 w/kg waiting for the B group to catch. Then some of the C’s try to grab onto the passing B’s. That usually seems to happen at about the half way point of the race.
Low-level B here. I agree it feels like 1 min gap is too short but then again as a lower B I’m used to losing and the categories are very broad. Not much to do about that, it’s just part of the game. IMO, it seems like the Rhino Crash series had those time gaps a bit more dialed in where sometimes C’s and D’s would actually win and A’s would come tearing through the B’s around the same time B’s would catch the C’s, etc. Total chaos, as it should be.
This week’s course was flat-ish (I didn’t race it) so there was probably a real chance to latch on to faster groups passing through.
Last week’s course with the Reverse Hilly KOM had the A’s catching a lot of the B’s mid-climb and there’s no chance to grab on in that situation. I think it was a worst case scenario for the lower B’s. Faster B’s might have been through the climb already and then had a chance to hang onto the A’s. C’s had such a big gap that my group of B’s never saw a single one. At the finish, we were still 45s back from the nearest C who looked to have ridden mostly solo @ 2.5w/kg.
Ultimately every race is different though. Hard to please everyone. Thankfully I’m great at losing!
I’ve been enjoying these lately, good threshold ride, calm start and oddly scoring big ranking gains out of nowhere.
Last week the A’s caught the B’s within 4mins, we had not made it to the Italian village before being caught. A few B’s stayed with the A’s over the climb but the B’s ended up getting dropped and all finishing together… about 2 mins down on the A’s.
Today, I raced lunch time and the A caught the B about 15mins in, as they were caught on the downhill the A’s couldn’t break away so we blobbed up till the climb out in Surrey hills and that split everyone.
It does need to looking at to make it more competitive.
IRL chase races, if they run as a series, usually have their start intervals tweaked as necessary each time to try and make sure everyone comes together at the end, and there’s a chance for strong riders from any group to win.
The organisers of these races should be doing the same if they want these races to succeed and be attractive to those in B/C/D.
I’m guessing that the problem is that these timings were originally set based on the premise that there’d be some A’s in the B cat (and B’s in C and everyone and his dog in D) pushing the paces of each group higher than it should be? Those gaps worked well THEN, but now that people are forced into the correct(-ish) category, the timings need to be reviewed to take account of the new paces - bigger gaps all round I’d guess.
I’ve done two as C category. First one A’s caught the B’s pretty early, then what remained of that steam rolled through C’s at about 20 mins with only a few C’s catching on. Then a second group mainly B’s pushed past us a couple minutes later. The second race was interesting. The C’s made a strong team of about 9 players, having dropped two early on. We stayed together and regrouped quickly after any climbs. Pushed hard all the way to the end. A’s caught the B’s as you would expect, but we managed to hold them off with about 45 seconds to spare at the finish. There weren’t any D’s. Magnificent 8, a flatter course and the A’s didn’t have big watt numbers. Might be interesting to see this with a 3 minutes spread between each group. With only a one minute Gap, I don’t see too many B’s holding off an A group. B’s push too hard and they will just drop riders, which A’s can use to bridge and pass.
Whoever provided that answer is not reviewing what is happening with the current races,
As I mentioned, the As caught the B group in 4 mins the other week in Watopia
They did it in 15 mins on Wednesday in London.
The closest it has been was on wandering flats a good few weeks back & the B’s were caught on the climb up to the village 5-6km out.
The starting delay needs to be taken out, not made to 90 seconds.
That gap keeps getting wider between those towers and reality.
Yes, but it is not fun for the weaker B that can’t jump on the A train. When A overtake the B’s, the B team is not working together anymore. The whole idea of this race type has failed.
If the A’s are catching the B group in 4 mins, that must tell people that something needs to change?
The pace of change is so glacial it’s embarrassing and frustrating for the end users.
Believe it or not, if people see things are changing little and often to try and improve things it actually buys you some leeway and slack as people can actually see the path forward (that includes the odd step backwards as people accept that with frequent changes)
Sitting on your hands for months and then making a single change for the worse is what gets peoples back up and causes friction.