Similar to Paul, whilst I treat these events as races, its my personal goals that I’m out to achieve, nothing to do with ranking. I really enjoy these larger events with effectively one Category and a choice of routes to suit, on the day.
Out of interest, this was discussed previously (having the option to late join in the pen would be nice), but the voting on the Feature Request suggests that the community isn’t overly enthused, which aligns to the views here. But if anyone wants to, go ahead and vote this up …